Britain's land is still owned by an aristocratic elite

[ANGELFIRE1 10]

Maybe the op is just a Troll post.

 

Angel.

[57Varieties 10]

Landless peasants? Who are you? Wat Tyler?

 

I am beginning to wonder if the modern world has ever made an appearance in Sheffield. On other threads we have left wing loons harking back to the economics of the 19th century and now you think we live in the 14th century. How long before someone suggests we'd be better off back under the control of Rome?

 

 

We are already under the control of Rome. I'm freeing myself of the Roman Catholic Church as we speak.

 

Ive just uploaded these videos to my youtube channel for you.

 

Santos Bonacini part 1 of 5

 

Santos Bonacini part 2 of 5

 

Santos Bonacini part 3 of 5

 

Santos Bonacini part 4 of 5

 

Santos Bonacini part 5 of 5

 

What is the Crown Corporation

 

BBC5 TV John Harris

 

I hope it helps you understand the dire situation the planet is in today.

[Agent Orange 11]

Maybe the op is just a Troll post.

 

Angel.

 

No, I really think he believes what he types. He insists everyone should share everything they ever worked for, with him, without anything in return.

[coffindodger 10]

I think you are taking me far too literally. What I am suggesting is that landowners who inherited their lands in the past should be stripped of the right to profit from them. I accept the argument that the land needs to be managed but not to be exploited for the benefit of a few.

 

The idea that land in London needs to be managed is laughable. There is a case for saying parts of the Chatsworth Estate may need to be managed but tenant farmers should be able to buy outright the land they farm and those who rent should not be exploited to keep the Cavendish family in a lifestyle they have by an accident of history rather than honest work.

 

If a farmer decides to buy the land the money should not go to Cavendish family, it should go to the Treasury to benefit the people, not the Cavendishes.

 

Tenant farmers have been leaving estate's like Chatsworth in droves for many years, big is the order of the day, huge is best. However I do know of so called small farmers, who keep the very minimum of stock in able to benefit from generous EU grants. But having said that, the Chatsworth estate has reduced it's sheep flock from 6000 to 2000, and has a small herd of Charolais, they might be doing exactly the same.

[coffindodger 10]

No, I really think he believes what he types. He insists everyone should share everything they ever worked for, with him, without anything in return.

 

A bit like footballers wives then.

[chem1st 10]

Nobody is paid merely for owning land, so that's the first problem, you want to stop something that doesn't happen.

 

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmenvfru/671/67109.htm

 

110. The current definition of a 'farmer' does not require the SPS recipient to be actively producing food, or other agricultural products. For this reason, the CAP has been accused of merely rewarding people for owning land rather than incentivising behaviour that contributes to food security and the other CAP objectives.

 

They are!

 

Characterising ownership as depriving someone else of something is disingenuous.

As already noted a large proportion of this land is unsuitable for housing or business activity. What difference does it make who technically owns parts of the peak district, it's a national park anyway!

 

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eleven.asp

 

THUS, THERE ARE TWO types of ethically invalid land titles:[1] “feudalism,” in which there is continuing aggression by titleholders of land against peasants engaged in transforming the soil; and land-engrossing, where arbitrary claims to virgin land are used to keep first-transformers out of that land. We may call both of these aggressions “land monopoly”—not in the sense that some one person or group owns all the land in society, but in the sense that arbitrary privileges to land ownership are asserted in both cases, clashing with the libertarian rule of non-ownership of land except by actual transformers, their heirs, and their assigns.

 

And from the link in the OP...

 

When it comes to land ownership, Britain today is a more unequal country than Brazil - where there are regular land riots. We are beaten in the European league tables only by Spain, a country which largely retains the land patterns imposed by General Franco's fascist regime. It's time we realised: this land is not your land, from Land's End to the Scottish Highlands. It is theirs.

 

This makes a mockery of the principles our society is supposed to be built on. Very few people defended the idea of hereditary peers - so why should most of the country's land be owned according to hereditary principles? For a system of private property to thrive - and I believe it must, because it is the best way to generate wealth - it has to be legitimate. There must be a relationship between work and reward: if you work hard, you should be rewarded. But most of these landowners have put in no work, and they are given a vast reward: the land on which we live. And - even where wealth has been earned, as in a few cases - nobody has earned this obscene amount of space on a crowded island. There has to be some sense of proportion, or the idea of human equality becomes a bad joke.

 

But far from redistributing land, successive British governments have reinforced this inequality by subsidising the richest landowners in the country. For example, a recent New Statesman investigation found that the multi-billionaire Duke of Westminster - who has done nothing to earn his wealth - is entitled to £9.2m in subsidies each year from you, the taxpayer. Kevin Cahill, the author of an award-winning book on land ownership in Britain, explains: "Money is being taken out of your pocket to enhance the assets of the rich, who, in their role as landowners, pay no tax. This is a massive scandal." Yesterday, Tony Blair was talking about weaning poor people in Britain off disability benefit. How about taking the land-owning aristocracy off welfare before we start turning on poor people desperate for their extra £50 a week?

 

And another...

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/10/land-tax-labour-britain

 

In broad outline, the UK is 60 million acres in size, of which 41 million are designated "agricultural" land, 15 million are so-called natural wastage (forests, rivers, mountains and so on) and owned by institutions such as the Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Defence, and four million are the "urban plot", the densely congested land on which most of the 61 million people of these islands live.

 

In sum, 69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Or, more pertinently, 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land, while 24 million families live on the four million acres of the urban plot. No other country in Europe, apart from Spain, has such an unequal concentration of land ownership. The single wealthiest landowner is the Duke of Westminster, who owns hundreds of acres of prime real estate and land in Belgravia and Mayfair.

 

As Cahill said, there is no shortage of available and uncultivated land in Britain - the landowners' estates are vast and, in areas such as the Cotswolds and parts of Scotland, say, omnipresent. What Britain suffers from, especially in the south-east of England, is a shortage of land on which housing can be built. As a result, the urban plot becomes ever more congested, land values and property prices continue to grow - because scarcity of land attracts a premium value - and our young people, many of them debt-burdened from their university years or struggling to find work in a recession, cannot afford to buy a flat, let alone a house. This forces them into the twilight world of short-term rents and disreputable landlords.

 

And there are more, this is mainstream news, and it has been a political battle ground for 1000s of years. Ever since the first man claimed ownership and deprived others.

 

And in the UK today we tax labour (with ever increasing taxes upon the labour of the poorest), and subsidise property & land ownership, via CAP payments, housing benefit, mechanisms to force up house prices and rents (and thus increase the imputed income advantage of land ownership).

 

Is it any wonder we have record unemployment and growing inequality.

 

Wake up for crying out loud. It's like your dreaming and speaking out in your sleep in favour of your own slavery.

Edited February 13, 2012 by chem1st
quote tags

[hyper 10]

Have you thought of getting a job?

comedian springs to mind

[chem1st 10]

No, I really think he believes what he types. He insists everyone should share everything they ever worked for, with him, without anything in return.

 

I do not suggest that. I suggest the opposite.

 

What people work for should be their own.

 

If a man grows some potatoes, if he ploughs and plants them himself they should be his. He shouldn't be forced to do it for some landowner whom does nothing to earn his keep, who merely owns land because of inheritance and state enforced privilege.

 

However I recognise that land is a finite resources and that some sharing of the wealth that can be produced must take place.

[WeX 10]

chem1st, we don't always agree, but I'm with you on this one. it sickens me how much the royals own and to add insult to injury, they don't pay inheritance tax either!

 

Just walking around central London, knowing that no matter how hard you work, how much you aspire to be a success, you can never live or own any of the grand buildings there!

[Agent Orange 11]

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmenvfru/671/67109.htm

 

 

 

They are!

 

Characterising ownership as depriving someone else of something is disingenuous.

As already noted a large proportion of this land is unsuitable for housing or business activity. What difference does it make who technically owns parts of the peak district, it's a national park anyway!

 

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eleven.asp

 

 

 

And from the link in the OP...

 

 

 

And another...

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/10/land-tax-labour-britain

 

 

 

And there are more, this is mainstream news, and it has been a political battle ground for 1000s of years. Ever since the first man claimed ownership and deprived others.

 

And in the UK today we tax labour (with ever increasing taxes upon the labour of the poorest), and subsidise property & land ownership, via CAP payments, housing benefit, mechanisms to force up house prices and rents (and thus increase the imputed income advantage of land ownership).

 

Is it any wonder we have record unemployment and growing inequality.

 

Wake up for crying out loud. It's like your dreaming and speaking out in your sleep in favour of your own slavery.

 

There is nothing stopping you buying land or property.

[truman 10]

chem1st, we don't always agree, but I'm with you on this one. it sickens me how much the royals own and to add insult to injury, they don't pay inheritance tax either!

 

 

COuld the Royal Family sell any of their estates? Genuine question..I was always under the impression they couldn't..

[chem1st 10]

It seems to me that the OP wants owt for nowt. Free housing and acres of free land. Why not get a job, earn some money and buy your own house and land. There is nothing stopping you from buying these things.

 

Nonsense.

 

I argue that everyone should be given access to housing and to pay fair rents, ideally the cost of this would be driven down to practically next to nothing over time. There is less than 1000 hours of labour in a house.

 

I argue that everyone should have access to land to farm if they so wish, however this would be in the framework of LVT and citizens income.

 

So I could PAY (other citizens of the UK) to farm some land (as I would be depriving others of the ability to farm it), others could do the same.

 

Which is better than the current system of paying people whom inherited vast swathes of land to 'farm' land, when the definition of 'farming' they use to qualify for vast financial subsidy in the form of CAP payments does not even require these people to produce food.