90 percent of us live on but 5 percent of the land.

[chem1st]

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/09/how-we-pay-our-richest-landowners

 

A political consensus has hardened that there are too few houses being built and that our planning laws are too restrictive. Equally most people seem to believe that too much of Britain, especially England, has been bulldozed and obliterated; that our land is less pleasant and less green with each passing year. In fact, only 10.6 per cent of England (and 6 per cent of Britain) is developed. The myth spun about this country is that land is scarce. It is not – landowners, many of them aristocrats who acquired their land through a quirk of ancestral good luck or who benefited from the Norman Conquest, the dissolution of the monasteries or the enclosure of common land, are paid to keep it off the market through a system of European Union agricultural subsidies (see table below). What is scarce is land on which there is planning permission to build.

 

Not enough houses being built and a land monopoly depriving citizens of their right to use land for housing and employment. Stolen land. Subsidies for landowners who inherit stolen land.

 

In the UK as a whole, it is “enclosed farmland” that accounts for by far the largest share of land (40 per cent), followed by mountains, moorlands and heath (18 per cent) and woodland (12 per cent, a figure that has doubled since 1945). For those who question why UK homes are both the smallest in Europe and the most expensive, the answer is that 90 per cent of the population lives on just 5 per cent of the land. Viewed in this context, it is unsurprising that so many believe this is an overcrowded country in which rapacious developers have monopolised what little space remains.

 

And what is more peculiar is the tax upon the serfs to benefit landowners!

 

The average British household contributes £245 a year to the CAP, most of which is handed to the wealthiest landowners. Originally established with the intention of supporting small farmers and reducing Europe’s reliance on food imports, the CAP, which accounts for over 40 per cent (€55bn) of the EU budget, has become a slush fund for assorted dukes, earls and princes. Payment is based on acreage alone and takes no account of wealth, making the scheme one of the most regressive – the more you own, the more you get. In addition, since the EU’s definition of “farmer” does not require individuals to produce food or other agricultural products, many recipients are, in effect, paid not to farm.

 

So people get paid agricultural subsidy for holding idle land, whilst men who wish to pay money to rent a pot of land to grow a small amount of food sit on a waiting list.

Some of these landowners claim agricultural subsidy AND rent out the land to tenant farmers!

Farmers might be poor, but the people that 'own' (hold) the land they work are not!

 

A Freedom of Information request by the New Statesman to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reveals that the largest landowners received millions of pounds in taxpayer subsidy last year. The Duke of Westminster, a multibillionaire, was paid £748,716 for his ownership of Grosvenor Farms, the Earl of Plymouth £675,085, the Duke of Buccleuch £260,273, the Duke of Devonshire £251,729 and the Duke of Atholl £231,188 for his Blair Castle estate. It was also a lucrative year for the Windsors. The Queen received £415,817 for the Royal Farms and £314,811 for the Duchy of Lancaster, while Prince Charles was paid £127,868 for the Duchy of Cornwall. Similarly well-remunerated was Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who received £273,905 for his 2,000-acre Glympton Estate in Oxfordshire, allegedly purchased with proceeds of the 1985 al-Yamamah arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia. The largest individual UK beneficiary is Sir Richard Sutton, who was paid £1.7m for his Settled Estates, the 6,500-acre property near Newbury that he inherited with his baron*etcy in 1981, despite net assets of £136.5m.

 

Whilst people in tiny dwellings living under leasehold/freehold TENURE pay large sums in council tax for but a very very small parcel of land.

 

Land reform is now both a political and an economic necessity for Britain. Here is an issue that should galvanise both the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

 

We are desperately in need of land reform, and we have been since '66 (1066).

[MrSmith]

But I have access to vast swathes of beautiful England and much of the land is used to feed us, employ us, and protect us.

[vwkittie]

Yay, build all over the countryside. How about no.

[Birds]

Yay, build all over the countryside. How about no.

 

Much of the land surrounding sheffield isn't suitable to be built on, which is why, thankfully, Sheffield isn't the huge urban sprawl that Manchester is.

[Expat owl]

Yawn, another land/housing post from Chem1st .........................

[Kerrangaroo]

There's a piece of land behind us that has a proposal for 18 low density five bedroomed homes to be built which should help alleviate the housing crisis a little.

[Birds]

Yawn, another land/housing post from Chem1st .........................

 

I bet you're sitting pretty in a secure home...just remember, many are not.

[Ms Macbeth]

There's a piece of land behind us that has a proposal for 18 low density five bedroomed homes to be built which should help alleviate the housing crisis a little.

 

The crisis is really in social housing. If the development near you is for a registered social landlord building affordable rented homes for large families then yes, that would probably help. If they are five bedroomed/several bathroomed luxury homes, then it won't.

 

Not that I have anything against large expensive homes being built, they provide work for lots of people, and the large amount of stamp duty benefits everyone.

[Kerrangaroo]

The crisis is really in social housing. If the development near you is for a registered social landlord building affordable rented homes for large families then yes, that would probably help. If they are five bedroomed/several bathroomed luxury homes, then it won't.

 

Not that I have anything against large expensive homes being built, they provide work for lots of people, and the large amount of stamp duty benefits everyone.

 

Would you like to know the reason for the proposed development, it'll make you laugh.

It's to mix the demographic!

[FACEBOOK]

/////////////////////////