BS: ...this land is private property

Subject: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 02:05 PM

Five white men own more of the US than all of Black America put together:

http://inequality.org/owns-land/

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 02:14 PM

http://www.whoownstheworld.com/about-the-book/largest-landowner/ 

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 02:48 PM

No-one ever made the land. Apart from inheriting it, the only way you can come by land is to put a fence round it and tell people that it's yours from now on. In other words by stealing it. All private land was stolen at some time in the past. Just because it has been passed on to you doesn't mean it was never stolen. There are penalties for stealing. The penalty for stealing land should be a tax on it. There wouldn't be much tax per acre on land that not much can be done with, such as mountains and deserts. Land in urban areas, and the best agricultural land, is far more valuable and should be highly taxed. My land tax would only kick in once you owned more than a certain amount of land. In London that might be a quarter of an acre. In the mountains it might be a thousand acres. If you owned land that you were doing nothing with, or were using to the detriment of the environment, you would forfeit it. A land tax that made no exceptions, not even for the Queen, would soon have people throwing their fences away. We don't need big landowners wielding power in unjust and undemocratic ways. What we need is millions of small landowners. They would use the land in the best way they knew how, because it was theirs, not someone else's. Someone working the land for Prince Charles is never going to invest the same love, care and standard of efficiency than they would if it was their own land.

That's my impossible fantasy and I'm sticking to it.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Richard Bridge on the Intel Quad Core
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 02:58 PM

The US and UK are somewhat different. You might be interested (as to the UK) in the Inclosure Acts and indeed how the UK lost most of its common land when Commons Registration was introduced. Likewise many minor highways have been lost and the possibilities to prove new ones (no matter how strong the evidence found) ahve been truncated.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 03:11 PM

If only solicitors were better at dealing with it than politicians, we'd be able to truncate Cameron.

Eyup Bridge. Quad core eh? Four times the confusion me old blossom.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: gnu
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 06:08 PM

Her Royal Beth? Nay. She doesn't "own". She is the figurehead of a system that subjugates through military prowess. As do all "rulers" and dictators.

To be a true landowner, you have to hold the land "freehold" under whatever system or jurisdiction or whatever. Now, nobody really owns land, even under such systems. Just try not paying taxes to, say, Beth, and your title gets POOF! I won't get into the discussion of "stealing" land or holding it by force because I wish to impart something that affects me personally.

Few people know this but the largest private land owner on earth is from NB.ca, my home province in the Great White Frozen. The Irvings. They now live in Bermuda... tax laws. They like to pay no taxes in Canada. Nice work if you can get it eh?

They also are ranked a ways down the list on the richest people in the world. Yeah, right. Let's see the likes of Bill Gates or others can cash in their bank accounts if things go squirrely. Irving has land and resources and factories and... well... the biggest oil refinery in NA comes to mind. And, they privately own the most land on earth. And they own most of the newspapers here and they own radio stations and they own hundreds of companies and they own... whatever the fuck they want. And I don't just mean NB. Canada. Maine is now and "next".

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Thanatopsis
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 06:44 PM

Steve Shaw sez: ...Someone working the land for Prince Charles is never going to invest the same love, care and standard of efficiency than they would if it was their own land...

Unless they're scared

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 07:13 PM

What the linked article actually says is: "The five largest landowners in America, all white, own more rural land than all of black America combined." (bold type is mine.)

Ref: Pigford v. Glickman

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 07:17 PM

Really? You tend your land with love because you're scared?


To continue with my reverie, imagine a world with millions of small landowners instead of a few big ones. To make it pay you'd have to use your land intensively. Think of the diversity replacing the tedious sameness of huge holdings. No more barley prairies. You would have to improve the soil and replant hedgerows to provide shelter. You would have that incentive. You'd have to use real skills instead of driving a tractor all day, inhaling dust laced with pesticides and getting fat through boredom and inactivity. No investing in land, no speculation. And you can't hide your land. You can't put it in an offshore account or pretend you haven't got it or get an accountant to prove that you have a lot less than you really have, unlike money. And the tax raised on excessive land holdings would drastically reduce the tax burden on working people. Sanity restored: the incentive to make your land pay, an end to the tax burden disincentive of going to work. No more taxing people's hard work. And an end to landlords, the biggest sharks on planet Earth. They'd offload their holdings like they were dropping hot potatoes. Blimey, I'm getting carried away here!

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Teribus
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 07:36 PM

"We don't need big landowners wielding power in unjust and undemocratic ways. What we need is millions of small landowners. They would use the land in the best way they knew how, because it was theirs, not someone else's."

Now how do big landowners wield power in undemocratic and unjust ways?

Millions of small landowners all doing their own thing as best as they know how would be a recipe for disaster even allowing for the not insignificant hurdle to be overcome in simply finding the millions of people with even the remotest interest in working those millions of smallholdings. But there again I could be wrong and the job centres of the UK are inundated with people battering down the doors all eager to become farmers, but I rather doubt it.

Somebody has got something so let's take it from them - "Socialism" is not known as the politics of envy for nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Thanatopsis
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 07:42 PM

Scared of Prince Charles silly (or maybe Camilla) sending me to the Tower for mis-mowing the verge

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 08:03 PM

Your facile politics of envy point has been answered in another thread. You must be getting desperate, raising it here as well. Big landowners wield power unjustly by being landlords. No landlord born ever made so much as one square foot of land. Well I suppose that the Dutch made some land by reclaiming it from the sea. I'd let them hang on to that. Landlords use their wealth to make (not earn) even more money by charging rent. Right-wing governments like landlords so much that they let them charge as much rent as they like unfettered. The rent is paid on houses and on land and the payers have little security of tenure. Tenant farmers have to do all the work but still pay rent to a landlord. Prince Charles makes millions out of his farms yet doesn't know the first thing about what farming really entails. Well he does wear green wellies, has a Harris Tweed jacket and plus-twos and rides a horse I suppose. He and his fellow landed gentry are parasites on their tenants. But I wouldn't dream of taking away their land. I'd make them pay such punitive taxes on excessive holdings that they'd voluntarily ditch most of their holdings. Land would become cheap and thousands of tenant farmers would be able to own their own holdings and plough the profits back into the land instead of into the pocket of some useless twerp who talks to his pot plants, believes in homeopathy and conducts symphonies to his bedroom mirror, oh, and shags his old flame the day before he marries his bride, tricking millions the world over into thinking he meant it. Anyway, I know you're loving this, so let me just tell you that I know this will not happen in this green and pleasant land. There is a place called cloud cuckoo land. I can but dream.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: olddude
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 08:21 PM

Small US farmer's are getting rare, big corporations own all the farm land anymore

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 08:40 PM

Exactly. And isn't it boring.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Feb 16 - 09:14 PM

Your green and pleasant land is Mary's Dowry, don't give up 

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 03:19 AM

""Socialism" is not known as the politics of envy for nothing."

If I condemn thieves for robbing a bank, am I displaying envy?

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Stu
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 04:04 AM

You can't own land.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Teribus
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 04:38 AM

To simply answer your question Shimrod - No would not be displaying envy you would be condemning a crime. Now if you were to condemn somebody on the basis of their wealth, and made demands that they must be stripped of it - then you would be displaying envy.

As to that other thread Shaw:

Two teachers did as you did and took advantage of the property market back in the 1980s - you moved and bought yourself another house, they took their profit and converted it in the course of the next 26 years into a property empire worth £180 BILLION. Their properties were let and they charged what was the market rate, had they pitched the rents at the "as much as they liked" as you claim their properties would never be let and their "EMPIRE" would have never have got off the ground.

Now then let us take an equally jaundiced look at the problem from the landlords side just to balance things up. Who is "Housing Benefit" paid to? The Landlord, or the Tenant? It is the latter who can then spend that money on anything he or she wishes, the automatic and reasonable assumption that it is given to the landlord to cover the expense intended by the Welfare System is often not the case, the money goes elsewhere. I know five people who have property for rent and after having been stung by poor payers (Who take months to evict and leave the property completely trashed) will not let out to anyone on "Housing Benefit", meanwhile the local authority is left with the problem of rehousing tenants with a track record of being feckless and irresponsible - the problem being dumped on another unsuspecting landlord.

As for the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall contribute massively to the Exchequer before the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family pay their own taxes it amounts to somewhere between £320 and £240 million a year.

Now tell us where all your "makee-learnee" farmers and smallholders are going to come from? Then explain to us just how efficient and productive they will be? There again Shaw you probably think all the food we eat comes from abroad or from the supermarket - for the 64 million people on these islands to eat our farming has to be as efficient as it possibly can be and that does not happen with millions of smallholdings - History tells us that.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 06:18 AM

History tells us the exact opposite. We live in one of the most fertile and well-watered countries on earth but we import food by the millions of tons. Why, I found one day last summer that a certain supermarket was selling courgettes from Holland when they were growing so bloody fast in my garden that I couldn't even give them away. This country was self-sufficient in food in your bad old days and people didn't die of diabetes, heart attacks or fat rot, and the countryside was replete with a diversity of habitat and wildlife that has all but disappeared thanks to your modern "efficiencies". And thank God for the Haber process, eh? Why, I wonder how those country bumpkins of old managed to get almost the same tonnage of grain per acre as modern farmers without all that damaging nitrogenous fertiliser?

The owners of those Duchies you refer to wouldn't know what an honest day's graft was if it reared up and bit them on their royal backsides. While the tenants are working their land for them and generating all those profits, they're off somewhere hot and colonial, waving at all those foreign chappies who are standing behind a rope waving cheap flags at them. And don't tell me that they're good landlords, etc. They have massively-overpaid "estate managers" to make sure that things are running smoothly at home and to make sure that the plebs can't get in to disturb the grouse or poach the salmon. That's what landlordism is all about.

"I moved and bought another house..." Well I had to find someone to buy the first one first. Then I had to borrow a ton of money that has taken me 35 years in all to pay off, all to buy my HOME, not "another house", a property or an investment. As for your market rate, well you know as well as I do about the blind workings of the market, supply and demand and all that. Thatcher and all her successors ensured that there was a shortage of public housing to rent by selling off over a million of the choicest houses at massive discounts in order to further her agenda of making the country a nation of little capitalists (as well as selling off our public utilities cut-price to allow anyone with spare dosh to make a killing on the shares. Look at them now: ripping people off with complicated, impossible-to-understand forests of tariffs and laughable customer service provided by call centres in the cheapest countries they can find). Housing shortage equals landlords' market. Remove rent controls (well done again, Maggie) and there's your recipe for out-of-control rent increases. Round here, the lowest-wage economy in England, a couple working full-time on the local average wage can scarcely afford to rent a two-bedroom house on a new-build estate, let alone get a mortgage, and I'm not talking posh here, I'm talking about houses with a lovely view of Morrisons' delivery yard or the back end of our new Lidl.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 06:34 AM

A LIDL within walking distance, thats something to be really envious of.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 06:37 AM

I heartily recommend a little book by that self-sufficiency guru John Seymour called Bring Me My Bow. You can pick up a second-hand copy on Amazon for a couple of quid. He blows all Teribus's guff about modern efficiencies and his defence of landlords clean out of the water. And John was no leftie. In fact, I find some of his rather right-wing views to be slightly obnoxious. That's just in case Teribus thinks I'm advocating this as part of some Marxist agenda. He has some very interesting things to say about modern agriculture in particular (he was a farmer for most of his life) and the economy of scale.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 06:39 AM

When I was down in Steve's neck of the woods last week I heard a young lad saying he had just managed to rent a house. The cost was £1100 per month. £1100 was, he said, the going rate for a two bedroomed house.

Ye gods and little fishes.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 06:47 AM

I think, to be fair, round here £1100 would probably be about right for rent plus council tax and fuel bills for a two-bed, decidedly non-posh house.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 07:19 AM

You are a good fellow, Steve, and a fine idealist. You can give us all a true lesson, a masterclass, in basic morality.

But the fact remain that one can OWN land under our laws. It might not in your opinion be right that this should be the case; but such, alas for you, it is. You are rather reminding me of the famous yokel in the old joke, asked the way to somewhere, and replying "Well you can't start from here".

Here, where we happen to be, is, woe·and·alack for bien-pensants of your sort, the only place where you can start.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 09:04 AM

I never said you couldn't. I don't even believe that you shouldn't. I think that your land ownership should be a bit like your tax allowance. Above a certain amount, the more you own, the more tax you pay. But the tax should be graduated, based on the real value of the land you own, as I mentioned before. The main point about land is that no-one made it. Go back far enough and you find that someone stole it in a war or enclosed it using force to keep other people out. You can make a house, which is then yours, though if you build it on land that you stole you can expect to be challenged. You can improve your parcel of land, which gives you the right to be its steward, unfettered, as long as you did it without exploiting or disadvantaging people. If the law says that you can own tens of thousands of acres or square miles of land, and lets you use that land for improper purposes such as rearing grouse for brainless rich idiots to shoot at, or allows you to rent it out at extortionate rents to the tenants who work it for you, or allows you to stop me from walking over your moors and mountains in case I frighten the deer that you want to shoot at for sport, then I think the law is wrong. And I've never pretended that my ideas can ever be carried out. But I don't mind telling you what they are anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Stu
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 09:53 AM

"Here, where we happen to be, is, woe·and·alack for bien-pensants of your sort, the only place where you can start."

No, woe and alack the poor souls who think they own the land. You can't own the land, it's a delusion that you can. All these rights of ownership are transient; the fripperies and conceits of the small-minded and greedy, who cannot see beyond their own brief lifespan.

How much do you own? The crust? The lithosphere? The mantle? Is it geostationary or do you own your floating patch until it's subjected beneath another tectonic plate? Do you own the birds that live there? The badgers? The worms they feed on? Do you grant them the 'right' to live there? What if they themselves are transient? Do you own some and not the others?

"Therefore we require, and we resolve to take both Common Land, and Common woods to be a livelihood for us, and look upon you as equal with us, not above us, knowing very well, that England the land of our Nativity, is to be a common Treasury of livelihood to all, without respect of persons"

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 10:32 AM

Here's something that a mate of mine wrote recently with respect to the Government's proposal to abolish the Wildlife Crimes Unit:

"I have just visited a valley on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire border that was shockingly devoid of life. There were plenty of Red Grouse on the tops, but I saw no Mountain Hares (they eat heather - grouse-food), Crows or Goshawks. There were 8 pairs of Goshawks a couple of years ago."

Far too many "land owners" are greedy, selfish, life-hating bastards who would sterilise "their" land of everything that doesn't bring them in a profit. There's no doubt, in our minds, that the hares, crows and goshawks have fallen prey, illegally, to the guns of those charged with maximising the numbers of grouse that rich bastards like to shoot.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,#
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 10:46 AM

When we are all suffering from food shortages, housing shortages and medicine shortages, the only private land left will be that defended by armies or citizens with guns.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 11:07 AM

All v well, Stu, to quote The Levellers or The Diggers or whoever it was, as if you have made some sort of unarguable knockdown point. And to cite the well-known adage that "You can't take it with you" as if you had made some sort of profound & original statement: of course our ownership of anything stops at death; but what of it? The fact remains that the laws by which we are governed recognise a concept of ownership; so you better learn to live with it, mate -- or else look silly as some dear old lone voice crying in the wilderness...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 12:40 PM

God, Michael, you don't half harp on about this. Yes we know that people possess legal titles to land. Once upon a time it was legal to hang peasants for sheep stealing too. Just read what we're saying. Forget legal. Think moral. Consider that nobody ever made the land. Consider that what we call the land is a shallow interface 'twixt Heaven and Hades. Do you want the landowners to be able to claim the atmosphere right up to the Van Allen belts and the ground right down to the Moho? Reread Stu's post, properly this time. You can claim land if you're big and strong but you can't own it because it's everybody's and not yours to own. Why? Because you didn't make it, and your ancestors had no authority to usurp it, just raw power. You can be the custodian of a fair share of it, even call yourself the owner of it you really want to, but that comes with responsibilities. That's allowed, morally. If you are in charge of more than your fair share then you should be given sharp incentives to offload it. The pheasants and the grouse would just have to put up with it.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Stu
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 01:20 PM

"so you better learn to live with it, mate"

You see, that's where you're wrong, I don't at all. In fact, I don't recognise the concept of land ownership, although I have to deal with the consequences of the delusion of land ownership with some frequency.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,wysiwyg minus cookie
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 01:46 PM

HELLO--

...one can OWN land under our laws BECAUSE European colonizers STOLE it from its original inhabitants!!!

But you'd all rather make another vain attempt to win a meaningless pissing contest than feel for THEM, obviously!

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 01:56 PM

I hope that large-parcel land ownership goes into decline. I'm not sure it's all bad, though. The first post links to an article that says that Ted Turner owns a huge amount of land. I think I've heard Turner is a pretty good steward of his property, and his ownership may well be an advantage to the common good.
Here in the western US, much of the land is owned by the federal government, and conservancies are acquiring more and more land. That's a trend that I'd like to see continue.
The Bundy family of Nevada disagree.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 01 Mar 16 - 05:21 PM

"The fact remains that the laws by which we are governed recognise a concept of ownership ..."

And you can be damn sure that "landowners" had a very big say in framing those laws!

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 01:22 AM

Steve -- I harp on about it, do I? While you are maintaining a dignified silence, I suppose? The fact that there have been unjust laws in the past doesn't alter the fact of the existence of the present rules by which we are governed. No good your going on as if they don't apply because The Great S.Shaw doesn't happen to approve of them. Have you not yet learnt the difference between what you think ought to be the case, and what is indeed the fact of the matter? Till you do, you were best to keep quiet; you are just making yourself look silly.

Regards ≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 06:42 AM

In case you haven't been following, Michael, the whole tenor of my posts in this thread has been that I recognise the facts of the matter quite well, am proposing a utopian alternative that I know isn't going to come about, but can talk about it anyway. And why not if it helps to point to injustices. Go back and have a look.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 06:43 AM

And I wish I'd edited that big sentence. Tried to stop it, too late I was.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 06:45 AM

OK -- apologies for misrep.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 12:53 PM

Jack this is important. If we all could instantly see who owns what,
revolution would be seen as necessary.

Americans are visual beings thanks to our screen education and the hypnosis that resides there.

It is said the image called Earth Rise changed our consciousness.

If an image of America showed the joint ownership of private State and Federal Land were, lets say a google map, the average American would see reality for the first time. Bernie should have one made.

To begin we need a map of just the border and coastline ownership !

A project like this may be easier than it was 10 years ago.

Some of the ownership would be a great surprise to all.


If only we could see that access to the ocean is not our land or your land but less than .001 % public beach.

Did you know that of the 5 Hawaiian Islands, one is TOTALLY private?

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 01:20 PM

The map does not exist.

It looks like one must go county by county, state by state.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 01:40 PM

If an image of America showed the joint ownership of private State and Federal Land were, lets say a google map, the average American would see reality for the first time.

Something like has existed for years, but not just for Ameica and not for "average" anybody. The new technology of global mapping is a crucial tool for the landowning elite to figure out what they can grab next.

(I first heard about that from the political scientist Janet Laible at Lehigh University - dunno what she's published about it. Her pal Any Wightman in Scotland has been doing some good work on these issues for his entire career - he's standing as a Green candidate in the next Scottish election. His Twitter is well worth following: https://twitter.com/andywightman).

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Mar 16 - 03:13 PM

No color coded easy to see map of privatized America there.

I think it is a project not yet made.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Mar 16 - 02:44 AM

Donuel says: Did you know that of the 5 Hawaiian Islands, one is TOTALLY private?
Wikipedia says Hawaii has "approximately 152" islands, although the State of Hawaii acknowledges only 137 because the others are tiny or spend a lot of time under the surface of the sea. All but 127 state-owned acres on the seventh-largest island, Niihau, is owned by the Robinson family, who also own other properties in the state.
Lanai, the 6th-largest island, is 98% owned by Larry Ellison, founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation. The rest of Lanai is owned by the State of Hawaii. I can't imagine that any of the five major islands are totally in private ownership. There seems to be a lot of public land on each of them.
Here's (click) an article on the ten largest landowners in Hawaii. The State of Hawaii is the top landowner, and the U.S. Government comes in second.

There are many people in the western U.S. who believe that government land ownership is tyranny...or socialism. I rather like the fact that the people of the U.S. own huge portions of land in the West.

I suppose it's mostly casinos that are responsible for the improvement of the lives of Native Americans because their land is so poor, but I think there's justice in the fact that vast amounts of land in the Western U.S. belong to the tribes, as almost-sovereign nations existing within the territory of the U.S. And now, many of the tribes are doing well. Our local tribe makes generous donations of casino profits to community charities. They sure help us nonprofits out.

-Joe-

Click here for a map of federal lands in the United States.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Teribus
Date: 03 Mar 16 - 04:59 PM

"History tells us the exact opposite. We live in one of the most fertile and well-watered countries on earth but we import food by the millions of tons. Why, I found one day last summer that a certain supermarket was selling courgettes from Holland when they were growing so bloody fast in my garden that I couldn't even give them away."

Does history tell us the opposite Shaw? Don't think that it does but perhaps you could provide some examples from history - but I doubt that you will.

You still haven't told us where all these "makee-learnee" farmers and smallholders are going to come from.

We import food through choice, we are a complex multicultural, cosmopolitan country, we are part of the EU and we trade with them. What efforts did you make to get rid of your crop of courgettes Steve?

"This country was self-sufficient in food in your bad old days and people didn't die of diabetes, heart attacks or fat rot, and the countryside was replete with a diversity of habitat and wildlife that has all but disappeared thanks to your modern "efficiencies"."

Poor education, know all, baby-boomer generation who craved for junk food and fizzy drinks, who did everything in excess and thought that they could get away with it. That Mr Shaw is what caused the increase in diabetes, heart attacks and fat rot - it had S.F.A. to do with modern farming.

"Why, I wonder how those country bumpkins of old managed to get almost the same tonnage of grain per acre as modern farmers without all that damaging nitrogenous fertiliser?"

Between 1885 and 1945 wheat yields remained almost static at around 2.5 tonnes per hectare.

From 1945 onwards there was a marked increase year on year in yield from 2.5 tonnes /hectare to 8.6 tonnes/hectare in 2014. Our acreage is dropping but productivity is still increasing.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Jack Campin
Date: 03 Mar 16 - 08:40 PM

Donuel: look for "google earth parcel data". What you were asking for was briefly available free, but Google removed it a few weeks ago. And they don't seem willing to say why, or what it might cost to get it back.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/2Bpdn1eQeuQ

It seems if you have a few thousand dollars a year to spend, you can still get that functionality by licencing it from the firms that were supplying it to Google. Good luck finding what data is available, who owns it and what software can display it to you.

That article implies that usage of GIS data is MUCH more widespread by an enormous range of businesses (which do have that money to spend) than I ever imagined. I knew it was huge, but I didn't realize it was THAT huge. The GIS data industry must have an annual turnover in billions, but it's so diffusely organized almost nobody has an overall picture of what it's up to. (Google probably does).

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,Dave
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 04:53 AM

"From 1945 onwards there was a marked increase year on year in yield from 2.5 tonnes /hectare to 8.6 tonnes/hectare in 2014. Our acreage is dropping but productivity is still increasing. "

This is due to improved fertilisers and pesticides. And the start really was National Growmore, introduced in 1945. But available to large farmers, small farmers, smallholders and hobby gardeners alike. I don't think we need the land to be in the hands of large farmers, there should be a more equitable distribution. But I am not with all this organic nonsense. Apart from GM, thats unproven and we are kept in the dark about the consequences by the likes of Monsanto who squash all opposition.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 06:52 AM

Financial Times investigations into global land issues, starting with near-genocide in Ethiopia:

https://ig.ft.com/sites/land-rush-investment/ethiopia/

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 04:04 PM

you are making well-made points here steve. don't know what to add

except a question. is the situation in england the same as in scotland where who owns the land is largely classified information? the snp government is making some rather weedy attempts to improve the situation but it's still scandalous. yet more nonsense about grouse being more important than people. or fairness. or mountain hares.

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 04:26 PM

and another thing ....those folk who own woodland on dartmoor and are trying to live an environmentally friendly and positively alternative life. their existence is threatened by the local council who apparently disapprove of well-intentioned hippies. what is wrong with our country (apart from capitalism. obviously) that we can't enjoy and support some diversity and eccentricities? isn't that what freedom is about?

Subject: RE: BS: ...this land is private property
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Mar 16 - 05:01 PM

A good read - Kevin Cahill in The New Statesman. Google it, I'm useless at doing links:

"The great property swindle: why do so few people in Britain own so much of our land?"

Makes you spit really. And all of it nicked from all of us.