Robin Grey speaks with Christopher Price, Director of Policy for the Countryside Landowners Association about farm subsidies, land value tax, GMO, Right to Roam, open data and the Land Registry, fracking and more.
Tag Archives: land value tax
Seventy Years in the Planning (60 mins)
BBC Radio 4 presents Will Self walking the London green belt in search of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act which optimistically tried to end the post-war British conflict between field and city. He retraces a countryside ramble he took with his father, the journalist, town planner and political scientist Peter Self – a leading exponent of the principles enshrined in the ’47 Act. Will argues that the public consensus to build a New Jerusalem has been squandered in the past seventy years, leading to the present day housing crisis. He goes back to first principles and argues that the offer made in 1947 by the Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lewis Silkin to build a better Britain is as relevant today as it was then. Will says that if it was an opportunity missed, then the fault doesn’t lie exclusively with the planning system, rather with our lack of desire to make the planning system work.
NEF piece on housing and land
Josh-Ryan Collins from the New Economics Foundation has produced a lovely piece of prose which ends with these lovely sentences:
“There is a strong case for fundamental changes in the way land is taxed, controlled and used. The speculative profits arising from owning desirable land need to be either taxed or captured by local or national governments — or perhaps communities — by owning the land themselves.
In many East Asian countries, such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, the majority of land is controlled by state corporations — public ‘land banks’. In the US and Canada, there are similar schemes at state or local government level.
These may seem like radical structural interventions for the UK. But the alternative is worsening inequality, rising prices and rents and, eventually, economic and financial collapse as the bubble bursts yet again.”
https://medium.com/@neweconomics/why-you-can-t-afford-a-home-in-the-uk-44347750646a#.blbly27s4
A good New Statesmen article on Land Value Tax
This is worth a quick read. It is to the point and well written.
http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/10/land-tax-labour-britain
“It will be said that in a world of internationally mobile capital and people it is counterproductive to tax personal income and corporate profit to uncompetitive levels. That is right. But a progressive alternative is to shift the tax base to property, and land, which cannot run away, [and] represents in Britain an extreme concentration of wealth.”
Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat conference, Liverpool, 22 September 2010
(1887) The Land Song
“The song became a Liberal radical anthem in the aftermath of David Lloyd George’s “people’s budget” of 1909 which proposed a tax in land. During the two general elections of the following year, ‘The Land Song’ became the governing Liberals’ campaign song.” (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_song)
More info can be found via – https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/the-land-song/
Sound the blast for freedom, boys, and send it far and wide,
March along to victory, for God is on our side,
While the voice of nature thunders o’er the rising tide:
“God made the land for the people”.
The land, the land, ’twas God who made the land,
The land, the land. The ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand?
God gave the land to the people.
Hark! The shout is swelling from the east and from the west!
Why should we beg work and let the landlords take the best?
Make them pay their taxes for the land, we’ll risk the rest!
The land was meant for the people.
The banner has been raised on high to face the battle din,
The army now is marching on, the struggle to begin,
We’ll never cease our efforts ’til the victory we win,
And the land is free for the people.
Clear the way for liberty, the land must all be free,
Britons will not falter in the fight tho’ stern it be.
‘Til the flag we love so well shall wave from sea to sea,
O’er the land that’s free for the people.
The Truscott Arms – Maida Vale, London – 23/04/15
West Central London Green Party proudly presents
Three Acres And A Cow, A History Of Land Rights And Protest In Folk Song And Story
Thursday 23rd April @ The Truscott Arms, 55 Shirland Rd, Maida Vale, W9 2JD
Doors from 7.00pm – show starts at 7.30pm tickets from http://www.etickets.to/buy/?e=12554
——————–
‘Three Acres And A Cow’ connects the Norman Conquest and Peasants’ Revolt with current issues like fracking, the housing crisis and transition town and food sovereignty movements via the Enclosures, English Civil War, Irish Land League and Industrial Revolution, drawing a compelling narrative through the radical people’s history of Britain in folk song, stories and poems.
Part TED talk, part history lecture, part folk club sing-a-long, part poetry slam, part storytelling session… Come and share in these tales as they have been shared for generations.
A History Of Community Asset Ownership by Steve Wyler
When my friend Sophie first told me about this book she said ‘Someone has written a book of the show!’
This is a brilliant overview of the last thousand years and what it lacks in a catchy title, it makes up for in compelling prose.
You can download the book from our website as it seems to have dissapeared from the website which previously hosted it.
Cry Freehold – documentary on land (38 mins)
BBC Radio 4 being unusually frank here, connecting land and with the housing crisis in the England. Presented by Chris Bowlby: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k0s5q
Hugh Jones from New Listener has written a transcript of the show which you can now find here – http://www.newlistener.co.uk/home/cry-freehold-the-transcript/
Below is a youtube video of the show – I also have it on mp3 if it gets taken down from youtube and you are keen to hear it. drop me a line…
‘There is a housing crisis in many parts of Britain. But is land the real issue? Chris Bowlby goes to Oxford, where the problem is acute, to investigate.
He hears how a dynamic city can end up with virtually nowhere to build, how land prices help make homes so costly and how land shortage creates invisible victims.’
You must be logged in to post a comment.