Optimist wrote:

"The green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it."

Emotive terms have been formed and liberally used such as concreting over
the countryside and urban sprawl. With only about 7.5% of the land settled,
we can't concrete over the countryside even if we wanted to. About two
thirds of all new housing is built within existing urban areas with the
remainder mainly built on the edge of urban areas. Very little is built on
open countryside.

Cities have a natural footprint limit. The generally accepted limit is that
if it takes over an hour to travel from one side to the other its expansion
naturally tails off. In olden times this hour was on foot or on horseback,
now it is in cars or on public transport. So we can't "sprawl" too far
either. In England the area of greenbelt has doubled since 1980, with nearly
21 million acres absorbed in total. The UKactually has greenbelt sprawl.

Greenbelts, extensively introduced in the 1950s, were intended to be narrow
and primarily used for recreation by the inhabitants of the towns and cities
they surrounded. The belts were expanded in width, but continued to be used
for farming. The shire counties used greenbelts to hold back the disliked
populations of nearby towns and cities. Recreational uses disappeared and
the greenbelts became green barriers to keep large numbers of urban
inhabitants from mixing with a very small number of rural residents. This is
a clear case of the few exercising their will over a massive majority. Often
these greenbelts were not even green, containing industry and intensive
industrial agriculture. Instead of being a sports jacket for the urban
dwellers geenbelts became a straight jacket..

The biggest propaganda organs a the Council for the Protection of Rural
England and the Countryside Alliance. Green movements like Friends of the
Earth have been accused of being fronts for large landowners. Large
landowners use green groups to keep the population out of the countryside.
The former is an organisation formed by large landowners and the latter is
funded by large landowners. Their angle is keep the status quo by keeping
townies out of the countryside, and also keeping villagers in villages. A
Cabinet Office report described the countryside as, "the near exclusive
preserve of the more affluent sections of society."

The Council for the Protection of Rural England have protected little of the
character of the English countryside since world war two, despite their
claims. In 1940 the German air force took photo reconnaissance photos of
largely southern England. The captured photos, when compared to the ordnance
survey maps of 1870, 70 years before, clearly indicated there was little
difference in topology. When compared to the ordnance survey maps of today,
there are vast changes. The 1947 T&C planning act just allowed landscape
raping agriculturalists, who contribute no more than around 2.5% to the UK
economy, to go wild.

The Council for the Protection of Rural England claim to be acting in the
interest of the land, wildlife and the countryside in general. This is far
from the case. It is the obscene profits of large landowners they are
primarily interested in, protecting little of rural England.

In Medieval times 100% of all taxes came from taxes on land. Up until the
late 1600s 3/4 of all taxes came from land taxes. The aristocracy peeled
back taxes on land and put it onto individual people's efforts, income tax.
By the mid 1800s, only 5% of taxes came from land. The shift away from
comprehensively taxing land created the scourge of the modern world's
economy - boom and bust.