On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:25:40 +0100
"News" wrote:
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,

7.5%? Where did you get that figure from? Do farms not count as settled?

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

Are you trolling? You can't get across london in an hour never mind Toyko
or mexico city.

rest of drivel snipped

I'm guessing you work for a developer and/or estate agency or have some
other vested interest in building sprawl.

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.

Right, because there was never crop failure or animal disease which meant
peasents couldn't pay the tax was there, back in those bucolic times you
apparently hark back to.

B2003