buctootim

But you havent quoted any statistics to show the percentages change significantly. You are doing exactly what you did in the Heineken thread - which is to ignore the evidence and links posted by me and others and simply claim something as being true, but backed up by nothing. I have quoted verifiable stats for the UK. You claim the situation is different for England. Fine, cite some evidence.

I dont dispute that there are a relatively smaller number but extremely large estates in Scotland and that the average size of estates in England is smaller, in part because the land is more productive and expensive. So what? What has that got to do either with land reform or inheritance? You keep chucking these tangential things out there thinking it is some kind of triumph. It isnt.

Do you have ADHD Sergei? you never successfully answer questions or make relevant points.

So presumably the fact that we have such a large proportion of our very limited land concentrated in such few hands makes the case for reform even more pressing? Or is there some other reason why its actually a very good thing that land which previously belonged to all citizens was parcelled up and given to 0.01% of the population between 1750 and 1840?

Thats irrelevant because the UK population is largely urban. The rural population density is very similar.

Wow. Pantomime stuff. So far we've had robber barons, communists and the man with 25,000 posts complaining about people discussing stuff. For the record Im not advocating an increase in the overall tax burden. Indeed if a way is found to tax those super rich who currently avoid it, the tax burden for the majority (and asset purchase prices) would fall.

Desperate stuff. You get proved wrong over and over again so you just drag out another irrelevant red herring.

Wake up DD. You are one of the biggest contributors, if not the biggest, in the lounge.

More and more people are becoming aware of how to avoid income tax. What used to be a relatively small problem for HMRC is becoming much more widespread thanks to google and lawyers. It is possible and financially worthwhile for anybody earning over £70,000pa to set up some kind of tax shelter. The same applies to corporation tax - receipts of which (as a proportion of Government income) have dropped by more than half in 25 years. Seems to me the best alternative is to largely scrap income tax and move the focus to assets - tax people and companies on the value of what they own rather than what they earn. I'd also reform inheritance tax - making the threshold dependent on the beneficiaries so that, for example, somebody leaving a £1m estate divided equally to their three children would pay less tax than someone leaving £1m to one person.

I do, its my job. Its been my job for 20 years. More than half of rural land in the UK is owned by a small number of individuals. The Government, utlities, companies and charities own another 22%. Heres the communist Daily Mail for you. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328270/A-Britain-STILL-belongs-aristocracy.html Efficiency comes from larger fields and production sheds, not larger farms per se (acceptiong that very small farms are inefficient). Beyond a certain size you actually lose efficiency because instead of having one guy with an overall control and hands on management you have to start delegating to managers and end up with a pyramid structure. To put the sizes in context the Duke of Buccleuch owns an area 20 times the size of Southampton (or half of West Sussex). The Duke of Atholl's estate is bigger than the Isle of Wight.

Well you're right in that failure to address to completely iniquitous land ownership and inheritance laws bred a lot of anger and made communist revolutions possible. Communism would never have happened if democratic reform had taken place previously.

I think you are missing the point. Estate owners dont usually farm directly, they have up to 250 tenanted farms and many hundreds of tied houses. Breaking up the estates would enable the tenant farmers who already work the land to buy their own farms - likely improving efficiency - and farm workers to own their own homes.

Havent had one of your anti Cortese / Reed rants in a while. Guess its been hard for you what with Saints overachieving and all.

Lol. But owning half a county because some King took common land and gave it to a distant ancestor 400 years ago is fine.

Cant think of any links to specific age related research offhand - but yes in general younger people tend to absorb information from now whereas older people tend to adhere to beliefs formed when they were young (even if the situation has changed). Here is some general attitudinal stuff, mainly US Im afraid. http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/CC_American_Mind.pdf http://www.pewglobal.org/

Ah. I apologise too, I misinterpreted. Sorry cant name the charity because it would make the donors identifiable too, but its an environmental one. I have a friend who works for a major bank who was tasked with organising a 'wealth weekend' for 20 of the banks richest clients. He said what was fascinating was that even though all 20 were billionaires he had only heard of one of them. There is much more hidden wealth controlled by very private behind the scenes individuals than most would believe.

...

Get real. It would be gross breach of confidence and I would deservedly get the sack if I did. The thing is, you react as if you are so surprised that these situations exist that you doubt my post. The sad thing is its not even unusual. There are dozens of stories like that. Edit. This is an example of the estates which commonly exist (which I have no connection to) http://www.roxburghe.net/sportingestate.html.

Its not everday you get to see a Mock tudor deathhead pisco-erotic homo montage.

I have regular dealings with three billionaires because they fund the charity I work for. One of them is is a Brit living in tax exile overseas who made his money exploiting a monopoly granted to him by a corrupt third world government. The other two are European nationals resident in the UK also as tax exiles - both of them inherited their cash. Two of them own estates - the largest of which is 60,000acres - around 100 square miles - which includes all the real estate and other buildings of three villages. If you are born in one of those vilages you never have any chance of owning your own house in the area you were born. It is practically feudalism. How can it be right for any UK citizen to hold that kind of power through inheritance? - let alone visitors from outside who are only here because they dont want to pay tax in their home country (or anywhere else for that matter).

or Sharing Private Ryan.

Been done twice already in past week. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?37341-Veet-for-men-hair-removal-gel

We are. A lot of climate scientists think that if it werent for the GHGs we are pumping out then we would be experiencing declining temperatures. The trouble is we arent yet sophisticated enough to determine the 'goldilocks' amount of anthropogenic carbon - not too much, not too little; not too hot, not too cold.

I think its "How do smart girls get mink?" Its about trading sex for luxury gifts or marrying into money. Baby mink are born - ie the smart way to get money /mink is through fu ck ing instead of working for it. It worked better as joke when mink coats were the thing to aspire to and women tended to have less access to high paid jobs.

Maybe just maybe its because they want more holidays, by being able to go away every weekend if they want. Young kids dont want to be dragged round Mayan temples or the Rio carnival after 14 hour flights just so the adults can congratulate themselves on how enlightened and travelled they are. Beach, bikes and a ball is what they want - a view which has a lot going for it.