Brexit, the economy and house prices part 5

Enterprise_1701C

Everyone going on about how much of the UK is "empty", do you really propose to concrete over the 70% of the land area of the UK that is agricultural land?

Some of this may not look like agricultural land from the air, and indeed some of it may not be being used as such at the moment, but it will be brought back into use after Brexit.

kabayiri

gfplux wrote: »

If that will be the case then there will be no need to blame the EU but place the blame where it belongs, on the British Government.
..

In the referendum, the official position of the government was one of Remain. Cameron clearly stated his preference, just as he had in the Scottish referendum.

So you could easily imagine that some people blamed the government, using a protest vote.

The idea that people will have less to complain about in 5 years time, when our debt is even higher, is flawed. It's just clearer then who they direct their complaints towards.

Herzlos

Why concrete over 70% of it? We already use less than 5% of it, so we could concrete over another 5% and double our "population capacity". Less if we designed things to better handle the density.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

Everyone going on about how much of the UK is "empty", do you really propose to concrete over the 70% of the land area of the UK that is agricultural land?

You wouldn't need to resort to such baseless scare-mongering if you actually had a leg to stand on with any of this stuff...

We all know the UK is virtually empty - and that there's plenty of land to use without impacting agriculture in any meaningful way.

The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), for example, estimates that less than 1% of the country is "built on", about 2% of England.

Ordnance Survey data suggests that all the buildings in the UK - houses, shops, offices, factories, greenhouses - cover 1.4% of the total land surface. Looking at England alone, the figure still rises to only 2%.

Buildings cover less of Britain than the land revealed when the tide goes out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901297


As for this part....

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

Some of this may not look like agricultural land from the air, and indeed some of it may not be being used as such at the moment, but it will be brought back into use after Brexit.

What on earth makes you think the UK would want to or be able to increase agricultural land use after Brexit?

Given that Michael Gove has confirmed he wants to increase environmental restrictions and some farmers are already moving agricultural production overseas due to a shortage of labour?

ukcarper

Herzlos wrote: »

Why concrete over 70% of it? We already use less than 5% of it, so we could concrete over another 5% and double our "population capacity". Less if we designed things to better handle the density.

People who don't live in and around London don't realise just how difficult it is to improve infrastructure, I live on the edge of 3 council areas they are built on 57%, 27% and 13% these are not big cities but supposedly small towns and villages. There is plenty more building planned in area in fact the one with 57% built on is having an additional 4000 homes built now.

Herzlos

ukcarper wrote: »

People who don't live in and around London don't realise just how difficult it is to improve infrastructure, I live on the edge of 3 council areas they are built on 57%, 27% and 13% these are not big cities but supposedly small towns and villages. There is plenty more building planned in area in fact the one with 57% built on is having an additional 4000 homes built now.

I still didn't realize that paying rent/mortgage in London was the only qualification for having a view.


Tokyo has a higher population & population density than London, correct?
Tokyo has the infrastructure to handle it (and handle it much better than London, Japanese trains make ours feel like the relics they are).


Thus the problem isn't with the population or density, but with the management of it.


We could improve the infrastructure drastically, but it'd need a government with a plan, and an be willing to endure a little disruption.

Enterprise_1701C

It is a fact that 70% of the land area of the UK is agricultural

We need that land in order to be able to feed ourselves.

It has already decreased far too much, and it is thought that by 2030 there will be a significant shortage of farmland.

The reason more of it may be put back into use after Brexit is simple - the CAP.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28003435

If you are so desperate to let more people into the country then we need MORE farmland not less, we cannot just build on every last hectare of land, that 70% of the land mass of the UK should be protected as farmland, we genuinely NEED it, it is not a luxury.

Arklight

One fairly easy solution would be to just build nice apartment blocks that people want to live in (nice, not some Bovis cardboard construction where you can hear every detail of your neighbour having a dump through your bedroom wall).

There's a large new development of "detached" homes near us. If that's detached they may as well just give up on the pretence. 3 stories high, there is literally a few feet between them, no front gardens, or even pavements, and a tiny overlooked back garden apiece.

The government just needs to end that nonsense at the planning stage. Either a development is detached houses with land around them or it's actual high density housing with properly managed parking and common outside space.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

It is a fact that 70% of the land area of the UK is agricultural

We need that land in order to be able to feed ourselves.

We use more land for golf courses and 'horseyculture' (Little Tarquin and Henrietta having a pony) than we do for all housing combined so I'm quite sure land can be found without using any meaningful amount of agricultural land.

Besides - as we only need to use another 2% of land if we wanted to double the population - then adding a mere 25% to the population over the next century would require less than half a percent of our land.

It's a vanishingly small amount to use over the next 100 years.

fatbeetle

Having lived in Aus for the past 20 years, and now having returned to Blighty to live, has given me a whole new perspective on how crowded, and yet how beautiful, the country is.

It would seem the remainers here would happily destroy that beauty in order to achieve their political ends,