You've got to be kidding, right? Surely such questions as 'Land Reform' are for the developing world, where nasty corporations are cutting down rain-forests and booting off indigenous people to grow beefburgers on, etc. This is indeed true, but the state of land ownership - and the subsidy system it has - in the UK is a scandal of epic proportions. In fact it is the underpinning reason as to why we have to pay a ridiculous amount for a place to live in the UK; a fact that is then sold back to as: 'high house prices are a good thing for the economy'. Sadly most folks are entirely duped by this nonsense.
This excellent and disturbing article shines some much needed light onto the issue:
'Modern British history, excluding world wars and the loss of empire, is a record of two countervailing changes, one partly understood, one not understood at all. The partly understood change is the urbanisation of society to the point where 90 per cent of us in the United Kingdom live in urban areas. Hidden inside that transformation is the shift from a society in which, less than a century and a half ago, all land was owned by 4.5 per cent of the population and the rest owned nothing at all. Now, 70 per cent of the population has a stake in land, and collectively owns most of the 5 per cent of the UK that is urban. But this is a mere three million out of 60 million acres.
'Through this transformation, the heirs to the disenfranchised of the Victorian era have inverted the relationship between the landed and the landless. This has happened even while huge changes have occurred in the 42 million acres of rural countryside. These account for 70 per cent of the home islands and are the agricultural plot. From being virtually the sole payers of such tax as was levied in 1873 (at fourpence in the 240p pound), the owners of Britain's agricultural plot are now the beneficiaries of an annual subsidy that may run as high as £23,000 each, totalling between £3.5bn and £5bn a year. Urban dwellers, on the other hand, pay about £35bn in land-related taxes. Rural landowners receive a handout of roughly £83 per acre, while urban dwellers pay about £18,000 for each acre they hold, an average of £1,800 per dwelling, the average dwelling standing on one-tenth of an acre.' (New Stateman article and Who Owns Britain website).
media-underground.net