Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Who does the land belong to?

 UK

"Today, 6,000 landowners own some 40m of Britain's 60m acres of land, and that 70% of the land is owned by 1% of the population. By contrast, 60 million people live in houses collectively occupying 4.4m acres."- Kevin Cahill  Who Owns Britain?

Currently, in our "property-owning democracy", nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population, while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line. 


 Scotland

"There are more than 9.4 million acres of land held by a mere 969 landowners. 10 million acres of land are held by a mere 1550 private landowners in estates of 1000 acres and larger." Andy Wightman in his 1996 book Who Owns Scotland Andy Wightman

The number of owners of 60% of private rural land in Scotland has decreased since 1970, from 1180 to 969 in 2010.

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