Peter Smith

Someone told me that poverty exists as wages are too low to pay for rents and house prices are too high. This chap was right, but did not understand the connection between wages, rents and house prices. Once you understand Ricardo's Law then everything else in economics makes sense: A recent history of why rents and house prices are always too high: ·          Since the 50’s the euro-dollar and offshore banking system has been able to magic up endless credit to any western financial player or developer free of tax and regulation. This is the key economic change along with the abandonment of post war controls on the movement of capital ·          Political changes since the thatcher/Reagan era, which were facilitated by my point above, and the triumph of the ‘neo-classical' economic cover story paraded by the dangerous buffoons from the ‘Chicago school’ of economic policy have effectively hidde...

My response to a chap helping to  organised  a anti development petition Any house building would help poor people, it is a national disgrace that we are building so few homes in the UK. But as you say there are no real planning proposals to redress this, and the Tory planning changes are a travesty that will maximise income to landowners and city spivs while minimising the social benefit that home building brings. I still doubt it will have any real structural difference to biodiversity in the UK, changes in agriculture are at least 100 times more important than house building. I still think that this is not well understood by the general population and most people operate on a completely false set of assumptions that house building is a major factor in wildlife loss. Simplistic campaigns and some of the  rhetoric on the 38 degrees site play into this popular misconception. I have grave concerns that the popularity whipped up by all sections of the media ar...

A lot of wildlife charities are mobilising their supporters to sign petitions against the new Tory plans to relax planning permissions on new developments. These new proposal are obviously just political payback to   David Cameron's Landowning Chums in the Countryside Landowners Association and house building political donors. But I have a big problem with wildlife organisations getting on the anti-house building NIMBY bandwagon as the issue is far more complex and we end being part of a system that is responsible for horrendous squalor and social inequality. It is a terrible thing to pit the many people paying large rents, or have taken out mortgages they cannot repay or the many families living in appalling squalor against those of us trying to save wildlife. The reality is that there could be a massive house building programme in the UK, which would have very little direct impact on wildlife. With the right mitigations measures,   such as the construction of wildl...

I wrote this as a d iscussion  for the Lib Dems ALTER group for  their  next party conference - Power to the elbows! LVT Wildlife & The Environment Land Value Tax (LVT) on all land in the UK will not only create jobs and boost the economy, but is the key to protecting our wildlife and conservation of natural resources. LVT will allow all the citizens of the United Kingdom to share in the natural riches of our country and feel that they have a stake in its future. This will have many benefits for community cohesion and respect for the countryside and private property. LVT has been recognised as the key economic reform by the academic discipline of ‘Environmental Economics’ as the only policy that will allow us to square the circle of having a growing economy, increasing employment with greater wildlife protection and conservation of natural resources. Natural Capital Government revenue should come from Natural Capital; the free gifts that nature gives...

I had an e-mail exchange with a David  Cameron  apologist in a discussion about the role Wildlife conservation has in preventing riots,  my response to the Bullingdon  Club  apologist (who had the temerity to say that the poor and  underclass  relied on these people to create wealth)  is copied below, : The members of the Bullingdon club represent mostly landowners who derive their wealth by charging others a rent for land usage. The banking system, which many of the young Landowners find themselves working for these days works on a similar system of charging ‘economic rent’ by the private ownership of the supply of money, where only a tiny fraction is actually put into the productive economy and most goes into third world exploitation and the creation of massive asset bubbles, such as the frightening housing bubble that is crippling the economy of this country. Our Bullingdon Club friends create virtually no wealth, so do no...