"Jules" wrote in message
news
The UK has a land surplus.

Really?

Yes the figures were given. Only 7.5% of
the UK is settled. What didn't
you understand about them?

Well, presumably by 'settled' you mean 'lived on'?

I would think so, yes.

The rest isn't all
"surplus" - it's mostly used for
*something*, even if it isn't to stop
people dropping dead from concrete overdose

It is not lived on that is for sure. Much of it is subsided to lay idle.
The overall agricultural subsidy is about £4.5 billion per year, £4.5
billion to an industry whose total turnover is only £15 billion per annum.
Unbelievable. This implies huge inefficiency in the agricultural industry,
about 33% on the £15 billion figure. Applied to the acres agriculture
absorbs, and about 14 million acres are uneconomic. Apply real economics to
farming and you theoretically free up 14 million acres, which is near 22% of
the total UK land mass. This is land that certainly could be put to better
use for the people of the UK.

That was some interesting reading in your post, however. Those land
price figures are just plain scary :-( (I think it works out at about
Ã,£4000 per acre where I live for building land, although it'll
obviously be more nearer to town)

£4,000 an acre for building land. In your dreams!!!! That is what
agricultural land goes for. An acre will go for at least £500,000.

I'm not living in the UK, though

We are!!! That is why we live in hutches and others do not. The large
landowners in the UK do not live in hutches.

I'd heard a rumour that the place where I
worked back in England before I
left sold off some of their land at over a
million / acre, but I'm not sure if it really was
that high. It's a bunch of rabbit hutches these days...

About right.