Category Archives: Posted

Mandelson: Tony Blair banned fox hunting after a £1 million donation from animal rights campaign IFAW

Tony Blair agreed to ban fox hunting after a £1 million donation to Labour from an animal rights group, Peter Mandelson claims

The former business secretary said the group got ‘pretty transactional’

By Jason Groves – published 14 December 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12866059/tony-blair-ban-fox-hunting.html

Tony Blair agreed to ban fox hunting ‘under pressure’ because of a £1million donation to Labour from an animal rights organisation, Peter Mandelson has claimed.

The former business secretary said the group got ‘pretty transactional’ and it demanded the ban ‘in return’ for the cash – which at the time was the party’s biggest ever donation.

The Labour peer, who is now an adviser to Sir Keir Starmer, did not name the group involved. However, his comments appear to be a reference to a £1million donation given by the late animal rights campaigner Brian Davies, who founded the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Lord Mandelson revealed the pressure Mr Blair was facing during a discussion about political funding on the Times Radio podcast How To Win An Election.

Asked about whether donors had ever tried to buy influence, he said: ‘I can offer you an example from 1997 when an organisation – it was a fund to do with the welfare of animals – got pretty transactional with us. It was the first and last time I can remember this.

‘They wanted a ban on hunting in return for a very sizeable amount of money. And Blair and Co were sort of reluctant obviously to enter into some sort of trade over this policy.

‘However, there were a lot of people in the party who wanted that ban – there were a lot of MPs coming and demanding it – and we got into a difficult situation where frankly we went a little bit too far – further than Blair wanted – in making this commitment in our manifesto.

‘It was, frankly, under not duress but under some sort of pressure. It wasn’t attractive and it’s not been repeated.’

His comments will raise fresh questions about political sleaze. Labour has been trying to woo wealthy donors in the same manner as it did in the run-up to the 1997 election.

Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, which led the campaign against the ban on hunting, said: ‘Tony Blair has already admitted that the hunting ban was one of the legislative measures he most regrets.

‘The Hunting Act has failed at every level, not least in the damage it has caused to the countryside and biodiversity. A future Labour government should right the wrongs of the past and remove this running sore in Labour’s relationship with rural communities.’

But a spokesman for Sir Tony said it was a ‘misinterpretation’ of Lord Mandelson’s comments to suggest that Labour’s policy had been influenced by the donation.

They added: ‘There was no such agreement, he is clearly saying there were a lot of people who had passionate views on the subject.’

Labour’s 1997 manifesto pledged to facilitate ‘a free vote in Parliament on whether hunting with hounds should be banned by legislation’.

Legislation to ban hunting was not finally introduced until 2003 and did not come into force until 2005 following a titanic parliamentary battle.

In his political memoir, Sir Tony voiced regret about the ban and revealed that he had deliberately left loopholes in the legislation that would allow hunting to continue provided certain steps were taken to prevent cruelty.

He said he had not realised the ‘primeval’ passions that the ban would cause among rural communities.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare did not respond to a request for comment. The Labour Party has yet to comment on the matter.

UK ‘No Farmers No Food’ campaign launches over ‘green’ taxes and supermarket price fixing, squeezed margins force farmers out as private equity moves in

No Farmers, No Food campaign group wins support as UK producers mull protest action

By Kevin White 8 February 2024 The Grocer magazine

UK farmers have been debating following their European colleagues’ protest action, which led to big disruption in France and across the continent last week

New campaign group No Farmers, No Food is already attracting significant support, as farmers across the UK mull following their European colleagues with protest action.

The group was established on Twitter/X a fortnight ago as a wave of protests spread across the continent over onerous environmental regulations, rising costs, competition from imports and a lack of support from supermarkets.

Farmers across the UK now appear to be eyeing similar action. The new campaign has already attracted more than 50,000 followers on the social media platform and more than 300,000 on Facebook, with countless more farmers and food industry bodies engaging with the movement behind the scenes, said founder James Melville.

Guy Singh-Watson: Supermarkets act now: Get Fair About Farming

No Farmers, No Food is pitching itself as a non-political, non-militant campaign group that seeks to “support farmers and build public opinion and support” around the type of concerns expressed by continental farmers, said Melville – who is the son of a farmer, a media commentator and communications specialist.

“What we’re trying to do is create a set of campaigns and messages the public can understand, based on what is sometimes a very, very, complicated set of issues that are differing from farm to farm,” he added, pointing to government bureaucracy and the treatment of farmers by supermarkets as key areas that needed to be addressed.

But he stressed organising protests “was not our job as a very new organisation”.

“It’s up to individual communities and farmers to decide what they want to do,” he added.

Guy Singh-Watson: Get Fair About Farming: Silence of the supermarkets

The formation of the group comes amid growing calls for organised farmer protests in the UK. Farmers in Wales are understood to be particularly open to protest action.

More than 1,000 farmers met at Welshpool livestock market last week to discuss the impact of proposed new Welsh government sustainable farming rules, which NFU Cymru warned could devastate the nation’s farming sector.

Plans by the Labour administration could lead to a 10.8% cut in livestock numbers and an 11% cut in labour on Welsh farms, equivalent to losing 5,500 jobs – costing the sector almost £200m. However, the Welsh government stresses the plans are subject to a consultation and could still change.

Kelly Seaton: huge financial pressure being piled onto farmers

Farmers at the event expressed dismay at the plans, said north Wales-based livestock farmer Gareth Wyn Jones, who is also among the supporters of No Farmers, No Food. Further meetings were expected in Wales this week.

“There are definitely whispers around protest action and an appetite for it. But we’re not quite there yet,” Jones told The Grocer.

“This is a movement of frustration, with many farmers feeling like enough is enough – the situation many are finding themselves in is unsustainable.”

Some farmers were “raring to go” on protests, he said.

However, Jones – who has also highlighted the plight of farmers on his YouTube channel – stressed the “need to keep the public on board” and for any potential action to be co-ordinated, respectful and peaceful.

“There is no point in fragmented protest,” he added. “But if we do see protests it demonstrates we are at rock bottom.”

https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1748774254718472473

With Tata steel having just confirmed the closure of the two blast furnaces at Port Talbot, here are a few important data points.
First, UK steel-making has collapsed faster, over the past half century, than ANY other country in the world save for Venezuela.
Pretty shocking👇

Blockade: EU Farmers topple and torch John Cockerill’s statue; Welsh Farmers organise

Farmers bring down Cockerill statue in Brussels protest as 1,000 tractors block roads

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/farmer-protest-tractors-eu-brussels-france-b2488790.html

Protest on day of EU summit comes as France lays out concessions to protesters leading to union bosses to call on farmers in the country to go home

Emmanuel Macron has said that Europes farming sector is facing a major crisis and needs to profoundly change its rules after more than 1,000 tractors brought part of Brussels to a standstill, calling on EU leaders to do more to support them with rising costs and environmental rules.

Background from The Guardian: Carbon offsets overstate climate benefit by 1,000%, study finds

Farmers in several countries across Europe have been blocking roads for days as part of protests, with France particularly hard hit. Speaking after a leaderss summit in the Belgian capital, the French president said that Europe is not deaf to the plight of farmers and that simplified regulations across the EU would help. The statement came after France laid out plans for some concessions to the protesters, leading to unions to call on them to go home.

Earlier in the day, farmers threw eggs and stones at the European parliament, started fires near the building and toppled a statue of John Cockerill a British-Belgian who helped Belgium’s industrial revolution who the protesters potentially mistook for someone connected to the EU. Small groups tried to tear down the barriers erected in front of the parliament a few streets from where the leaders summit was taking place but police fired tear gas and sprayed water at the farmers with hoses to push them back.

Major thoroughfares in Brussels were blocked by around 1,300 tractors, according to police. Security personnel in riot gear stood guard behind barriers where the leaders were meeting at European Council headquarters.

Background from BBC: Carbon offset, tree planting schemes pricing out farmers

If you see with how many people we are here today, and if you see its all over Europe, so you must have hope, said Kevin Bertens, a farmer from just outside Brussels. You need us. Help us!

Farmers from Italy, Spain and other European countries took part in the demonstration in Brussels, as well as continuing their protests at home. In Portugal, farmers made their way to the Spanish border at the crack of dawn to block some of the roads links between the two countries.

One of Belgiums biggest supermarket chains Colruyt said on Thursday three of its distribution centres were blocked by protesting farmers, leading to disruptions in its supply chain. Centres located in Ollignies, Ghislenghien and Halle in central western Belgium, which supply Colruyt’s Belgian shops with dry food, water and drinks, and fresh and frozen products, were no longer accessible.

At the moment, stock is still available in our shops… [but] it is inevitable that products will eventually be missing from the shelves, Colruyt said in a statement, adding that it was difficult to make definitive statements on timing as shops have different stock levels.

Background from Newsweek: Farmers Fight Back Across Europe

Colruyt Group has always focused on sourcing locally as much as possible and succeeds very well in this for many categories, the store chain said. It added it understood farmers concerns but did not see blockades as a solution to them.

In France, where farmers stepped up protests at the start of the week, the impact of dozens of blockades is also being felt, said Eric Hemar, the head of a federation of transport and logistics employers.

We did a poll among our federation members: all transport firms are impacted (by the farmers protest) and have lost over the past 10 days about 30 per cent of their revenue, because we are not able to deliver on time or with delays, he told France Info.

In his latest speech aimed at easing tensions with angry farmers, Frances prime minister Gabriel Attal earlier said France would enshrine in law the principle that it should be self-reliant in food and it will tighten import controls.

Mr Attal, speaking at a press conference, also said the government will stop imposing stricter regulation on its farmers than European Union regulations require.

It makes no sense to ban pesticides in France before such decisions are taken on an EU level. We will end this practice, he said.

Background from BBC: Climate change or market change? Cold callers shock farmers with tree-plant plea

Detailing his agenda to boost Frances agricultural sector, Europes largest, Mr Attal said it was out of the question that France would agree to the Mercosur trade deal with Latin American countries.

He also said France will step up safety checks on food imports, notably to make sure that imported foods do not have traces of pesticides that are banned in France or the EU.

The finance ministry said the new emergency measures for the sector, focused largely on supporting struggling livestock farmers and wine producers, would cost 400 million (340m), plus 200m in cash advances.

Union leaders called on their members to end the roadblocks in the wake of the speech but said this came with the condition that the promises be followed by concrete progress. They said they would give the government a three-week deadline until the start of Frances giant Salon de lAgriculture farming trade fair for the first results to show.

From Monday, were going to get to work in the prefectures and ministries to work on all the points that have been announced, said Arnaud Gaillot, the head of the Young Farmers (Jeunes Agriculteurs) union.

The protests across Europe come ahead of the European parliament elections. While the farmers crisis was not officially on the agenda of the EU summit, which focused on aid to Ukraine, an EU diplomat said the situation with the farmers was likely to be discussed later in the day.

Farmers have already secured several measures, including the blocs executive commission proposals to limit farm imports from Ukraine and loosen some environmental regulations on fallow lands, which several EU leaders welcomed as they arrived at the summit.

Free Party: a folk history of the 1990s free party movement against the 1986 Public Order Act and the 1994 Criminal Justice Act

Free Party: a folk history of the 1990s free party movement and against the 1994 Criminal Justice Act

https://www.facebook.com/FreePartyDocumentary

Free Party: a folk history – TRAILER

https://www.docnrollfestival.com/films/free-party-a-folk-history/

All they wanted was the freedom to party. The State saw them as the enemy within.

A timely DIY indie film that follows the birth of the UK’s free party movement from the late 80s and early 90s and the social, political and cultural impact it’s had on our present times. Many Tories believed the movement’s DIY anti-consumerist lifestyles, prophetic environmental, radical, direct action anti-road protest and animal welfare ethos threatened the foundations of their neoliberal era State. The film explores the inception of the movement, a meeting between urban ravers and the new age travellers during Thatcher’s last days in power, and the explosive years that followed, leading to the infamous Castlemorton free festival in 1992 – the largest ever illegal rave, which provoked the drastic change of the laws of trespass with the notorious introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994. Eschewing tired formulaic filmmaking styles and tokenistic big name DJ sound-bites, this exhilarating modern day folktale is told exclusively by those who were in the thick of it and features interviews with members of Spiral Tribe, DIY Sound system, Circus Warp, Bedlam and many others.

Colm Forde – DnR Creative Director

Dir Aaron Trinder| UK | 2023 | 107 mins

Screenings appear to be announced here on Facebook – please add a comment below if you find anywhere better to find them, thanks.

 

No Man’s Land? How To Claim Forgotten, Unclaimed UK Land For Free through Adverse Possession laws

Claim Land For Free UK

Claim Land For Free UK

There Is probably Unregistered land In the Image Above.
claim-free-land-uk = Claiming Land By Adverse Possession

How to Claim Free Land Uk – Yes it’s Totally Legal – If you are looking to claim free land in the Uk then you may be in luck.

Yes, this is true. You can claim land for free in the UK through what is known as Adverse Possession. It takes a total of 12 years to get the land title in your name. But it takes only weeks to start using the land and making money from it.

But be in no doubt that you can become the owner of free land in the UK. It takes a matter of years to become the true owner of that free UK land. But this does not mean you have to wait to work that land.

I have now started uploading YouTube Videos @TheSmallFarmerLife Channel. I will discuss everything from what it is to look for land whether that’s claiming it for free which I will be making a Video about.

Videos will be on so many different subjects around starting and running a small farm…!

Now Let’s Discuss What You Need To Know On Claiming Land

How can you claim this land for free you may ask? Well, there are thousands and thousands of acres of land out there in the UK that are unregistered. Now, this does not mean that nobody owns the land. It could just mean that the land has never changed hands since 1990. This is when it became mandatory to register land or property after a sale.

Here is a quick overview of how the process works for Claiming Free Uk Land

More Detailed Explanation On How To Find land To Claim Below

As you can see in the image above there is still 20% of land and buildings not registered in the UK which is around 12 million acres. This is because the whole of the Uk is made up of 59.9 million acres in total.

If you don’t have the time to Adversely Possess Land and have a little money spare to invest in farmland. This is how I managed to get 2.6 acres for free in the space of 4 years. Go check out my post on “How To Find Land To Farm” and see how I did it.

There are so many other reasons that land has not been registered. All land is owned by someone, somewhere. This could even be the crown, but this does not mean that you can still not claim it.

Reasons, why land is vacant and could possibly be claimed, is for many reasons. The land could have belonged to a business that went bankrupt. That nobody knew the land belonged to the business and it was forgotten about.

The land could belong to a gas, electricity grid or railways that run through the country. There is plenty of free UK land out there that has belonged to people who have passed away. This land has just been forgotten about and is just sitting there.

The point being is that there is so much out there that people don’t have a clue who owns it. Meaning you could claim that land yourself for free, it is really quite amazing.

I was even told in the past by one of our council leaders & planning chairman to just go out and claim land free. This is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to get free land. Some councils have land they do not even know they own.

You Need To Be Looking For Land That Looks Like This. This land is just down the road from where I live. I have Seen It Just Get Worse Over Years. I Might Look Into This land.

Claiming Free Land Or Buildings

It is not as easy as walking up to a piece of land and saying “I Claim This Land In My Name”. There is a process that you need to go through to claim the land.

To claim the land in your name and have it registered in your name takes 12 years in total. 10 years to make the claim and 2 years for someone to object (The Rightful Owner). But you do not have to wait that long to use the land. It’s possible you are driving or walking past land, that you could claim and you’re passing it every day.

If you are looking to claim land for free and this can include buildings also. You need to be looking for unkept land, which could be overgrown with weeds and trees. The fencing could be rotting or no fence at all and can come in a small patch or acres.

I have extended people’s gardens through my business. Land that has been covered in nettles and thick brush, with an old shed much further back. I personally would have claimed it all, which was about a 3rd of an acre or more.

I have also claimed free land here in the UK for my customers. This was to extend their gardens and they still have it. They still have the free land attached to their gardens to this day with no problems.

How you should go about the first process. Let’s say you have seen a piece of land that is overgrown. It may have old fencing, that looks like it hasn’t been touched or repaired in years.

Firstly you would like to know if a local owns the land or if it has been registered. Now you can do this by knocking on local doors. You could also do a quick Land Registry Search for the registered keeper.

If no one knows who owns the land and you cannot find a registered keeper. This is a good start to staking your claim to that land.
Staking Your Claim To The Land

Staking your claim to the land for free is a little scary at first. But it is legal and you are not breaking the law. You will not be arrested and the police will not ever be called it is a civil matter.

That is unless you think you can just steal land in the UK. This is not what we are talking about, we are talking about claiming unused land.

Stealing Land: This is when you know that the land in question is in use by a current owner. They may or may not have registered it but they are using the land all the same. Do not do this there is plenty of land and buildings out there to claim without breaking the law.
Top Tip To Find Land To Claim

You should be looking for lots of potential land plots. Land that meets the criteria I mention in this article. This is the key to finding potentially a couple of pieces of free land.

You do not want to put all your eggs in one basket so to speak. But this does not also mean you have only one piece of land in mind or even a building. Then you should stay away just claim the one piece of land or building you have your eye on.

I am just saying if you make up several signs and stick those signs on land and buildings. If you think could be possible to claim then your chances will become higher. You might end up being able to claim none of them. Then again you could end up claiming them all.?

Make Sure You Have What You Need In Your Vehicle As You Travel Around, Such Things As Keep Out Signs..?

So you want to print out or get yourself some “Keep Out Signs”. Also, place your mobile number on and trespassers will be prosecuted. Then laminate them and get a cheap mobile phone and place the number on the sign also.

Quick tip purchase a cheap mobile phone with a number that you will only use for this purpose. Then nobody will get hold of your personal number and when it rings you will know what it’s about.

A4 paper will do fine to place your keep-out notices on and get them laminated to stop them from getting wet. Make sure you get at least 10 made for the different sites you have spotted as potential plots.

Now you have your little signs and place them on the entrance to the land. If nobody calls, to say hey what is your number and sign doing on my land, within a couple of weeks. This is a good sign for you that nobody in the area actually owns it. If they do call move on what have you lost a printed piece of paper?

After a month or two of your sign being on the entrance to the land and in full view. Then you need to go and start to clear the land and patch up the fences and do this on the cheap. You can stick a couple of goats in there if it is only long grass and nettles they will have it down in no time.

If it’s used as a tip it could take more time, or you could just put a gate up and stick a sign up and wait longer. But the sooner you start to sort the land out the better chance you have to get free land.
Use Free Or Reclaimed Timber And Materials

Use reclaimed timber to repair fencing and gates. All the while you are doing this take images and take notes also. Make sure the images have a date stamped on them. This is what most mobile phones do nowadays anyway and even the location also.

Using reclaimed materials or even free materials to fix the fencing and gates is a great way to save money. There are lots of places to find free materials. Including Facebook Market Place, FreeCycle, Gumtree, Preloved

Check Out My Post On How To Find Cheap Or Free Building Materials

Just Because it has A Gate Doesn’t Mean You Cannot Claim It,

Making Your Claim Stronger

Now you have started the process then you can rent the land out your free land for grazing.

People will pay for grazing horses or as allotments and you then collect rent. Keep all the receipts for the rent of the land. If you have been collecting rents for the land you are claiming and have been doing so for several years. You are really looking good to eventually register the land in your name.

If you really wanted to and felt that you would like to farm it. Then you could start to farming the land yourself, it is totally up to you.

But if you do all this work and then someone turns up a couple of years into the process. This is unlikely if you have already been renting it out for several years. Make sure you are keeping the records for proof, showing you have been caring for the land.
Temporary Title Claim To Land Or Building.

After 5 years you can put a temporary claim on the land. This is all explained on the Land Registry website. The Land Registry will also confirm that this is totally legal. This makes sure nobody comes along after you gave been there for several years and tries to stake a claim also.

At this time you might be saying this is too much time and energy. But just think about it what have you spent up to now? Nothing you have probably made money if you have rented the land out.

This is your money, nobody can take this money from you. Even if someone does turn up and say it belongs to them.

If this does happen, then the person who turns up and says it’s their land. They have to prove it is their land. So do not just take their word for it. If anyone else starts asking questions about you and the land. You do not have to tell them anything, do not lie to them, just do not say anything.

Unless they are just asking you how you grow your vegetables. I mean, be nice to locals, this will prove you have been using and caring for the land. Also making local friends will only benefit you in the long run.

If you tell them that you are claiming the land because it hasn’t been cared for. So you thought I’m having this, then who knows what or who will come out of the woodwork.

People are claiming land in this way every single day. There are even people selling information on how to claim free land. The only information you need I am telling you right here.

Also, it does not just have to be you that has been on the land for 12 years. If you got the land off a person who was on there for seven years. Then you only have to wait another five years to claim it. Make sure you get any evidence they have. Make sure that they have actually been there for along as they say they have.

Making Your Claim

Once you have been on the land for 10 years. You can then apply to have the land registered in your name. The law allows 2 years for any owner who has proof to come forward and challenge this application. Now as I have said earlier they have to prove it belongs to them.

Most times if you have occupied the land for ten years. Then you can be pretty sure, you are in with a good chance that it’s going to be yours. I have heard of people coming to claim the land. Then the person who is claiming the land won and got to keep the land over the challenger.

Even if the land goes back to the original owner and they can prove it belongs to them. You have had at least made some money from the land. How much depends on what you used it for or rented it out for.

You can also put in for planning permission for land. If it does not belong to you, so do not be scared of this. Yes, it’s a big chance if you are trying to get planning for a home. But if you are just looking to put up small barns, greenhouses, and sheds. Then you can easily take these structures down and move them.

The point is that there is a lot of land out there unregistered and registered. They could potentially be claimed totally free. Many places to look are the side of railways, electricity grid land, corners of farmland, old buildings left abandoned, old farmhouses in ruins, land that is just in a weird place and overgrown.

keep looking along the roadsides there is land. Some people may never have left in a will or had a family. Land left abandoned in mountains of paperwork by bankrupt banks & businesses. This will only eventually end up in the Crown’s hands if nobody claims it.

You can go and claim land and buildings today for free. So why not when driving around keep your eyes open? Make a few signs and put them anywhere you think the land is unregistered.

You also do not have to pay the £3 for the title deeds. Just move the cursor over the land you have found on the land registry website. If it has been registered it will say deeds available, if not then it will say none available.

Make sure when you do the Land Registry search for deeds. That you are in the middle of the piece of land. Not near the edge of the land. This way you will actually get to see if the deeds are for that piece of land. Not some other that is next to it.

Small pieces of land are hard to pinpoint for the deeds. The map has around a 20 – 30-meter radius. So it could pick up deeds from land next to it. So make sure you are getting the right title deeds.
If you also like to watch a video on this article click the link

The larger the piece of land the easier it is to make sure it’s not registered land.

Tips For Finding Land To Claim Free

Look for overgrown land. Check for uncared-for fencing. Look for weeds growing through the entrance drive if any. Even if there is a lock on an old metal gate, how old is the lock? Has it been opened lately, you can tell if it has.

How to claim land in 2020

You can get a feel for what to look for. When you really take notice of cared-for and uncared-for land. Look for land that’s scruffy and hilly that cannot be farmed etc. These are excellent targets to claim.
claiming uk land

If you go down this route I really hope you find a piece of land. I am almost certain there is some close to you and you don’t even realize it. Also, the advent of Google Earth is a great tool to look for potential land local to you.

You can look from the air and then go to street view. But remember these images can be a few years old. So once you have spotted your target piece, go out and take a look with your own eyes.

Please do not go and squat on land that obviously belongs to someone. This will do nothing to help you. You will only eventually be moved on and it is just wasted time and energy.

Good Luck With Your Search & Happy Hunting..!

Landowner’s supreme court case threatens 2023 Dartmoor wild camping victory

See also: No Man’s Land? How To Claim Forgotten, Unclaimed UK Land For Free through Adverse Possession laws

Landowner’s supreme court case threatens Dartmoor wild camping victory

See also: Dartmoor ‘robot rangers’ to wear body-worn video cameras after ‘rise of abuse’ by wild campers they are trying to evict  Alexander Darwall is challenging decision last year to overturn ban on wild camping on the moors

Helena Horton Environment reporter – Wed 10 Jan 2024

The right to wild camp on Dartmoor could be under threat again after the supreme court granted permission for a wealthy landowner to bring a case against it.

Last year, the Dartmoor National Park Authority won an appeal against a decision to ban wild camping on the moors.

Camping had been assumed to be allowed under the Dartmoor Commons Act since 1985, until a judge ruled otherwise last January. It was the only place in England that such an activity was allowed without requiring permission from a landowner.

The case hinged on whether wild camping counted as open-air recreation, leading to a long debate in the court of appeal. Lawyers acting for Alexander Darwall, the landowner, argued it was not, because when camping one was only sleeping rather than enjoying a particular activity.

After the court of appeal decision, lawyers acting for Darwall, a hedge funder and Dartmoor’s sixth-largest landowner, asked the supreme court to hear the case.

Darwall bought the 1,619-hectare (4,000-acre) Blachford estate on southern Dartmoor in 2013. He offers pheasant shoots, deerstalking and holiday rentals on his land.

His attempts to ban wild campers from using his estate without his permission sparked a large protest movement, with thousands going to Dartmoor to assert their right to camp. It awakened a land rights debate in the UK, with the Labour party weighing in. The party previously said it would legislate for a right to wild camp in all national parks. However, it since appears to have U-turned on its land rights policy.

Lewis Winks, from the Stars Are For Everyone campaign, said: “The loss of our cherished right to sleep under the stars on Dartmoor ignited a passionate and broad movement for greater land rights in England. This news is confirmation that reform is both needed and inevitable, and will act as a clarion call to all those who wish for generations to come to enjoy these fundamental freedoms.

“As ever, the right to wild camp is emblematic of the fragility of our wider rights in the English countryside, and Darwall’s latest egregious move illustrates the need for greater legal protections for access to nature.

“We hope that the court sees sense and returns a favourable verdict, enabling wild camping to continue on the commons of Dartmoor.”

Darwall’s legal team at Landmark Chambers said that the high court held that the words in the act “unambiguously excluded a right to camp on Dartmoor” and found in favour of the landowners. The court of appeal held that it “unambiguously included a right to camp” and allowed the Dartmoor National Park Authority’s appeal. “The appeal to the supreme court will determine once and for all this important issue, namely whether members of the public enjoy a right to camp on the Dartmoor commons,” it said.

“The supreme court will be asked to consider a number of principles applicable to statutory interpretation which will be of interest to practitioners. In particular, it will be invited to consider whether the court of appeal took sufficient account of admissible ‘background’ materials (i) in identifying the ‘mischief’ at which the legislation was aimed and (ii) in considering whether the statutory language was ambiguous.”

Norfolk villagers claim Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, has stolen over 3,000 acres of public common land

Locals’ uprising against the ‘Lord of the Manor’: Stately home Holkham Hall at centre of bitter row after Norfolk villagers claim its owner the Earl of Leicester ‘unfairly’ took over 3,000 acres of public land

Ryan Prosser 01 Jan 2024 – https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12917037/Locals-uprising-against-Lord-Manor-Stately-home-Holkham-Hall-centre-bitter-row-Norfolk-villagers-claim-owner-Earl-Leicester-unfairly-took-3-000-acres-public-land.html

Holkham Hall, which covers 25,000 acres, is owned by Thomas Coke, the Earl of Leicester

One of the most prestigious stately homes in the country is at the centre of a bitter legal row over the ownership of part of its vast 25,000 acre estate.

Holkham Hall, valued at more than £200 million, is on the north Norfolk coast and owned by the Earl of Leicester and the huge farming estate is run by Jake Fiennes.

But the picturesque marshes of Burnham Overy Staithe, near Brancaster, are at the centre of an extraordinarily fierce row in which villagers are challenging the power and influence of the local ‘Lord of the Manor’.

Locals claim that more than 3,000 acres of land is legally common land. They say the Earl of Leicester, of nearby Holkham Hall, has ‘unfairly’ claimed the part of the area as his own and that the land is being wrongly treated as private property.

Sailors and boat users are charged for moorings and launchings on the popular waterways and the fees are claimed by the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust which leases the land from the Holkham estate.

The eighth Earl of Leicester, Thomas Coke – an elected hereditary peer in the House of Lords, who was the Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II – insists the land is lawfully part of his estate.

In recent weeks, the dispute has been played out at Norwich Magistrates’ Court but the battle ended in defeat for the villagers, after a tribunal panel ruled against them. But they have vowed to continue their fight.

With average house prices of £1 million, the stretch of fashionable coast around Holkham has been dubbed Chelsea-on-Sea because of the growing number of Londoners buying up second homes or holiday lets.

The Scolt Head and District Common Rights Holders’ Association was set up forty years ago and has always argued that the land belongs to Burnham Overy Parish Council under historic Enclosure Acts that date back to the 18th century.

But the villagers say the Earl unlawfully registered the land to the Holkham estate in 2012 and has leased it to the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust which is wrongly charging people for moorings and license fees to launch boats.

Rod Cooke, secretary of the Scolt Head and District Common Rights Holders Association, accused the Holkham estate and Trust of ‘usurping from property that doesn’t belong to them’.

Common land has been taken from us and is being used as private property and there is not supposed to be any commercialisation of common land and they shouldn’t be profiting from it.

‘What they’ve done is unlawful and there’s no way common rights holders can get justice.

‘We’re perfectly happy to manage the common with everyone, but the Earl of Leicester, who calls himself the landowner, and the Trust won’t talk to us- they don’t believe we have any role in the management of the land we own.’

But Holkham estate says it successfully registered ownership of an island in Burnham Overy harbour, traditionally called the 77 Acres, with HM Land Registry between 2009 and 2015.

It denies any ownership of the Scolt Head Island nature reserve, which it says lies with the National Trust and with Natural England.

Peter Mitchell, managing director of the estate, said: ‘Ownership of the this land was challenged some four or five years after it was registered.

‘Holkham looked back into the estate records and agreed at the time the possibility that the ownership of the 77 Acres may not have been legitimately held by the previous owner, who sold a large block of land around the Burnhams to the Holkham estate in 1922.

‘If that counter argument were shown to be true, ownership would most likely have tracked from its status as unenclosed land into ownership by the parish council or the district council.’

The estate says that it has worked closely with the parish council over the last few years and that the authority came to the conclusion that they ‘neither needed to, nor wanted to, take on ownership’.

‘The Holkham estate therefore decided at that time that it should not transfer ownership to the parish council, but instead continue to take responsibility to manage this important area of natural habitat.’

The Scolt Head and District Common Rights Holders Association reported the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust to the Charity Commission thirty years ago but in 2019 the Commission said it was not going to take any action over the complaints. He said both had been ‘unlawfully contravened by the Commission and Trust’.

Mr Cooke submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Commission asking for correspondence between the regulator and the Trust.

However, it withheld some information, arguing that if it was to disclose correspondence from trustees public confidence in charities could be lost through fear of consequences.

Mr Cooke appealed, but it was this case that was dismissed at a tribunal at Norwich Magistrates’ Court in recent weeks.

‘We could take the Trust to court for trespassing on common land, but when you’re dealing with organisations with thousands of pounds we simply can’t take them on because we don’t have that sort of funding,’ Mr Cooke said.

Subsidised offshore windfarm anyone? How King Charles acquired our continental shelf, almost three times the UK’s land area

Landlord of the Sea: How King Charles acquired our continental shelf, almost three times the UK’s land area

How The King Cashed In On Our Seabed – a tale of Medieval power and private property ownership… as UK poverty spirals out of control

 

The royal family has made millions from the exploitation of the seabed—a resource that belongs to us all. Is it time for people and planet to be put ahead of profit?

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/monarchy/62141/how-the-monarchy-cashes-in-on-our-seabed

Prospect Magazine – By Guy Standing July 19, 2023

Ever since ancient Rome, the sea, seabed and seashore have been accepted as part of the commons—res communes omnium—belonging to everybody equally, and inalienable as state or private property. The commons as a distinct form of property was taken forward in Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest of 1217, the twin bedrocks of common law and all democracies.

A commons depends on the “sovereign”—in the UK’s case, the monarchy—acting as steward or trustee, with responsibility for preserving it for generations to come. For more than 650 years, following a ruling by King Edward I in 1299, the monarchy accepted this positive duty, known as the Public Trust Doctrine.

However, in the past 60 years, the monarchy has gradually plundered the blue commons—the seabed around the British Isles—transforming it into nothing less than a rentier capitalist empire. That empire, in the decade since 2013, is thought to have earned the royal family in the region of £193m. The new king, Charles III, who while heir to the throne established a reputation as an environment protector, has inherited and continues to profit from this system.

The evolution began in 1961, two years after the discovery in Dutch waters of large quantities of North Sea gas. The Crown Estate was constituted by an act of parliament to manage the assets belonging to the monarchy, with a mandate to maximise revenue and capital value for the Treasury. As King, Charles is not involved in managing these assets; they are not the monarch’s personal property but “the sovereign’s public estate”, managed by the Crown Estate supposedly in the public interest.

At the time, the Crown had no ownership rights in the sea beyond the lower-tide mark on the seashore. Indeed, in 1951 the Labour foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison, had declared that the sea around Britain was not the property of the state or anybody.

But in 1962, as was revealed much later, the Queen privately told the first commissioner of the Estate—the leader of the board running the corporation’s commercial interests—that she had seen something about “taking over rights on land under the sea”. In fact, the Estate’s legal adviser in 1959 had proposed enshrining in law the extension of Crown lands to the whole of the continental shelf. Other Estate officials advised against trying to extend rights to the seabed, because this would draw attention to the fact that no existing legislation gave such ownership.

However, prompted by the passing of a UN convention that granted states rights to the continental shelves by their shores, and by drilling companies seeking legal clarity on ownership of the seabed in expectation of finding commercial oil and gas reserves, the outgoing Conservative government of Alec Douglas-Home passed the Continental Shelf Act in 1964. It gave the Crown Estate precisely the rights it had earlier refrained from seeking. This granting of ownership to the Crown Estate was a huge enclosure of the commons but did not change the fact that the seabed was still part of the commons. The Crown, and the government as its agent, became the seabed’s steward, responsible for preserving it.

All at sea: the Crown Estate (and in Scotland, the separate Crown Estate Scotland) owns the seabed to 12 nautical miles out. It also holds rights to explore and use natural resources (except oil, coal and gas) and generate renewable power on the UK’s continental shelf

As a business, the Crown Estate grew at a modest rate during the following decades, returning all revenue to the Treasury while the monarch received a fixed sum—the annual “civil list”—to pay for royal expenses. The Estate’s marine activities did not include the North Sea oil and gas bonanza, for although the Crown owns the oil and gas found beneath the sea, as beneath the land, their exploitation is managed by the government and its agencies.
In the 1980s, the Thatcher government sold leases on lots in the North Sea to oil companies at ridiculously low prices, taking the revenue as a windfall profit to pay for tax cuts. This was a blatant depletion of the commons, in sharp contrast to Norway’s decision to use its surplus oil and gas revenues to create what is now a mammoth sovereign wealth fund, ensuring benefits flow to both current and future generations.

The next phase came in 2001, when offshore wind energy took off. In a first step, the Crown Estate leased 12 seabed sites of 10 square km each. Three additional rounds saw leases awarded in 2003, 2010 and finally in 2021, when the Crown Estate auctioned six large lots, most of which went to German and French firms. The most recent round included the novel addition that the companies would pay the Crown a ground rent, an annual “option fee”, even before producing any wind energy. It was estimated that this round alone could generate nearly £9bn over 10 years.

And here is the rub. Over the past two decades, successive governments have allowed the Crown Estate to become a monopolistic corporate enterprise. In 2004, the New Labour government passed the Energy Act, which enabled the Estate to claim a share of the revenue from production of all offshore wind and wave electricity. In 2008, it extended this to gas and carbon dioxide storage.

These measures intensified a clear conflict of interest for the Crown Estate between being a steward responsible for preserving the commons for future generations and a business working to maximise revenue and profits. Meanwhile, to add to its profits, the Estate had started to invest in joint ventures.
In 2010, the Parliamentary Treasury Committee concluded that the Crown Estate was focusing too much on income from its control of the seabed and seashore, rather than on the long-term public interest. In what was hardly an adequate rebuttal, the Estate’s CEO said he was pleased the committee recognised they were running a successful business operation, adding only that the Estate took its responsibility to act in the wider public interest “very seriously”.

Nothing was done to prioritise once again the role of the Crown as protector and steward. The situation was tilted further in favour of commercial criteria in 2012, when George Osborne, at the time chancellor of the exchequer, abolished the civil list in favour of a “sovereign grant”, calculated as 15 per cent of the Crown Estate’s profit. That figure was increased to 25 per cent in 2017, ostensibly to cover the estimated cost of refurbishing Buckingham Palace; at present it is set to revert to 15 per cent in 2028. The creation of a deadline in itself created a new moral hazard, giving the Crown Estate an incentive to maximise short-term profits.

In brief, the Crown Estate has become a monopolistic sealord. It has monopolised offshore wind and wave energy and created an oligopoly consisting of a few, overwhelmingly foreign-owned multinationals, a structure that promises to keep prices and revenues above what would arise in a competitive market. Although the Estate uses an auction process to decide which firms secure the leases, it still decides how many leases to sell, as well as the size and location of the lots.

In the decade since 2013, the Crown Estate has made more than £1bn profit from its marine business (known in the Estate’s accounts as energy, minerals and infrastructure until 2019/20, and inclusive of aquaculture until 2016/17). Over the years, this sum has been delivered to the Treasury, and has contributed to the pot from which the sovereign grant is calculated. Precise figures are difficult to discern due to the opaque nature of Crown Estate accounts, but Prospect research suggests that in the ten years to 2022/23, the seabed has earned the royals approximately £193m.

£193m: the royal family’s estimated earnings from the sea, 2013 to 2023

This sum takes into account King Charles’ magnanimous announcement in January 2023 that the Crown Estate would hand over to the government what a spokesperson called the “offshore energy windfall” from the 2021 round of sales, which boosted the marine sector’s profits from £127.5m to £370.8m in a year. In any case, revenue from the commons should not be treated as a “windfall” at all. It should never have been the Crown’s to begin with.
In its eagerness to make profits, the Crown Estate has even sold development rights for one patch of seabed to two different projects at the same time, one for a giant Danish-owned offshore windfarm, the other for storing carbon dioxide under the seabed. An industry insider commented tersely that the Crown Estate was being “a bit greedy”.

By the financial year ending in 2023, the value of the Crown Estate’s marine businesses was £5.7bn, up by 14 per cent on the year before, mainly because of offshore wind. The Crown is not liable to pay tax on the sovereign grant. Overall, the Estate’s portfolio is worth almost £16bn. It is a major industrial enterprise, but one that does not have to adhere to free market principles, let alone be answerable to the commoners.

The Welsh should feel particularly aggrieved, in that whereas all management and revenue of the Crown Estate in Scotland is in the hands of the Scottish government, revenue generated in Wales is not devolved. Extraordinarily, the value of the Crown Estate’s marine portfolio in Wales rose from £49m in 2020 to £549m in 2021 and to £603m in 2022. None of it went to the Welsh government, let alone to Welsh commoners. No wonder a majority of Welsh people want the Estate to be devolved as it is in Scotland.
25 per cent: proportion of the Crown Estate’s profit given to the royal family through the sovereign grant

These inequities are compounded by the fact that the Crown Estate has not always, before granting leases, carried out environmental impact assessments in accordance with either international law or the precautionary principle, which requires decision-makers to err on the side of caution when considering projects that might entail serious or unknown ecological risks. For the first three rounds of sale of seabed rights, the Estate was required under EU law to demonstrate that it had considered alternative sites before deciding where to locate infrastructure developments such as windfarms.

There is no evidence that it did this. Instead, assessments of the environmental impacts were left to developers, with the UK government judging in which sprawling zones development could occur. And the Estate itself has admitted that in the three earlier leasing rounds it didn’t have data with which to make objective assessments.

There has been progress: the Crown Estate and the government will in future examine the environmental impact of offshore windfarms, and outside of leasing rounds, work is under way to better understand the impact on nature of marine infrastructure. Had the Crown acted as the steward of the commons, this work would have been started much earlier.

In one case, the Danish power company Ørsted received approval for a project off the North Yorkshire coast which will affect a Special Protection Area that is home to Britain’s biggest colony of seabirds. The Estate and the government accepted that the project would threaten endangered birds, but let it go ahead on the basis of a promise by the company to introduce an offset breeding scheme to make up for bird deaths. There is no evidence that the scheme will work.

But while wind energy—sorely needed for the green transition—has received public scrutiny for its impact from nature, it is far from being the Crown Estate’s only source of profit from the sea.

Sand and gravel are easily the most mined minerals in the world, with about 50bn tonnes excavated from rivers, lakes and the sea annually. This figure is growing by around 5 per cent each year, feeding demands, led by China, for concrete and other construction materials. There is an impending global shortage, and excessive excavation is already causing land erosion worldwide.

The Crown Estate is the only body in the UK with the designated or presumed authority to oversee the production and sale of our sea sand. It has been quietly expanding mining, to the point where 21m tonnes of sand were excavated in 2022. A quarter was exported, mainly to Belgium and the Netherlands.

The manager of the Crown Estate’s “marine minerals portfolio” said in September 2022 that the Estate works “in partnership with industry, to help support the sustainable use of sand and gravel resources”. If it were a proper steward of the commons, the Estate would also work with conservation bodies, not just those interested in maximising extraction and profits. To protect against erosion and to avoid destruction of underwater ecosystems, there should be regular impact assessments of sand excavation before any more mining begins, done by independent bodies not answerable to the Crown Estate.

Bearing in mind that sea sand is an exhaustible common resource that will become more expensive as it becomes scarcer, a responsible steward would invest all or part of the revenues to maintain the capital value for the benefit of future generations, according to what is known as the Hartwick Rule of Intergenerational Equity. Instead, the Crown Estate is effectively treating all revenue from the sale of sea sand (as well as potash and other minerals found in the sea) as “windfall profit” for current spending.

Another seemingly innocuous activity being encouraged by the Estate is seaweed farming. Seaweed and seagrass are valuable for the marine ecosystem, not least as habitats and carbon sinks (they are far more effective than woodland in absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere). Nearly 90 per cent of seagrass has vanished from UK coastlines—much as a result of pollution, dredging and trawling—since the Estate took over the seabed as its income-earning property. Meanwhile, scientists predict that most of the UK’s 26,000 square miles of kelp forests will be lost by 2100.

£9bn: predicted windfall, over ten years, from 2023 offshore wind leases

Sadly, the Crown Estate has impeded some plans by civil society groups to replant thousands of acres of seagrass by charging, in at least one case, £500 an acre for doing so. One kelp farm company abandoned plans to develop a network of 58 farms around the seabed due to lengthy bureaucratic delays by the Crown Estate. These are not the actions of a benign steward of the commons.
Then there are around 750 aquaculture sites—for farming fish (mostly salmon), shellfish and crustaceans—from which the Crown Estate Scotland (CES), an independent body that gives its entire revenue to the Scottish government, earns a hefty sum. The CES, which takes 1.5 per cent of turnover income, must be partially answerable for fish farming’s shocking record in Britain: farmed salmon have a premature mortality rate as high as 24 per cent from disease and lice infestations; mass escapes threaten wild fish species; and the corporations, most foreign-owned, pay only half the true costs of production, with the remainder, including environmental costs, borne by local communities.

Scottish fisheries complain that licensed fish farms discharge sea lice and pesticides into the sea, killing wild fish. The CES, although more accountable to Scottish ministers, ignores the precautionary principle, and allows seabed dredging for scallops and bottom trawling for prawns, both of which do massive harm to marine ecosystems.

If the CES behaved as a real steward of the commons, it would demand that salmon farmers met higher ecological standards. If it cannot fulfil its positive duty to protect the commons then it should not be steward at all.

So what should be the political agenda? In the long run, a progressive government should want to restore the sea and seabed as part of Britain’s commons. In the immediate term, it should reform the governance of the Crown Estate, insisting that its primary responsibility is to preserve and enhance the capital value of the common resources in the sea around Britain.

The Crown Estate could charge firms more rent for ecologically damaging fish and shellfish farms. By contrast, it should not be charging anything for activities such as seaweed farming or seagrass replanting that revive marine ecosystems. It should make a commitment consistent with the High Seas Treaty, agreed at the UN marine biodiversity conference last year, to rewild 30 per cent of the seabed under its stewardship by 2030. It should stop the export of our sea sand. Above all, the next government should appoint a cabinet-level minister of the sea, whose responsibilities should include overseeing all the marine-related activities of the Crown Estate.

Finally, there is a transformational opportunity for a new progressive government. The King has said the £1bn a year “windfall” from the latest auction of our seabed should go to the public. The only equitable way to treat revenue from the commons would be to recycle it equally to all commoners—that is, to all of us. That £1bn a year should go into a Commons Capital Fund from which common dividends could be paid to every citizen. After all, the Crown’s role was to protect, not to plunder the commons. Charles III inherited an empire at sea—but he has the chance now to change it for the better.

Guy Standing is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London and a founding member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes a basic income for all. He is author of The Blue Commons: Rescuing the Economy of the Sea.

 

The Death of Monkton Wyld..?

The Death of Monkton Wyld?
30th December 2023 – by Linda Beamish

… It’s as if Four Headless Horsemen rode in on the back of Stephen Williams  in 2023 – and murdered the Charity and the Community that ran it!

When 4 new trustees; Laura Guest, Steven Slavin, Juliet Ann Lovelace-Johnson and Richard Lovelace-Johnson; took over their roles in January 2023, they effectively killed the charity they took over.- just as if it were a hostile corporate takeover. 

Like poison, the Toxicity of The City spread through the green veins of the countryside all the way to the rolling hills of Dorset, blackening the capillaries of it’s host body as it did so, seemingly aiming to kill-off their own hosts, the experts in Sustainable Living that provided the educational and exemplary aims of the UK registered Charity.

If the UK Charity Commission does not take any form of Legal action against the four new trustees, and the instigator, following complaint, it must be seen as duplicitous as a government body.

What’s happened at Monkton Wyld Court this year should not be allowed to happen anywhere else to anyone else, and the world needs to learn from this case now.  (Change your foundation documents so that Trustees do NOT Own The Land and Property.)

On the 11th October, quote: ‘Without any warning or consultation, Trustees change the Charity’s Articles of Association on the Company House website. They take the Articles of a London-based Community Interest Company called Public Voice CIC, make a few small changes, and paste it in to replace the previous Articles. Funnily enough, one of the Directors of Public Voice is Laura Guest who is also the main Trustee driving all the changes at Monkton Wyld Court.

Among other things, there are changes to the objects of the Charity, which for many years have been to promote education in sustainability and to maintain the listed buildings. Now the Charity’s objects include the promotion of “commerce, art, science, education, religion, charity or any profession, and to promote any social, political or sporting activity and anything incidental or conducive to the above objects”. Just about anything in fact. There are also changes making it easier to pay Trustees for their services and to sell off the charity to something other than another charity. A complaint to the Charity Commission has been made by former Trustees and community members.’ reference the Monkton Wyld Court Case website linked above, which transparently carries continuing updates.

It is vital, now, that ALL communities and Intentional Communities, EcoVillages, Coops and CoHousing Communities, everywhere, take note and learn from this case – fast.  (Please help to spread the word.)  Ensure that, where your community may have (new) trustees, they have a genuine understanding of, and empathy to, your charitable aims, and that – if they come from the corporate sector they have understanding, experience, and/or training in environmental sustainability, and aims of your community.

If you have set up as a Workers Cooperative, please (please) do insure that NO former members have any form of access to your online accounts, if they do, they could also achieve the aims of the former member of the workers coop that ran Monkton Wyld Court charity, that hacked into their accounts and changed details to cast shadow on their good work.

The corporate world should not be allowed to have anything to do with the control of the non-profit Third Sector – let alone sustainable and ecological communities like Monkton Wyld Court, particularly since it has been the unsustainable and unethical practices of the Corporate sector, that have created the need for the Third Sector guidelines for environmental sustainability and sustainable community living projects like this in the first place!

People need to feel safe in living in communities, not be under constant attack by people who haven’t even a thread of understanding of the aims of sustainable communities they’ve never left The City to take a look at – but taken the word of one man – against the democratic community vote.  (Living safely in communities is one of the planning guidelines.)

Lessons need to be learned – and not just in how to live sustainably – but most especially now for communities, since several other well established ecologically sustainable community living projects in the UK have also been subject to similar or corporate takeover recently.  (We are all vulnerable, especially rurally and in isolation.)

The non-profit Third Sector has a whole mountain of additional rules to adhere to, and targets to meet, that are completely alien and opposite to those of the the corporate (capitalistic) Private Sector, and even much of the Public Sector too now, since Councils boast of their new Corporate bodies on the colourful covers of their glossy journals.

It appears that we are at that point in time that has been prophesied for millennia, (as well as that of the millennium prophecy of 2002)… But don’t worry, since: ‘The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth’ (Matthew 5:5).

In short, some of us knew what was coming… Some of us didn’t, and some of us didn’t want to know, or thought that they had the solution in place already, and – like Monkton Wyld Court – were taken off-guard, and without defence or the opportunity to defend themselves.

If any intentional community member is reading this now, please ensure that it is possible for your community non-profit to scrutinise any trustee applicants credentials, and if applicants come directly from any other sector than the Third Sector, that they have fully studied the full quota of rules, laws and guidance for the governance of non-profits and coops stipulated by the United Nations, government departmental guidelines, and more.  If they haven’t, they should not become trustees of a charity – nor be directors of a non-profit.

According to the Law, nobody, in any sector, should ever take the word of one person, and/or take action against a community of at least 15 witnesses – without first taking diligent notice of the statement of every other person witness to, involved or accused, or looking at the evidence – and most especially not when they have only just walked into the position as trustee of a UK registered charity, as in this case.

From what I was able to ascertain speaking with friends at the Resistance Festival at Monkton Wyld Court and the Valley Vibes Festival in Devon held earlier this summer – including investigative journalist Tony Gosling and other members of www.tlio.org.uk – action needs to be taken to support the rights of Simon Fairlie, Gill Barron, Jasmine, Jon, Jarred, and all the other community members affected. 

As is the case with communities and intentional communities, this is not just ‘a job’ it is a way of life – it is both home and environment – in other words, the community has lost everything.  The people have lost everything,

The pigs were gone by the time the Resistance Festival was held at the end of August, and since then, the micro-dairy, which was one of Britain’s oldest examples as taught at the Resistance Festival, the Programme for which is shown right.

Because the members of the intentional community followed the law – they were sacked – and made homeless.  And in fact, aged 72, sustainability and rural planning expert, author Simon Fairlie was himself put into virtual house arrest as the new rules of the new (ruling) trustees, governing his lack of access to any of the community spaces or amenities, since the entire 11 acres where the community lives, is, of course, both!

According to the latest news from Monkton Wyld, Simon’s virtual house arrest eventually spiralled into a police arrest, on a trumped up charge of car theft by trustees.  As shown in the photograph online, Simon, co-author of The Land magazine, was forced into the back of a police van – as if he were a criminal – and kept in custody for nine hours.  The trustees have also now forced Simon’s micro dairy to have no income whatsoever, as they have initiated action with the authorities prohibiting the sale of their wonderful range of organic raw dairy products.  (It was amazing to hear how much could be made from so few jersey cows at the festival.  And the taste, was truly scrumptious!)  What an unwarranted sad loss.

Co-Author of The Land magazine Jill Barron, aged 73, was also sacked by the trustees and forced to move out of the community, as was Jasmine the Gardener, her partner Jon, Jarred and his partner, and more – and most of the community have resigned in protest, alongside the only remaining original trustee.

On top of all that, somebody, somewhere, has also hacked into the workers coop accounts – and altered them – changing evidence vital to their case.  (Another reminder for Intentional Communities: make sure that accounts CANNOT be hacked into by anyone not currently a member of their Workers Cooperative or Community.)

There is now nobody with the knowledge, educational research, or understanding, left, to run Monkton Wyld – and as such it really has been murdered.  (The question is, can it be rebuilt, like Stiffkey Bridge? Or perhaps to Rebuild Community @WhatsApp?)

Sustainable Community Living Projects are even more vital today than ever, so it really is crucial that communities ensure that this sort of takeover doesn’t happen again, for the futures of everyone concerned – and for Earth.

What’s happened in the Monkton Wyld Court Case linked above, should be criminal, and is:

On the Pearson BTEC HNC in Building Studies 2001-2003, students were taught of the need for (truly) sustainable construction, and, as the government and Local Authorities had targets we all needed to aim to achieve as designers, exactly what that is in terms of construction and the environment, with aims to achieve the highest possible design and build targets of build code Level 6 (+).  *IE GREEN DESIGN by Avril Fox and Robin Murrell, 1989 © Longmans ISBN: 1 85454 200 1

Students were advised to further research CAT EcoVillage in Wales – Canolfan Y Dechnoleg Amgen – www.cat.org.uk

– And were also advised to look online for others as there were many exemplars to the same educational standards – one such being Monkton Wyld Court Centre for Sustainable Living, until now.

It’s seriously wrong isn’t it…

So… Why would anyone, ever, want to become a trustee of a charity such as Monkton Wyld Court? (School?)

Well, in this case, it might also later prove to be a case of The Land – and not just the now homeless magazine.

If trustees takeover the running of charities, wherein the trustees Own The Land under the terms of the Intentional Community documents, as recorded on the Intentional Community platform www.ic.org – there could easily be incentive.  (Beware!  Write Community Foundation Documents differently!  Protect The Community that lives on The Land! Protect the Village! Protect the EcoVillage! Save The Parish! Save The Children & Vulnerable too.)

The Four trustees took on their roles in January 2023, and apparently took the complaint of a disgruntled rejected applicant to the intentional community as a Code Red, and sacked the backbone of the community in flagrant disregard for the rule of law that actually governs sustainable community living projects.  (As students were taught at HNC level in Building Law, quote: ‘Ignorance Is No Defence In A Court Of Law’ – that cuts both ways.)

In other words, ensure that you do you your own research.  Historically:

Going back to the HNC course in Building Studies, students were taught building history, and why it really is crucial now, to design for social exclusion – and without any more waste, to design for low impact and zero impact construction – and to consider ecological and regenerative designs for the landscape too, I.e. Permaculture.

Following on from The Egan Report, the construction sector also needed to change to become Ethical – as so much of the sector wasn’t – and again, this followed UK government guidelines that included Partnering (experts) rather than Tendering for projects.  (Architects and designers need to know this, as they often guide the design team, which now also includes their clients, whom they have a legal requirement to advise.)

Does any of this ever get taught to financiers, bankers, or anyone working in the corporate sector?  (I don’t know because I’m not from there myself thank God – but it should, especially in terms of Building Law.)

The fact that we all need to design and build differently now – SHOULD be taught to everyone – not just students on HNC courses following their own Continued Professional Development.

We can’t carry on designing and building unsustainably as it goes against all the government EU and UN guidelines.

This is because 70% of our planet is covered with water, and of the 30% of land above sea level, one third is now desert or suffering from drought, and is degenerating at an alarming rate – while the human population increases, landmass decreases – and as arctic and antarctic ice continues to melt, (also at an alarming rate), designers needed to design differently.  It is also criminal to cause any more land, water or air pollution or contamination, or take away natural habitat vital to the support of endangered species.

(We couldn’t carry on living or building unsustainably. UK Planning Guidelines were changed to keep the UK in line with UN guidelines.)

We couldn’t carry on and on, fighting for The Land to build upon, mine or excavate – and in 2002, when the lecturer delivered THE most damning and accurate prophecy – there was a terrible frenzy for every single piece of land that came up on the market, with everyone bidding hoping to make vast profits from property investment.  Some people even gave up their day jobs, and built up property portfolios instead, never bothering to study Building Studies first.

Property and land values were positively booming – and that was a second problem – because it was completely unsustainable as proven historically.  From Boom to Bang to Bust – repeatedly – repeatedly leaving millions in dire poverty, homeless, bankrupt, bereft of food and water, and shelter.

Historically, it has always been the same really, hasn’t it?  And that is exactly why all the rules were changed after WWII, giving people their human rights back, and ensuring their protection under International Law.

Since The Roman Invasion 2000 years ago, it’s been a case of Divide, Rule, Conquer – and make money in the process.

And that’s exactly where the Third Sector differs, because it really is dead opposite.

IF the UK Charity Commission fails to take action AGAINST the four new trustees at Monkton Wyld Court, listed on the UK government Charity Commission pages as being: Laura Guest, Steven Slavin, Juliet Ann Lovelace Johnson and Richard Lovelace Johnson, then perhaps as Friends we should take further action in support of MWC.

Perhaps we should call in the (new) Ketts brothers to protect rural, and urban, communities rights, or a renewed Boudicca force to be reckoned with, or co-create and drum up a new Peasants Revolt.

The Land Is Ours, www.tlio.org.uk – is possibly the best place to click to start and join the Peasants Revolt – it’s possibly one of The Best platforms now to get your voice heard – especially as a rural Peasant!

Common Land (peasants have registered rights to in gross) has been reregistered by the CRA in the UK, after application by Corporate Bodies, and Private Estates, (and some major and minor charities), for their profits, at the loss of Common Rights Holders Rights and due consultation with CRH.

Historically, Rights have been removed from local rural people and parishes, which were finally returned and guaranteed protection by ALL the Nations united in forming the UN.

Once upon a time, we were ALL rural, lived in the countryside, and understood the importance of stewarding The Land wisely, for the benefit of our families and communities, for future generations.  We once understood, and were wise, to the ways of the countryside – or, we died.

We knew we were completely at the hands of God and nature, and were dependent on the natural environment – and were as flexible as we needed to be to survive.

The Romans started to change all of that, changing the landscape, bringing in non-native species, and separating the communities that carried the knowledge of the natural environment, and introducing and enforcing their own rules.

People were no longer free, and were expected to pay taxes for the food they grew, and that was just the start of it.

Over the years, The Land has repeatedly been removed from the people indigenous to it, who were either forced to work as slaves, were tortured or killed.

The Domesday Book of 1086 originally cast in stone WHO owned The Land at the behest of William the Conqueror – King William 1 – listing the Lords of The Land, as decreed then, and what their dues were to the King.

Over the centuries, the amount of land available to The People has been taken away from them, and, in the end, the Industrial Revolution was the start of the end.

The Land Inclosure Acts then went on to create legal property rights to land previously held in common in England and Wales according to Wikipedia, which goes on to explain that between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, effecting 28,000sq kilometres.

The vast majority of the public land still available at the time, was categorized as either common or waste land, which rural peasants being landless themselves, were able to farm or forage.  This then led homeless or landless peasants to go to work in the factories in the towns and cities, since they had no other options, or very few.

Apparently, quote: “The powers granted in the Inclosure Act 1773 of the Parliament of Great Britain were often abused by landowners: the preliminary meetings where enclosure was discussed, intended to be held in public, often took place in the presence of only the local landowners, who regularly chose their own solicitors, surveyors and commissioners to decide on each case.  In 1786 there were still 250,000 independent landowners, but in the course of only thirty years their number was reduced to 32,000.  (Reference Wikipedia.)

Obviously, as shown by the four trustees, despite or in spite of all the new laws and governance, this is STILL going on today.

It IS historically the case, that the corporate and capitalist, needs slaves working for nothing in order to maximise profits – and even more people to count it all, and protect or defend it from thieves.

But it is also very wrong to expect people working in communities or in the non-profit sector, to have the same wage or working conditions as those in the corporate, Public or Private sectors.  Or even to have the same expectations.

Most people forming the Intentional Community at Monkton Wyld Court, lived there FREE – or at least, had FREE Free-range organic dairy produce, organic fruit and vegetables, and FREE facilities.  (Instead of High Wages.)

Some things in life are worth far (far) more than money…

Since the end of WWII, a raft of Human Rights have been written to protect humanity – and to protect Earth’s natural and organic environment.  The Third Sector specialises in giving all to these aims – where the Corporate, the Private and the Public Sectors do not.  The 1950s and 1960s led to an environmental awakening, and the call for World Peace – ‘Make Love Not War’ was the order of the day.

Veteran environmentalists and authors such as Avril Fox, George Monbiot, Simon Fairlie, Tony Gosling, Dame Jennifer Lonsdale, Dr Christopher Busby and David Attenborough, have been researching, educating or spearheading protests and campaigning for change for decades.  In some instances their knowledge spearheaded UN guidelines for change.

Right now, we either need to start to build environmentally and economically sustainable community living projects across the entire UK, (and Arks in risk zones), following the exemplars of EcoVillages and other eco-communities that have already blazed the trail and pioneered ways in which to hit ALL the Planning Guidelines, both in terms of Nationally and Internationally – or we will end up in the fullness of the 1984 projection.

Right now, today, there are two paths we can go by (quote: from The Long Road to Realism, autobiography of Avril Fox), one is inherently good and follows those guidelines, the other is disastrously bad – and will end in the end of humanity, and the end of an environmentally sustainable planet.

It was only on the award winning and green exemplars of EcoVillages such as CAT, Lammas, Findhorn, Fife Earthship, and the Hockerton Housing Project, CoHousing Communities and Eco-Communities such as Monkton Wyld that set the standards for others to follow that the UK government set aside as many millions as it did for Community Land Trusts (CLTs), and gave us the Right to Bid and the Right to Build.  If the exemplars that we are supposed to learn from are taken away from us, as is proving to be the case for Monkton Wyld and other established eco communities, then God help us – all.

If we have ‘Proven Need’, are suffering from exclusion, poverty, and have the evidence to prove our case, then we have the Right to Build as either individuals or intentional communities in application, according to the UK government’s Communities website and PDFs, and Exemption and Exception sites were to be allocated by Councils, then where should we be allowed to learn what is required?  (Should everyone just keep on and on reinventing the wheel?)

Given the fact that humans now ALL have a Right to Life protected by Law, a Right to Water, a Right to Life – a Right to Live as one in Nature.

The Workers Cooperative formed by the Intentional Community had an Agreed Low Wage.  Ergo, it was very wrong for the new trustees to use the clamant’s claim of a Low Wage against the Community that democratically chose or voted between them to refuse The Claimant’s Application to join Their Community.

FREE showers – free water and toilet facilities – free organic food, and a healthy, safe and happy environment in the beautiful Dorset hills, WHO wouldn’t want to work there, learn there, and become a part of this amazing coop community.  (I know I would – if it weren’t for my dependents, and other commitments within the non-profit sector I volunteer.  N.B.  Note to the UK Charity Commission – IF action is taken against the four new trustees, and you need to fill vacancies for trustees of the Monkton Wyld Court Charity – I, for one, volunteer.)

In fact, when I heard what had happened at Monkton Wyld Court, I first travelled down to Devon this summer to attend the Valley Vibes Festival, to meet with investigative journalist Tony Gosling and other www.tlio.og.uk members and supporters to discuss the case, and then later travelled back down to the West, to The Resistance Festival held at Monkton Wyld Court in Dorset to find out if there was anything that I could do to help, and again, to network with other supporters and members of The Land Is Ours. 

Although it wasn’t the same as the T.L.I.O. Gathering of 2011 – I still managed to learn an awful lot, (and not solely about the Monkton Wyld Court Case), as I attended as many of the classes as I could!  In short, I learned an awful lot this summer – including what I might be able to do to help – for example, writing this now!

George Monbiot originally formed T.L.I.O.  However, now seems to consider that The Land should be allowed to regenerate – without people either stewarding it or looking after it while living upon it as we have traditionally – and then considers himself to be the only person on the entire planet concerned about how to feed the world simultaneous to regenerating the natural environment – while preaching the Land Reform Act.

Living in a city – or even The City – looking out at the reducing countryside, is completely different to living in the countryside looking at the damages caused  to the countryside by those of The City, the cities and the towns, (as a peasant)…”  – Speaking as a Revolting Peasant – because the government made me so.

 

Written by Linda Beamish; Group Moderator/Regional Organiser EcoVillage Network UK; Admin. Pentref Eco Cymru EcoVillage Wales; Ambassador Imagine Rural Development Initiative (IRDI) Ecovillage Zambia; Community Organiser www.off-grid.net // www.LandBuddy.com – freelance (self-employed) Eco-architectural designer www.eco-designs.co.uk and social entrepreneur – AnArkAngel representing Avril Fox, the Patron Saint of the Ark Angels non-profit organisation.

London’s War on Informality, what seven hours in London taught me about surveillance capitalism – Brett Scott

The War on Informality

What seven hours in London teaches me about surveillance capitalism – Brett Scott – 19 Dec 2023Brett’s Substack

I lived in London for 11 years, and hold a deep affection for the city, but when I visit now I feel physically uneasy. As I disembark at Gatwick airport and step into the terminal, I’m hit with the punch of an invisible forcefield. Alarms start ringing in my nervous system, like those birds that cause a racket when danger is approaching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A friend tells me it’s because I’m an ‘economic empath’. She means it half-jokingly, but it’s true that I sense a creeping darkness looming in the city that I can’t easily put words to, but feel in my body. It must be something subliminal I’m picking up, but what? It starts when I see the HSBC billboards that line the passage to the passport control, with pictures of grandparents and kids alongside slogans like ‘together we thrive’. It builds as I force myself to look into the facial recognition cameras to trigger the e-gates through the border. It spikes further as I try to avoid looking at the MFlow cameras from Human Recognition Systems Ltd, their swirling lights trying to attract my attention so they can log my iris and track me around the airport to optimise crowd control.

Then there’s the feeling of being held hostage in the Gatwick shuttle train where they force me to listen to easyJet deals read by someone pretending to be my friend, selected by an advertising company that used consumer research that told them a working-class voice sounds more trustworthy when trying to sell things. Then comes the moment I dread most. The clipped voice over the loudspeakers at the National Rail station that says, “If you see something suspicious, report it to a member of the British Transport Police…” At that point I violently scrabble for my headphones, because I want to drown out what’s coming next. Shit, I’m too slow. Here it comes…

‘SEE IT, SAY IT, SORTED’, the voice says.

That phrase, which is repeated every five minutes on British transport, send those inner birds of mine into a scream. I think about the kids growing up in this environment, having this repetitive mantra coded into the deepest parts of their neural circuits as ‘normal’. I also think about the economic structure behind it. I picture the brainstorming sessions with the AML Group, the advertising agency that was paid a shed-tonne of money to create that slogan. They’re quite proud of it:

The AML Group execs reckon they’re pretty edgy with their Sin City aesthetics. The website profile photos of their leadership team are set against a backdrop of street art – presumably to show their creativity – while they boast that their campaign has led to a 365% increase in paranoid reports about ‘suspicious behaviour’. In London, you can get paid a lot to make creativity and conformity work hand in hand.

Being held by the handrail

So, within an hour of arriving in the UK, my emotional Geiger-counter is registering high ambient toxicity in the environment, but the triggering goes on. The journey from Gatwick into central London is one long string of directives to be a conscientious good citizen, playing in the background as I’m told to be a conscientious good consumer by the Santander billboards on the Tube platform, the fintech adverts in the carriage, and the Barclays posters on the escalators that pass me while the voice tells me to ‘please hold the handrail’.

 

London is a city of endless helpful requests coldly delivered to sound like orders, alongside matey propaganda designed by M&C Saatchi to make corporate platforms look warm and cuddly. When I lived here, this mix of dripping corporate inauthenticity and stultifying paternalism was there like a suffocating blanket, but the city had a strong counterculture to balance it out. I was born at the tail-end of the authoritarian apartheid regime in South Africa, so when I arrived London seemed a city of exhilarating experimentation and freedom. I lived in the neighbourhood of Brixton from 2008-2013, where every day the street market was a multicultural carnival with home-made ginger beer, ska music and the smell of weed. London seemed to have a decent balance of power between the formal corporate and state sphere, and the informal street life that teemed around it in the cracks. There was, as it were, a vibrant outside to the suffocating blanket.

Perhaps what my nervous system now registers is a shift in that balance. The vibrancy still exists, but it’s on the retreat as the outside space is eaten up. In the great ongoing war between bureaucratic corporate surveillance capitalism and the human soul, the former is gaining ground.

Entering the production line

Within two hours an emotional motif has emerged. It’s the feeling that London increasingly operates as a series of optimised production (and consumption) lines presided over by authorities, corporations and technology. People cram off the Tube to cram into Pret for coffee to cram into work, before cramming into the self-service checkouts at Tesco for lunch. You’ll never see the bosses or shareholders of the production lines, but you will see a series of CCTV cameras, touch-screens, QR codes and employees, with the latter increasingly subordinated to the technology.

As people cram into the bars in the evening, they’ll leave their Pret cups and Sainsbury’s sushi containers crammed into bins. Those will be emptied before dawn by an army of unseen cleaners, many of them immigrants, who will un-cram the city so the process can continue when everyone drains from the catchment area of the suburbs into the trains again. Once on the platform, our minds can get crammed afresh with the cutting edge of automation ideology, which in London means pervasive fintech ads, like this one from the automated investment manager Nutmeg.

Ah, Nutmeg. I remember this crew. I was involved in the London ‘alternative finance’ scene around 2011 when Nutmeg was founded, and the team would turn up at events I attended. Like most fintech players, they claimed to be pioneering a ‘revolution’ against the banks. Here’s their old billboard.

Spot the difference? Glance to the bottom left of their newer ad, and you’ll see that the ‘investing without the bankers’ company has been bought by J.P. Morgan. Their former CEO’s LinkedIn page says he’s ‘taking a break’, which is unsurprising given that he probably no longer needs to work after getting paid to sell out. Then again, selling out was always the plan. Nutmeg was backed from the start by firms like Armada Investment Group, Balderton Capital and Schroders, who would make damn sure the CEO ‘takes a break’ if the likes of J.P. Morgan made an offer. The inauthenticity in Nutmeg’s vision was always there.

At some level everyone here knows that every claim around them is laced with a streak of the fake. False revolutions are marketed constantly. Some are even named after revolutions, like Revolut.

It’s ironic that Revolut chooses this image, because 9 out of the 11 people in their leadership team are white men, and there are no black women, but commercial inauthenticity is so normal that Londoners expect to be lied to. The start-up phase of a company is just like the start-up phase of an unfinished product on a production line. In the early phase, the start-up gets to say scrappy rebellious things, but by the end they’re ready to be sold to J.P. Morgan. Revolut is backed by some of the same venture firms as Nutmeg was, so don’t be surprised if it ends up swallowed. The fintech scene primarily exists for one thing: to help bridge the gap between Big Finance and Big Tech.

The soundtrack of techno-feudalism

By hour three, the latest theme tune of London’s corporate takeover rises into my consciousness. It’s an incessant beeping sound. Beep. Beep. Beep. It’s the sound of people tapping their cards or phones on contactless payments terminals, in Pret, in the Tube, on the bus, in Sainsbury’s, everywhere. It’s the sound of a message being sent by the smart-chip on their card via the merchant’s bank to Visa’s fortress data-centres to their bank’s data-centres and back. It’s also the sound of Visa, Mastercard and the banking sector getting richer. More generally, it’s the sound of us being processed by a system that wants to accelerate its production and consumption lines.

Henry Ford famously quipped that ‘any customer can have a car painted any colour, so long as it is black’. The bosses of London increasingly say ‘use whatever form of payment you want, so long as it’s digital and corporate’. Indeed, the rise of contactless payment in London was kickstarted by the TfL transport system, which not only started blocking people from using cash, but partnered with Barclaycard to promote contactless payments. In true inauthenticity-maximization style, they ran a phoney charity drive to onboard people with the help of former mayor Boris Johnson and the advertising giant M&C Saatchi. The initiative, which was called ‘Penny for London’, claimed you could be a humanitarian by using contactless payment, because the system would automatically donate 1p from your train fare to underprivileged young Londoners if you did so.

The initiative raised little money for charity, but that was never the point. The point was to shift people’s payments behaviour. The directors of the now-dissolved Penny for London Ltd included Boris Johnson’s Mayor’s Fund, former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, and hedge fund mogul and Conservative Party peer, Baron Stanley Fink. Isn’t it strange that a bunch of financial elites were invited to sit on the board. Someone should report that to the See It, Say It, Sorted help-line as suspicious behaviour. I fantasize about calling the operator and saying:

‘I’ve noticed London has been taken over by two colossal American payments firms working in conjunction with Big Finance and Tech, and people don’t seem to notice. Suspicious?’

I can imagine the operator looking for ‘corporate takeover’ and ‘apathy towards ruling class hegemony’ in the list of threats to UK democracy. ‘No, sorry, we only act upon terrorist threats, homeless people, brown people, and people who take photos of our CCTV cameras’.

My French friend Victor takes glee in telling me that the UK has a lingering feudal mindset, because the country never had a true revolution like his. Certainly, parts of UK society seem to welcome in domination by techno-feudalism with minimal resistance. Behind the beeps on the contactless terminals I can see the grinning faces of the execs at Barclaycard, Visa and ApplePay, watching all the ‘cashless’ feedback loops accelerate, entrenching their platforms as the only means of survival in this environment. Their hegemony is amplified by state authorities, museums, universities, theatres and other institutions of cultural clout that add their official blessing to this takeover by ‘going cashless’.

Still, when I first lived in London, cultural immunity to this was higher. Using cash was normal, and it was also the currency of the informal underground that provided a counterpower to the formal sphere. Very few people experienced cash as ‘inconvenient’ in 2008, but even back then payments firms were working to shift that perception. I can hear the Visa UK marketing team popping the champagne cork on the night they released their 2016 ‘cashfree and proud’ campaign. Voiced by the much loved actor Brian Blessed, it had the objective of making cash seem ‘peculiar’ in the city by 2020.

Just like AML Group amplified British paranoia by 365%, these guys amplified the take-over of Big Finance-Tech with remarkable speed. Visa wanted Londoners ‘liberated’ from cash, but so-called ‘cashless payment’ is just transfers of bank-issued digital casino chips. Put differently, they wanted us liberated from our lack of reliance on banks. They wanted the cash economy to get metabolized by a corporate oligopoly.

This mentality of capture was presented as progressive: like our chuffed man in the ad above, we were supposed to feel a ‘sense of achievement’ when welcoming this in. Most notably, this mentality flourished in a particular strata of middle-class professionals. You don’t need to be a social scientist to see that wherever gentrification goes, cashlessness follows. The old ‘cash or card’ question asked by bartenders was silenced, and replaced by them shoving the POS terminal at you. This was the true ‘cashfree’ situation Visa desired, and yes, they are very proud that businesses will promote them by removing your choice to use their physical competitor.

Sterilisation by gentrification

By hour four in London I must find safe harbour. I retreat to the The Montagu Pyke on Charing Cross Road on the edge of Soho. It’s a Wetherspoons pub, and Wetherspoons is an interesting beast. One the one hand, it’s a stock-market listed company that consolidates pubs into a corporate chain. On the other, it uses its market power to protect stuff that might otherwise be undermined by market forces, like traditional real ale. Wetherspoons is notable for supporting CAMRA – the Campaign for Real Ale – and The Montagu Pyke is bastion for old London geezers who don’t want to be shamed for using cash or talking in a cockney accent.

I actually used to work in an old CAMRA pub called The St. Radegund. The roguish but loveable old boss was called Terry, who in his twenties had travelled for years through Asia in a beat-up van. I walked in, asked for a job, and the next night I was working, no questions asked. His policy was to serve no lagers, allow no smartphones, and accept no card payments. At the end of the evening I’d lock the pub up and take my wages in cash out of the till for myself. He simply trusted I’d take the right amount.

St Radegund regulars

The Radegund felt ‘homely’, but what does this mean? In a corporate office you’re only allowed you to express a limited part of yourself, but in a home all aspects of your being are allowed to reside. Things we call ‘homely’, then, have a certain level of holism. The Radegund was part of the capitalist economy – it sold beers for profit – but that was but one part of its spirit. It was also a community meeting space, a place for lonely widowers to find company, and for Terry to tell long stories to the regulars.

The Radegund’s most notable feature was the banning of phones, which prevented people from accessing a tool they might otherwise use to mine their environment for emotional commodities that could be pushed into an attention marketplace. Even the image I managed to sneak above was a partial infraction on that spirit. Phones are designed to make it technically easy for us to make audio-visual objects out of feelings and experiences that otherwise would resist objectification, and at this time Facebook was trying to lure me in with little dopamine rewards to get me to hand these objects over to them, so it could be displayed back to me from the outside.

At first glance the phone ban seemed restrictive – even draconian – but actually it protected the space from a mentality of commodification that might otherwise take root. Arguably, holding that mentality at bay is what makes things feel ‘underground’. One of the darkest possibilities facing us right now is that our phones may be like trojan horses invited into realms we may want protected from commodification. They slowly erode the sense that the underground resides within us.

Needless to say, the non-commodified holism that made the Radegund feel homely is the same thing that makes entire neighbourhoods feel homely. The old Brixton market, for example, played host to all manner of non-commercial values that co-existed alongside market activities. There was a diversity of spirit, which is what people end up calling ‘vibrant’. The more you push the needle towards non-commercial logics, the more ‘alternative’ a place seems. What we call ‘counterculture’ is a mentality that revels in de-prioritizing commercial logic, rather than foregrounding it.

Brixton’s gentrification really kicked off in 2011, when the Tory government broke the squatting scene and cleared out a big chunk of the informal culture. In the years since, a Wetherspoons pub called the Beehive has operated like a shelter, taking in fugitives pushed out by the rise of cashless wine bars and craft beer breweries. Soho, where the Montagu Pyke stands, was lost to gentrification way before that, but the pub is hosted in the building that once housed the old Marquee Club. Back in the late 60s, the venue was home to nascent stars like Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. The pub has a small exhibit commemorating this:

When I first moved to London, I got a thrill from listening to the Dire Straits song Wild West End, in which Mark Knopfler sings about walking the grimy streets of Soho before the area was turned into a simulacrum of itself to be sold to tourists. I never got to experience Mark’s Soho. One of the classic symptoms of deep urban commodification is that the identity of a place gets ripped away from those who live there and displayed back to them from the outside. You don’t host the spirit of Soho. You consume it. You live inside a product, and the local authorities begin to view themselves as product managers.

Many so-called ‘global cities’ face this problem. Amsterdam and Barcelona, for example, increasingly feel like managed products, which is why neighbourhoods like Gracia in Barcelona have graffiti saying ‘TOURISTS GO HOME, YOU’RE NOT WELCOME’. People who live in a home don’t like sensing they’re living in a production line for experiential commodities to be sold to outsiders, but London authorities have long given up the idea that the city is primarily a home. No, it’s primarily a venue to attract foreign investment, a tourist package, or a canvas of opportunities for property developers.

I saw this first hand when I worked in the financial sector from 2008-2011. I specialised in flogging exotic derivative contracts to property investment funds and developers. I saw how they saw the city as a series of spreadsheets. Buildings were just the intersection of input costs and output revenue, existing only to yield that residual essence called profit. Of course, these values of efficiency and accumulation feel sterile, so the developers would constantly try to cloak their profit-extraction endeavours in non-commercial imagery of friends, family, fun, adventure, weirdness, rebellion and so on. This is a more general feature of capitalism, which always must seek to appropriate non-commercial logics, and this is what ends up making things feel ‘gentrified’.

Gentrification is best understood as a pacification process, in which the marketable elements of some holistic thing are split off from its threatening elements. It’s like skinning a tiger. You’re left with an exotic, novel and aesthetically-pleasing skin, without any of the substance in its original context. Interestingly, if you study the Montagu Pyke exhibit above, it references backlashes to this phenomenon in music:

In reaction to celebrity rock, and to music run by record companies as a branded consumer product, the streets broke through again in the form of Punk Rock

‘The streets’ is an interesting phrase, but the last bastion of punk rock in London was a place called Camden, which no longer exists. Well, it technically exists, but what people call ‘Camden’ right now is actually the skin of the old punk neighbourhood, thrown over a commercial machine that sells the image of punk culture back to both the residents and a sea of tourists.

Trying to be a 1970s punk in a 2023 London is like trying to be a wild ferment in pasteurised milk. What makes a place feel ‘commercial’ is when the values of efficiency, ‘convenience’ and accumulation take over from all others, and the holistic spirit is slowly evicted. Commercial culture sterilises – or pasteurises – the environment of any parts of the human spirit that don’t act to support its aims.

All watched over by benevolent intermediaries

Young Mark Knopfler

In Wild West End Mark Knopfler sings about ‘getting a pickup for his steel guitar’ in Soho’s music Mecca, Denmark Street. By hour five in London I’ll inevitably end up there. I go to Wunjo Guitars and pretend to be in the market for a National Resonator. A staff member plays along, saying “give it try!” The Wunjo staff are all passionate guitar geeks, and – while they wouldn’t mind making a sale – they’re just as excited to share their love for the topic with anyone who turns up. Denmark Street retains some of the spirit of Mark’s time, but other things are being lost.

One of Mark’s most gutsy songs is Walk of Life. It’s about a busker called Johnny who plays “down in the tunnels, trying to make it pay”. Busking is a classic informal economy activity. You set up on the street, get moved on by cops, set up someone else, and collect coins as you go. I remember a busker called Flame Proof Moth who’d play down on the banks of the Thames next to a big target for people to chuck coins at.

Let’s map Flame Proof Moth on an economic systems diagram. If you imagine an economy as a giant interdependent mesh of players, ranging from tiny to gigantic, it would look something like the diagram below. The big corporate oligopolies sit in a centre, with smaller SMEs further down the chain, and then the millions of employees, freelancers and precarious workers forming rings around this. The ‘informal economy’ is always in the periphery. As I chuck a coin to Flame Proof Moth, it’s like two tiny nodes interacting on the outskirts.

Imagine now I live in a world where my brain has become convinced that progress means being totally dependent on Visa. Flame Proof Moth has been forced to come up from the River Thames and to set up one of those iZettle payments terminals next to him, so my card can call out via his bank and Visa to my bank and ask them to transfer 50p in digital casino chips to him (minus fees). Now, the tiny nodes no longer interact. Rather, we route our relationship through the central oligopoly.

If we rendered this image in 3D, tapping that card might look like this.

We’re now part of the formal economy. The ‘formal’ sector is the realm where bureaucratic values of hierarchal order preside. Formalization often entails intermediation, with small players routing through large players, a process that requires authentication. The ‘informal sector’, by contrast, operates on more horizontal and peer-to-peer lines. Amazon is formal. Large parts of the old Brixton market were informal. Many other businesses are a hybrid.

People whose minds have become excessively formalised will often demonise the informal sector with names like ‘the black market’. They may insist we ‘bring people in’ to the formal market, because they imagine that those who rely on street-level relations are out in the cold, and that corporate capitalism is like a kindly parental entity waiting to cuddle them. The informal market stands in opposition to corporate capitalism, so is branded as ‘inefficient’, precisely because it holds space for non-commercial values. It’s some grungy guy on the banks of the Thames who wants you to throw coins at him. He obviously has yet to understand that ‘liberation’ follows if he agrees to pay fees to Mastercard for the privilege of survival.

But here comes the dark part. The informal realm is what maintains the very vibe of a city, the sense of aliveness, the sense that its citizens are active creators rather than passive consumers. Some of the world’s most vibing places maintain a healthy balance of power between informal and formal. There’s an almost erotic interplay between those spheres, but the sure-fire way to kill the vibe is to break the balance. That’s when the society gets pasteurised. That’s when punks become consumers.

Keeping posture in slump culture

It’s hour six, and against my better judgement I enter Tesco to get dried fruit to keep my energy up. The UK’s biggest supermarket is part of a cluster of chain stores that dominate every high street. This phenomenon was dubbed ‘Clone Town Britain’ by the New Economics Foundation, who found that 41% of high streets in Britain were indistinguishable from each other in 2007.

Tesco is a champion for the bureaucratic streamlining of the UK populace. When I lived in London they pioneered self-service checkouts as a way to fire their service staff. As I was leaving they started piloting cashless stores in certain central London locations, aiming to set a new cultural precedent. The Guardian uncritically reported on this as part of the ‘growing cash free revolution’, but we know all about these phoney revolutions. Since I left, Tesco has pioneered the ‘make-it-normal-to-surveil-customers revolution’: each cashless self-service checkout now sports a mini-panopticon camera, to make you feel like you’re being watched.

I look at the people dutifully scanning their goods around me. They seem obedient, or is it that they’re stressed and preoccupied? Their faces seem to say ‘Don’t ask me to think about something political. This is progress’.

We’re told that progress is a bold striding into the future, but much ‘progress’ is actually a type of releasing of resistance. It’s the process whereby we either invite in, or relinquish resistance to, a narrow set of values that will displace a more holistic set. Much like the act of me slumping into a chair is me going along with gravity (rather than resisting it by holding posture), progress is the process by which we slump into acceptance of the default systemic tendencies in a large-scale capitalist system.

Those default tendencies are expansion and acceleration, both of which are elements of the economic god of Growth, and automation is a crucial component of all. Under a capitalist economy, tech just makes our lives faster, rather than easier. It’s not like the people in the Tesco self-checkout area are chilled out. No, they’re being pushed through a bureaucratic apparatus that wants them to move faster. Of course, Tesco will market this with reference to ‘convenience’, showcasing some marginal short-term benefit, but once a person steps in, the alternative will be pulled away from them. Self-checkout used to be optional. Now it’s often mandatory.

This is a type of entrapment, but given that resistance feels futile, it’s psychologically easier to nudge yourself towards believing that a self-service surveillance check-out is ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’. If nothing else, you’ll grudgingly learn that this is the new normal. After all, everyone else is doing it. What’s actually happening here is that the systemic tendencies of capitalism are proliferating through a network of people who have no ability to push pause to stop and ask if this is what they all really want. This is what ‘market forces’ are so good at doing: they prioritise a small subset of human desire – that momentary need to move slightly faster, for example – in order to lock in a new state of acceleration that you won’t be able to back away from.

This is easy to see, because there are many British people who demand physical cash to stay, but their demand will never be acted upon. What will actually happen is that those who slide into digital payment will have their ‘demand’ weaponised to recalibrate the infrastructure. Just look at all the new cash-blocking ticket machines in the National Rail stations. What they’re saying is this: From this point on, we only accept corporate intermediation. We don’t care about your archaic demands for texture. We require frictionlessness. We prioritise hierarchy over horizontality. They’re basically coercing cash users towards the choice that jells with automation.

In the current phase of the global economy, you’re told that you will be ‘left behind’ unless you leap aboard the platforms required to reach the requisite level of automation that everyone’s expected to sync up to. As you slump into acquiescence, the more likely you are to take on the persona of ‘the consumer’. Yes, I’m being served by Tesco. They only put these machines here for my convenience.

Antonio Gramsci would have called this ‘cultural hegemony’. It’s when people internalise the value set of a ruling class as natural, inevitable, and – eventually – their own. This poses a problem for me, because when I critique the captor, the captives might turn on me. I often have London friends shuffling uncomfortably as I insist on paying cash in a restaurant, or asking for a menu rather than scanning the QR code. They feel I’m being unfair on the waiter, who has no power to change the decisions made by the faceless bosses. It’s not like Tesco CEO Ken Murphy is going to turn up when I ask the Tesco assistant why my face is now on a screen. Ken answers only to his institutional shareholders. If I cause a fuss, I’m the trouble-maker.

Holding posture in this environment takes energy, but people are still resistant to the slump. Walking away from Tesco I notice that Nationwide has picked up on the angst felt by those who are being nudged towards digital apps as their bank branches are closed down.

There’s some fine-print at the bottom. If we have a branch in your town, we’ll still be there until at least 2026.

Three years. That’s all they’re prepared to promise. After that, all deals are off. The decision is made, and the key question facing the corporate sector is how to slowly mould the ‘laggards’ into compliance.

Searching for the outside

I want to see my old home. It’s a bittersweet way to spend my seventh hour, but Brixton was always a melting pot for the different clans of the ‘periphery’. This included immigrants but also the countercultures. In the last decade, however, Brixton became a battleground between two different conceptions of ‘independence’. On the one hand, were cash-only informal-vibe diaspora shops selling giant African land snails, jerk chicken and goats hooves. They authentically were pretty independent from the formal corporate economy. On the other, were a new crop of entrepreneurs opening ‘boutique’ shops with names like Champagne+Fromage and Honest Burger.

It was always a class war. The new entrepreneurs called themselves ‘indy’ but firmly plugged themselves into the digital mega-platforms, both in their marketing and operations. Visa was there to present itself as a humble servant, while the businesses slumped into a Faustian alliance to become its ‘cashless’ frontline agents in exchange for shaving a percent off their costs. They always knew their customers would wilt into compliance, after which the adaptable human brain could do the work of editing their memories to forget that there ever was an outside to Visa.

People ask me why I focus so much on cash. It’s because the arrival of so-called cashlessness is an eviction notice served to non-commercial spirits. The formal sector is slowly assassinating the informal economy, like an imperial death squad hunting down rebels. The creep is like a virus, and old Brixton punks must watch as it spreads into the body of the neighbourhood that hosts their identity. It appears to them as a sedation of the spirit, and a great forgetting of a world where solidarity, disdain for authority, and acceptance of imperfection were standard.

Their – perhaps reactionary – fear, of course, is that young Londoners will be born into this situation of capture, with their brain patterns calibrated within the formal system, such that they can’t recognise an outside. For example, many young people no longer have a concept of ‘money outside the bank’. Money is ApplePay. What is friendship without WhatsApp? What is directions without Google? There is no world that precedes the digital corporate overlay, with its filtering, auto-correcting and curating. The very concept of un-intermediated life is an endangered species.

I have no way of knowing what it was like to arrive in London in the 1700s, with no phone to connect to wherever you came from, or what it was like being Mark Knopfler arriving in 1973. I have, though, experienced what it’s like to arrive in 2008 without Silicon Valley laying out an all-encompassing digital red carpet. I’ve experienced getting paid ‘under the counter’ at an old pub, and doing things ‘off the record’. I guess I’m worried that 18 year-olds arriving here now must be preceded by their bank, by Google, by facial recognition, by Whatsapp.

But it would wrong to say that the outside doesn’t exist. Everyone has a holistic spirit with rebellious, creative and romantic elements, even if they increasingly must funnel through platforms that fundamentally contain no rebellion or romanticism. I know that there’s a team of AI engineers right now working on producing simulacra of those mystical feelings, so they can be wrenched from you and sold back. I’m just hoping they don’t succeed.

Do you feel it?

London now manifest in my body as a feeling of constriction, but there’s a hint of something else. Loneliness. I often get told I’m weird for caring about stuff like cash and informal economies, and perhaps my greatest angst in London is to do with voice. I want to name what’s going on, but sense that many others find it uncomfortable, even taboo. I’m not even asking for Tesco to be anything different from what it is. All I want is for them to be authentic for once. I just want to walk in and to hear the bosses admit that those self-service checkouts have got sweet fuck all to do with my interests. I want to hear Ken Murphy say: Brett, the self-service machines are here for us to process you faster, so suck it up and stop standing in the way of our profit. Ah, how refreshing that would be.