A Principled Landscape
In Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy depicts the close connection between Dorset’s rustic poor and the land. Land is at the centre of their daily lives. I am lucky enough to live in that beautiful county.
David Matless, ?Professor of Cultural Geography, has written a book, ‘Landscape and Englishness’ that discusses modern and traditional visions of landscapes, as arguments rage over building houses and allied infrastructure in the Green Belt, re-imagining of urban landscapes and the cultures of ownership and citizenship. It examines the cultural importance of landscape and the tensions that can arise from different uses.
In a legal sense, land or parts of it can be sold, bought, gifted, let, compulsorily purchased by the state, have rights granted over it and mortgaged. ?‘Peaceful possession’ of property is a legally enforceable human right.
Property in a physical sense can be occupied as a home, mined, used to grow food or energy generation, used for heritage or industrial purposes and contaminated. Property can be taxed, sometimes several times over.?Land ownership can become politicised across the traditional left-right continuum.
More positively trees can be grown on land to detoxify the air we breath and reduce vandalism in our cities.
In economic terms,?analysis of Land Registry data shows that the total value of all property sales in 2023 was ￡154.7 billion.
So, for all the above reasons, the public is intimately involved with the built and unbuilt parts of the great British Landscape, this 'Emerald Isle' This?is why the rule of law must apply to property in all aspects, so that ethical values, not greed prevail. The late Tom Bingham described the rule of law as the closest thing we have to a 'secular religion'.
Property lawyers have been involved with all legal aspects of?land since the 13th century, based on principles first identified in Magna Carta. Thus they ensured a ‘principled landscape’ prevailed?as members of the Law Society. Sadly since the passing of the Legal Services Act the Law Society has become ossified. Promoting the rule of law has been supplanted by a stale 'institutionalised' approach to the rule of law. Democracy is more apparent than real, with true power vested in its employees, not the members of its Council.
Can the Law Society be reformed or is a fresh approach needed, so that property lawyers feel they are being properly represented? The status quo is unsustainable.
STONE MASON at The Tradesmen Group LLC
1 个月I be willing to bet there isn't any Portland Cement in that