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The biggest rip-off of them all
The New Enclosure is a damning exposé of how public land is being sold off for private profit, says JOE GILL
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The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain
by Brett Christophers
(Verso, £20)
THE PRIVATISATION of British land has delivered nothing that the government claimed it would — value for public money, new jobs and homes and more “efficient” land allocation.
Instead, in a four-decades process that began under Margaret Thatcher, it has transformed Britain into a rentier economy, in which the vast majority of private wealth is held as land and property. Industrial Britain has become landlord Britain, with many of our barons hiding offshore.
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