The Countryside

 

The discussion on Radio 5 Live this morning has been interesting. Even the bloke from the Council for the Fossilisation of Rural England was better than usual.

The real problem is rural housing and the fact there is just not enough of it. My wife and I are stud farmers and we live on about 130 hectares, which has two houses and three cottages. Note that a thoroughbred stud creates much more work than an ordinary farm. We employ about 5 all year round, whereas a typical farm of our size might provide employment for one or two.

We have several odd pieces of land, that could be used to build an odd house or two.

Suffolk has about a third of a million hectares of arable land, meadow and pasture. So if we built say two houses for every 100 hectares or about five house a square mile, this would create 6,500 houses, without anybody hardly noticing.

Why is this not done?

If we built all the houses we need in the countryside, or in the towns for that matter, house prices would fall and the affect would be that the economy would collapse, as people would be so frightened that all their money invested in property would be worthless. Look what happened in the early 1990's.

So we can all rest happy that politicians will never allow this, so that us who have, don't have to share with those who need.