#landowners

[galleryofart]

Preparing for the Hunt

Artist: John Wootton (English, 1682–1764)

Date: c. 1745

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, United States

[kemetic-dreams]

Elizabeth "Lisette" Denison Forth (c. 1786 – August 7, 1866) was an African-American landowner and philanthropist from Michigan. Forth was born with slave status, and worked as a maid before becoming a landowner.

[eaglesnick]

IS CAPITALISM WORKING?

The economist Kate Raworth has said:

“For me capitalism is an economic system that prioritises, above all, delivering profit for the owners of wealth.”

The owners of wealth  – big shareholders, landowners and financiers - ensure this takes place by "capturing" the legal and political system “so that it can secure and reproduce privilege."

Corporations, on behalf of their shareholders, use lobbyists, public relations firms and thinktanks to influence the political- economic agenda. They use the press and other media outlets to craft the message they want the government of the day to hear.

But the problem is worse than that. It was recently revealed that

“One in five new Tory MPs have worked in lobbying or PR for corporate interests, new openDemocracy research reveals today. Opposition politicians have called our findings “deeply worrying”. (OpenDemocracy: 21/12/19)

Having Tory MP’s, "deeply connected to privileged corporate interests" is  not that surprising, but this problem is not restricted to the Conservative Party. In 1997, Tony Blair exempted Formula One from a ban on tobacco advertising, after the Labour Party received a  £1 million donation from the head of the sports governing body.

This was not a one-off. The “cash for honours” political scandal shocked the nation when it was revealed that the Labour Party was accepting large donations from individuals in exchange for seats in the House of Lords. Rich people were quite literally buying a place in government.

Luckily, the land owning aristocratic class do not need to buy their way into Parliament - they have a hereditary" "right" to help shape the laws the rest of us have to live under. Even though the number of hereditary peers entitled to sit in the House of Lords was reduced under the House of Lords Act of 1999, there are still 91 hereditary peers.

“As of November 2022, there are 4 dukes, 25 earls, 15 viscounts, 45 barons and 2 Lords of Parliament among the 91 hereditary peers entitled to sit in the House of Lords.”  (Wikipedia)

On top of this, we have 25 “Lords Spiritual” who also have an unelected  “right" to sit in the House of Lords and shape the laws we have to abide by. The Church of England is the 13th largest landowner in Britain, holding commercial property, ranging from shopping centres to car parks, as well as the land churches occupy. In 2006 the Church of England’s portfolio was estimated to be worth £4.3bn. It is hard to believe this does not influence the way they help frame and vote for new legislation in Parliament.

Cash for questions  - MP's being paid large sums of money to raise an issue in Parliament - is another way the wealthy influence politics, and scandals involving both Conservative and Labour peers have been exposed at heart of government.

 “The new cash-for-access allegations against two former Foreign Secretaries, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, suggest little has changed inside parliament’s culture since the scandals that led to Liam Fox’s resignation as Defence Secretary in 2011, and the damage to the Labour Party that followed the former Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers, being caught on camera in 2010 saying he was a “cab for hire” who would work for £5,000 a day.” (Guardian: 23/02/15)

As this was not enough, we have the corrupt practice of the revolving door between government and big business: politicians and civil servants moving freely from politics to business and vice versa. Here is one description of how this works:

“Elected and appointed officials working in government may use their time in office to generate connections with legislators they can call on as contacts after they enter the private sector. Business can send members of its companies to alter policy and regulations to its benefit. But one large group is left unprotected and out in the cold by the Revolving Door -- the everyday members of the general public. If democracies are established to serve the public interest, how is the Revolving Door legal?” (howstuffworks: What Is the Revolving Door)

We can see from the above that our economic-political system allows undue influence by the already wealthy, a rich elite who have disproportionate power over all of our lives, and who shape laws to protect their privileges.

From the former non-dom, non-tax paying wife of our Prime Minister, to the tax avoiding Tory Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, we see the system working to the advantage of the wealthy. From the energy companies  making obscene profits in a rigged market, to the water companies given permission to continue pumping raw sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches until 2050. From the continued deregulated of the finance sector in the  pursue profit at any cost, to public school charity status, saving the wealthy millions in additional school fees for their already privileged children.

On their educational website “Bitesize”, the BBC proudly inform our children that:

“Democracy is one of the key principles of the UK’s constitution. It ensures that everyone’s voice counts when the government makes a decision.”

If only that were true.

[forgotn1]

Landlords are like "if my renters don't pay, I could lose my house!"

Well, maybe if you hadn't bought a second - third, fourth, etc -  house you couldn't afford you wouldn't be in this predicament. Shoulda planned ahead and had savings to take care of it.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“The weaker form of disjunction [of the recalcitrance of the terrain to control by the primitive instruments of communication at the disposal of the archaic state] was found throughout the empire, especially in mountainous highlands where geographic isolation was compounded by the presence of a well-developed economy of transhumant pastoralism as, for example, in Italy, Sicily and Sardinia. In this context Hobsbawm is surely correct to claim that it is the very fixity of peasant farmers which makes them so eminently exploitable. His corollary that any type of movement is in and of itself provokes an element of freedom congenial to banditry is more than adequately attested in antiquity. It is this movement that is critically important in regions of diminished Roman control. In addition to pastoral nomads, highland shepherds represented a social group that was integrated socially and economically into the wider imperial system and yet which, because of it economic organization, was freed from most political constraints. Hence the equation "shepherd equals bandit" comes close one that is true for all antiquity. Indeed, the very type of organization that characterized highland shepherd communities enabled them to constitute the driving force behind the three Sicilian uprisings, the largest slave uprisings documented in all ancient history.

The crime most frequently attributed to shepherd-bandits is that of rustling (abigeatus). It was so inextricably associated with bandits that it was not regarded as common theft (furtum) but a much more aggravated type of crime. Rustling therefore incurred the most severe penalties. The emperor Hadrian decreed to the provincial council of Baetica (southern Spain, where the problem was endemic) condemnation to the mines or execution was the normal penalty. But there were problems with such an absolute system of penalties since the bandits obviously had wide links with parts of society that were considered legitimate. Such links bound them to the powerful and wealthy in whose employment they were found. Consequently the law was compelled to recognize this wider power networks that encompassed bandit-shepherds, landowners and receivers in a regional market in animals and private protection.  An exception then had to be made in the case of those receivers who were none other than members of the landowning elite. If culpable middlemen were of higher social status (honestiores) they were only to be relegated (a lesser form of exile) or suffer loss of their status and/or property.

But attempts to control highland brigandage by these and other means brought no final long-term solution. By the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. the central government was driven to desperate measures in Italy itself in an attempt to control shepherd bandits in the southern regions of the peninsula: Lucania, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia and Calabria. It struck at the central natural advantage of the shepherds - their freedom of movement. Specifically the government sought to deny the use of horses to them. All persons "except senators and high-ranking imperial officials, administrators of provinces, veterans, decurions and others performing imperial service under arms" were denied the use or ownership of horses. Collaboration with landowners is explicitly recognized as part of this system of highland banditry since the domini are specifically warned against providing horses to potential bandits, in this case their own shepherds. Finally, in recognition of an almost congenital disposition to banditry in these highland zones, the state warned all persons, including the wealthy, against sloughing off unwanted children on shepherds, in the certainty that they too would be raised as future bandits.”    - Brent D. Shaw, “Bandits in the Roman Empire.” Past & Present. No. 105 (Nov., 1984), p. 29-30.

[generalelectionmusings]

Former Shropshire huntsman fined over 'dangerous' dog attack

A former Master of the Ludlow Hunt has been ordered to pay almost £2,000 after his "dangerous" terrier attacked a woman resulting in leg inj

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1831 – A Proctor and 13 Constables are killed by tithe protesters at Carrickshock, Co Kilkenny.

#OTD in 1831 – A Proctor and 13 Constables are killed by tithe protesters at Carrickshock, Co Kilkenny.

In Ireland, tithes were not introduced until the Synod of Cashel in 1171, and then were confined mainly to areas under Anglo-Norman control. In theory, the revenue from tithe divided into four parts: one for the upkeep of the clergyman, another for Poor Relief, a third for Church Maintenance and Education and the fourth for the Bishop. Practice did not follow theory, and by the 18th century, the…

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[pm-lending-services-investpro]

Together we achieve anything, Grow together, stay together, support each other. Team = Family #teamwork #worktogether #achieve #prosper #goals #puzzle #makeithappen #realestate #builder #builders #developer #marketing #networking #hustle #income #purpose #helpothers #land #landowners #investing #invest #investment #investor #investors (at Pembroke Pines/Miramar)