to think no one should own land and ignore a sign saying private woods

[mls3]

Ok o will probably get flamed here.

But there is a badly managed woods near me with am old broken sign that say private woods. Aibu to collect a few broken branches for the wood burner? I know it is stealing, but this woods is overgrown and I'm thinking how unethical it is for anyone to own land.

Land used to all be free, until someone carved it all up to hoard for themselves. If land was still free now maybe we wouldn't have to all be working such stupid hours wasting our lives doing a job we don't like.

Oh dear more nonsensical arguments.

Having "less debt" in your mortgage does not necessarily mean you have to work less. Because that is dependant on your salary. People with large mortgages generally also tend to have fairly high salaries - they wouldn't get a mortgage without having the means to repay it. And people without mortgages can struggle financially too.

Yes, a few years ago there were plans to sell off some woodlands (NOT the Forestry Commission which is the body that manages the woods), but it didn't happen. See here for details of how English forests are managed and protected: www.gov.uk/government/policies/sustaining-and-enhancing-trees-forests-and-woodland.

what about the rights of those who PAID for the the property that squatters invade and trash?

entitled champagne socialist here, I think. As always, the communist countries are open to you. But I don't think you'll like it very much.

There has been a huge loss of rights as squatting was made illegal.

OP you really haven't thought this through have you.

1. Someone occupies a tract of land and puts up a Private notice.

1. You disagree with 'ownership'. There are no land rights, so you go and occupy (squat) on it.

1. The 'owner' disagrees with your occupation. There are no land rights remember, so he comes and re-occupies the land you thought you had occupied.

1. Repeat at 1.

It remains a civil offence to squat on commercial property in England as long as you do not break in.

Most home owners and tenants were very pleased this Government criminalised squatting. A good few people in Cities went on holiday and came back to find Romanians and many others of course including from the UK taken over their house, babies left on the street etc.

There was never a legal right to squat. It was just that if you did not break in it was not a criminal offence and now it is. Most people support that.

KK, true and also in England long lease holders have right to buy out the freehold which you might argue takes away rights of ownership from freeholders and was an anti ownership change. The state can also compulsorily purchase land such as for the high speed rail link.

The name of English ownership - freehold means you hold the land in a sense from the Queen - it is not 100% yours although freehold is a pretty good strong right compared say to the possessory title which some native peoples have around the globe and compared to the more limited legal rights of tenants and travellers.
Very interesting topics.

A lot of those who hold land do so as steward for future generations. until I sold my bit of rainforest, my island in Panama at ERaster I did feel i was preserving as it was those acres of rainforest with a duty not to bespoil or destroy them. Most landowners are not unlawful robber baron types intent on hurting the poor. Many people in the UK also worked very hard to buy their own house and would not be happy if strangers could camp in their gardens simply because the stranger could not afford a hotel room in Leeds that night.

We have laws in this country. By and large the laws are obeyed because most of us understand that without the rule of law there would be chaos. People who ignore the law and do what they feel like are criminals. If you don't like the property laws in the UK, campaign to get them changed. If you feel there is too much inequality in the UK, lobby for a fairer tax regime. That is how democracy works. In the end, if enough people agree with you, the law will be changed.

I have no time for those who feel rules are for other people.

Never mind the law, a civilised squatter wouldn't wander into somebody else's squat and start nicking stuff based on some imaginary 'what's yours is mine argument'. Similarly you wouldn't wander up to a homeless person and nick their sleeping bag because they weren't looking after it properly.

The OP knows nothing about the land except that it appears to belong to somebody else.

I love all these ideas and arguments. I am learning quite a lot from this thread - lots of posters with data and logic.

Thank you for the picture, op.

By the way, do you know what kind of wood it is? Do you know exactly what you walked over to pick it up? And are you really going to burn that kind of wood regularly in your wood burner?

The woods useless anyway. Green and damp and needs seasoning for a year before putting it on a log burner. Unless you want hard to light, smokey fires which are going to lay extra deposits in the flu and increase your risk of a chimney fire.

"taken over their house, babies left on the street etc."

So, world's most hopeless squatters then, if they didn't actually move into the house?

The principle of the Crown ultimately owning all land is known as ultimas haeres - that all land can theoretically be traced back to the Crown - and applied to most of the UK, with obvious exceptions such as udal tenure. The Crown still owns all the foreshore in Scotland (managed by the Crown Estates Commission). If a person dies intestate and beneficiary can be traced, thn the estate falls to the Crown and is dealt with by the Queen's Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer

One of the ideas behind the conversion of ultra long leases being converted into property holdings in Scotland was that the lease owners were far removed from the land and often were unaware that they held the landlords title. Many could not even be traced.

Land ownership laws cannot remain static - they have to adapt to changing situations, such as better methods of mapping titles. The process of change is long and complicated, with many review bodies, consultations etc before any proposal is put before parliament to then begin the journey towards becoming law. But just trespassing because you feel like it is generally an unconstructive way to achieve change

No, the home owner went on holiday young couple, 30s, with a baby and a toddler both work full time, came home and their London semi in Ealing or somewhere was now occupied by 8 Romanians. The London Evening Standard interviewed the couple and the Romanians. The occupiers had a faked lease agreement which is apparently a tactic used by squatters.
The couple with the baby who owned the house were the ones left on the street and this was just before the law changed so the only way to get the squatter out was about 2 or 3 months of litigation at huge cost which the couple would not easily raise as they had used every last penny to buy the house.

I have looked at this issue a lot in countries around the globe. Look at the Amazon. Some tribes have been there for a very long time but they don't under Brazilian law own the land. the Americans dealt with native occupation by moving people to reservations. In some countries there were treaties to give aboriginals rights - Australia I think. In New Zealand the whites said no one lived there - terra nullis they called it so they took land from those who were there first. of course some of the people there first in fact had only moved there 1000 years before from another country anyway.

Anyway the bottom line is that in the UK most of us accept that laws even those we do not like protect all of us and enable us to live together reasonably happily and so we tend to respect the law. Those who don't agree with laws can get them changed - like those who lobbied for a right of long leaseholders to forcibly buy out the rights of the freeholder or the rights given to crofters in Scotland and indeed the rights (not ownership rights) of tenants not to be harrassed only to be removed by court order etc.

We also have rights to public rights of way. There was also a principle that if you used land for 21 years plus it could become yours - I think that was then abolished (I am not a property lawyer).

The other interesting one is new laws on village greens which I think was this www.gov.uk/town-and-village-greens-how-to-register.

We also have split rights on land in England - someone might own the land but someone else the mining rights - loads of interesting stuff on rights to frack under your land at the moment. Quite a lot of mumsnetters will also have recently have had a letter from a local aristocrat saying rights to mine under their land are being registered as recently the law changed to say those land owners lose that right if they don't register it - so they have not surprisingly gone off to register it.

What can you gather on private land or indeed on a local park? You need to be careful as the landlowner might want the blackberries on the land or they may be selling off the fishing rights or rights to kill deer for tens of thousands so may not take kindly to poachers.

Sporting rights are big here in Scotland - there are many tracts of land that are kept unspoiled by development because a good income is derived from grouse and deer shooting etc. Salmon fishings constitute another right of property that is registrable.
There have to be ways of dealing with land for which no owner can be found, and this is one of the principles behind an a non domino title to land, essentially a transfer of title to oneself, but without benefit of a previous title. However, this was found to be incompetent, as a deed by A to A does not effect a transfer of title. The 2012 Land Registration Act has new provisions for dealing with land for which no owner can be found.
No system is perfect and never will be. But most agree that there have to be safeguards in place and the law, however imperfect, is there to do just that.

Laughing so much at this thread!

When was land ever free? Rewind a few centuries and most land was owned by the Church, one of the biggest money making machines in the country. Henry VIII made the Church sell a lot of land off.

There is a lot of woodland around us, all owned by different people. Some of it is Woodland Trust, most of it is private. I have no idea where you get the 1% figure but I would say it is wholly inaccurate.

I believe in a right to roam.

We "own" a woodland, however I see that as having a responsibility to it, rather than getting to keep it to ourselves.

People walk through our woods, we keep our chickens there, have no problem with it at all

I certainly tyhink our systems in England and Scotland are better than many other places. When I was looking to buy my island 10 years ago a primary consideration was which countries were stable and also had registered land as lots of people buy land abroad and then find the only title they have is possessory and they are thrown off it. It got me quite interested in native land rights (in Panama such as the Kuna indians have).

The other interesting one is the Chagos islands where the UK threw those people off to please the Americans and those people are still trying to get back to their ancestral islands and the British government is not letting them.

However we all originally came from Africa as humans so who is to say who is entitled to which bit of land where. I had my DNA traced 25,000 years back to the Caucasus mountains. I doubt if I went back there to claim anything I would be welcomed nor if I went all the way back to Kenya which is probably where we all started.

Going back to the original post she mentioned "badly managed woods". that is a huge issue. In my 28 acres of rainforest after a big storm I left the fallen trees because that is actually how the best rainforest floor is formed. It rots over decades. That is best for the animals and insects. It makes the forest floor almost unpassable but that is not bad land management.
The UK used to be covered in forests so if someone buys say Scottish land and does not allow hunting or sheep and lets it revert below the tree line to wild forest I would say that was good land management and if they own it they have the right to do that just as owner can allow or forbid the hunt to travel on their land.

I would say someone coming into my garden and taking wood from the bit at the bottom which is over grown where the foxes live is someone stealing. Work hard and buy your own land if you want it or go to a country which is so empty that no one worries if you are taking a bit of wood.

I love the way you always offer an angle that your average Mumsnetter can identify with.

First the op says: I'm thinking how unethical it is for anyone to own land
Then she says: own a house and a few square meters of land

And then: Empty feilds are fields without trees growing in. The whole country used to be a forest.
Where the shuddering fuck do you think food comes from? Do you honestly want the entire country to be woods?

Pausingflatly -

So a farmer puts in loads of effort to breed excellent cattle sheep etc and nurture the land so it is very productive. He then discovers that anyone can just walk in and do whatever they want to that land because his ownership of it is immoral and then he loses interest in farming as a result. Who is going to produce the mountains of farmed meat, fruit and veggies that people eat then? OP, when you buy a cauliflower or a tomato, do you think the farmer that produced it is immoral then?

I might be wrong, but is there not a right to roam in Scotland? Does that cause problems ?

We walk over farmland all the time. I would have thought that the average person walking in the countryside would have a respect for the land they are walking on.

We have footpaths on our land, rarely have any problems and as I said earlier people use the woods for walking

yes there is a right to roam.
here's a link to one challenge: www.heraldscotland.com/the-ann-gloag-ruling-and-a-right-to-roam-1.842555.

mls3 - in your OPENING POST you said:

"Land used to all be free, until someone carved it all up to hoard for themselves. If land was still free now maybe we wouldn't have to all be working such stupid hours wasting our lives doing a job we don't like."

So read your own posts before you accuse people of making stuff up!

I strongly believe that our countryside should be a place for people to freely enjoy. I feel very uneasy at the idea that the rich can buy up and divide the land between themselves excluding everyone else.

"our countryside should be a place for people to freely enjoy."

Did you miss the bit where it says that the countryside is where our food is produced ?