Tag Archives: town and country planning regulations

Opinion: Liberating the land – prosperity through Rigorous Liberalism

By Jock Coats | Tue 3rd January 2012 - 4:35 pm

The central tenet of what I call “Rigorous Liberalism” is that a truly liberal state would seek to eradicate economic, social and class barriers to equal opportunity before creating more government programs to subsidise people at a disadvantage in markets distorted by decades or centuries of privilege and rent-seeking.

Nowhere is this need more obvious than in land, planning and housing policy. Artificially restricting land supply drives up land prices and drives down housing quality. If customers can only afford so much and most is sunk into land costs there’s not a lot left for competition to drive up …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged housing | 18 Comments

Parliamentary candidate told to remove large helium balloon

By Mark Pack | Sat 6th February 2010 - 1:12 pm

Conservative candidate for Edmonton, Andrew Charalambous, has run into trouble with the law after tethering a large advertising helium balloon to the grounds of his office and also placing advertising hordings outside it (see photo in the Enfield Independent’s story).

Such actions normally require planning permission and although there is a special exemption for the period of an election campaign, that exemption has not yet come in to play for the general election. Despite this, Andrew Charalambous has been unapologetic, defending to the media his use balloons and posters as a matter of freedom of speech.

However, seeing how countries which …