[stupidcar]

Who's this "we" you speak of? I guess it's Fuck-You-Got-Mine baby-boomer Tory brigade, who bought cheap suburban houses in the 1970s and 80s and have watched them rocket in value ever since.

Because it certainly isn't the rest of us, who have no prospect of ever buying a home, or getting a pension, but are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforementioned baby-boomers, while listening to their lectures about how we don't work hard enough, and don't value the precious green belt that keeps their house prices buoyant.

England is ~10% urban[1]; the figure is even lower in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The green belt isn't about protecting some dwindling remnant of unspoilt land, it's about propping up the house prices of people too stupid and selfish to even admit to themselves how stupid and selfish they're being.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096

[crdoconnor]

>are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforementioned baby-boomers

It's curious how the 0.1% can mysteriously grow fabulously wealthy, cut pensions that older people rely upon, cut NHS funding which older people rely upon, jack up tuition fees, jack up rail prices, trigger the largest financial crisis in decades, price younger people out of the housing market and yet still manage to convince the younger generation that their own parents are obviously the ones who ripped them off.

[coroxout]

While also convincing the parents that all their and their children's worries can be fixed by doing whatever the 0.1% wants and that they should call anyone who disagrees an out-of-touch metropolitan elite, even/especially those never-going-to-own-houses kids

(Disclaimer: I have been guilty of anti-boomer rhetoric elsewhere lately, but I read your post and you are probably right.

It is still frustrating, though, to hear older people, comfortably retired mortgage-free in houses with 3+ spare bedrooms, tell us that if only we worked harder and didn't eat out occasionally we could surely save up for a house)

[tsukikage]

So, "why do we need green belts? My mansion has gardens!"