Country Life
THE RIBBON DANGER.
The Council for the Preservation of Rural England, and the Amenity Group in the House, both or which are non- political and have been co.operating most effectually with the present Government, are thoroughly alarmed at the effect of the Land Tax on the admirable Town and Country Planning Act. The tax, they fear, will cancel out its most useful and necessary clause. Nothing is so spoiling England, whose most precious gem is the old village, as what is known as ribbon development.. The The old group of cottages with their gardens centring round the church are part and parcel of the country scene spread wide on either hand before you reach the cottages. The arrival of the motor has caused the jerry-builders, for a mean profit, to set their traps outside these pleasant homes, like snares outside a warren. The green fields flanking the roads into the villages acquire a new value as sites for advertisements, shacks, petrol stations, and other debris of the motor revolution. A fiscal surveyor in estimating their worth would calculate thus : "An enterprising man might yet erect a teashop and an oil-pump and let the extra space for advertisement : it would therefore be worth his while to buy the land for 4s. a foot." He would presumably be forced to take such a line.
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