---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Brian Davey <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 2:21 AM Subject: Manorial Rights in the UK To: "CommonsDeutschland ." <[email protected]>, David Bollier < [email protected]>, Heike Loeschmann <[email protected]>, Justin Kenrick < [email protected]>, Michel Bauwens <[email protected]> One of the oddest issues to surface as a result of unconventional gas development is that of "manorial rights". As Paul Mobbs explains: "Unlike the USA, where the energy industry buys minerals rights directly from individual landowners, in UK the rights to the nation's fossil fuels are owned by the Government. The rights to energy minerals in Britain were nationalised in the 1930s - except for land held by manorial lords who inherit their titles. This means that the Government - usually the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)- issues licenses to exploit oil, coal and gas. But in isolated cases that might not be so if rights are held by a manorial landowner." As explained in more detail in an article in the Daily Telegraph on 5th November 2011 - "Under historic laws, that go back to the Norman conquest, 'Lordships of the Manor' have the right to exploit minerals under common land around towns and villages or land that has been brought by someone else but is still on the ancient estate. However unless the mineral rights are registered with the Land Registry before October 2013 they could be lost. Accountants and estate agents are advising landowners to register their land as soon as possible in order to cash in on minerals like gravel, limestone and the new "energy gold", shale gas. This will ensure that landowners are able to profit from shale gas reserves, as long as they gain planning permission, even if the local community is against drilling. The Doomsday Book lists 13,418 Lordships of the Manor who may hold rights over the sub-soil. " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8869801/Lords-of-the-Manor-to-cas... In setting out to research this on behalf of us peasants and commoners I notice that there is now a campaign to "End Manorial Rights". The campaign strap line is "An Action Group against out of date feudalistic laws affecting modern society". As the campaign argues "Protected interests of the landed gentry have NO place in today's socially and culturally diverse Britain. We must get rid of these outdated rights." In this we should follow the example of the Scottish parliament which abolished such rights in 2000. There is a petition. http://manorialrights.org/blog/2014/02/04/sign-petition-end-manorial-rights-... As I have said before - an appropriate resolution to this crisis, given the fact that are betters have surrendered to the oil and gas industry, would be for communities to take responsibility for the protection of soil, water and atmosphere - with a deliberative and democratic process deciding how sensitive and precious ecological "resources" are used to ensure that the interests of all, including other species in a healthy eco-system, are maintained. http://wealthofthecommons.org/ -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/