Maybe. Another poster brought up the impact that having a lot of private land conditionally open to the public could reduce demand for actual public land, which leads to less places where certain behaviors (those that are allowed on public land but which are banned on the private land) can occur.

Imagine someone who built a bunch of private parks all over a city that were open to the public, to the extent there was no demand for any public parks, but who decides to add a clause that no group activities related to sexual orientation (parades, protests, rallies, etc.) were allowed (of any orientation, so there was no discrimination issues).

Though, perhaps the blame still lies on the whole city for not keeping their public parks.

It should be clearly labelled as private property at least.

The 'pseudo-public' areas referred to in the article are signposted.

Why is that such an issue though? In the worst case, someone tells you it's private property and asks you to leave. Only if you refuse to leave do you commit an offence under English law.

It's a non-issue if it's properly labelled as privately owned public space. It should be also clearly delimited from public space.

> Only if you refuse to leave do you commit an offence under English law.

And even that's only a civil, not criminal, offence.

I'm not a fan of Livingstone, but this is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TuxOUGV6hE

Of course, as it puts the public in a place where they're at risk of being harassed by the police without realizing that they're on private property.

The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime.

> The entire system of private property is terrible and I hope it will be abolished within my lifetime.

Would you be okay with having random people just entering your house, sleeping in your bed, using your toothbrush and then taking your computer on the way out?

Obvious straw-man, but my point is: There's got to be _some portion_ of the system of private property that you agree with on some level. You might for instance disagree with the way private property is distributed, or how access to it is made difficult for some groups, or how we value it more than public property. You might be in favor of more taxation, or of “fairer” taxation (whatever that actually entails would be hard for everyone to agree with) or of revamped eminent domain laws, but I find it really hard to believe that you'd hope for the entire system of private property to be abolished within your lifetime.

There's a distinction between personal property and private property. My house, bed, toothbrush, and computer aren't private property, they're personal property.

No, you're just being obtuse for the sake of making an argument.

Not even remotely. Political thinkers have been making that distinction since the 19th century. Go back to the 18th century and people generally wouldn't even have used the term "property" to refer to things other than land.

No, I'm making a point that is well-accepted in political philosophy.

Let's be honest though, the law is flexible, and generally favours those able to buy the most expensive representation.

Lots of types of access come with conditions. This is true of both publicly and privately owned land. Huge amount of public land are restricted (Salisbury Plain for example), and we have good access rights to some private land (most of Scotland). In a small country there needs to be some rules as everything is so close together. It is not as clear cut as you suggested.

> as it puts the public in a place where they're at risk of being harassed by the police

It's private land, the police have no role. People are being harassed by private security companies.

The police absolutely have a role. Are you suggesting that if you came home to find squatters living in your house that the police would simply shrug their shoulders and suggest you move elsewhere?

You can't squat this land. You can trespass on it, and in England trespass is almost always a civil thing not a criminal thing.