ON SATURDAY, George Osborne, the chancellor, enjoyed a bit of a coup. The latest installment of Star Wars will be filmed in Britain, it turns out. "I think it is a real vote of confidence in Britain's creative industries", said Mr Osborne. One which "brings with it not just jobs for actors and directors and so on, but for all the other people who have put together an enormous movie." Quite. So what must he think to hear, just four days later, that South Buckinghamshire district council has seen fit to reject—for the second time—an application by Pinewood Studios, where the James Bond franchise is filmed, to expand. As the BBC report, because the expansion would have been into protected "green belt" land, it was deemed unacceptable. "We're 87% green belt in South Bucks and those policies are jealously protected", said the local councillor. Pinewood is planning to appeal, but it could take a year or even longer before they are given a final decision. In the meantime, Britain's film industry remains short of what they call "stage space". As Mr Osborne does everything he can to boost demand with tax breaks, it will no doubt become shorter still.

This fetishisation of "green belt" land completely perplexes me. I admit they may be biased, but according to Pinewood's representative, the land on which the studio wanted to expand is not an area of natural beauty. It's a few scrubby fields near the M25 motorway. Part of the site was once used as landfill. A cursory look on Google streetview would seem to back this up. But it is in the green belt, and so must be protected, says the council. Why should they care about the economic benefits of expanding Britain's film industry? Unemployment in Buckinghamshire is low; most of its workers are relatively well off.

Yet this is precisely the problem with Britain's economy. In London and the South East at least, plenty of economic demand exists. All sorts of businesses could expand on the edge of London. Housing developers are desperate to build new homes for the workers. The primary block is the green belt, which mostly stops anyone building past an arbitrary line somewhere inside the M25. It is a bizarre remnant of 1940s socialism, and yet it is almost never questioned by serious politicians. Cycle up to High Barnet, as I did for an article last summer, and it is astonishing how the 1930s semi-detached houses stop so suddenly and give way to fields.

No one—not even me—wants anybody to be able to build anything anywhere. But the British system favours the people who David Cameron once called the "BANANAs"—those who would build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. These people are mostly elderly, own property, are financially secure, and have a stake in an area. They are difficult, politically, to take on. Young people, meanwhile, who might benefit from new development, are dispersed and politically apathetic. But when 18% of 18- to 24-year-olds are unemployed, and another 21% underemployed, perhaps, for once, it is time they got a say in things.