UK forests up for sale

[Lamplighter]

Should a Yank even dare bring up this question ?

If it were close to April 1st, I'd think it was a joke, but...
Is this true ? If so, the US Republicans will just love the idea

guardian.co.uk
For sale: all of our forests.
Not some of them, nor most of them – the whole lot

Tories have never been treehuggers, but their plans to sell off all
state-owned forests are unwarranted, unwanted and unworkable.

We now know, thanks to the junior environment minister Jim Paice's frank evidence
to a recent House of Lords select committee, that the government is considering the sale
of not just "some", or even "substantial", amounts of woodland
as the public was originally led to believe,
but of all state-owned English trees across the commission's 635,000-acre Forestry Commission estate.
This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands, sites of special scientific interest,
heathland, campsites, farms and sporting estates.

Paice also accepts that foreign companies might want to buy up the trees,
and that foreign-owned energy companies might want to cut the whole lot down for renewable energy.
This is clearly not going to be received well in the Tory shires, where the trees mostly are.

I suggest going to the link as there is more (blog ?) discussion

[Sundae]

I really hope it's not true
I do take it with a pinch of salt just because it comes from a newspaper (The Guardian is left-wing but that does not make them averse to panic-mongering).

I will look into this further. I can easily see how it would slip through given the current economic climate. And the Tories do have a history of selling off the family silver...

[Lamplighter]

I did a bit of Googling and found this History of the UK Forest Commission.

It sounds as though the Commission started with re-planting the forests after WWI and WWII,
and then commercial use gradually turned towards public use
and giving more consideration to environmental issues.

I don't think the US has an equivalent.
We do have government agencies responsible for forests,
and re-planting the pubic lands does take place,
but until recently, it's been mainly as response to forest fires.

[xoxoxoBruce]

About a $100 per person doesn't sound like a good deal.

[Sundae]

Jonathon Porritt used to be on the radio every week when I was at school.
I don't remember if we had breakfast television in those days - it might just have come in - but all the cool kids listened to the radio anyway, and even if I was immune to that, at least I had a radio in my room, whereas the TV was subject to parental control and comment. He was the reason I joined Friends of the Earth.

£50 a year doesn't seem too grim compared with £145.40 TV Licence...

[DanaC]

Fifty squids a year to keep our forests? Seems a better deal than selling them off.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Even the puppy might kick in a sausage or two.

[richlevy]

Even Hardin's 'tragedy of the commons' didn't posit someone being able to just come in and buy the damned thing.

I'm hoping that this is a joke, similar to the Taco Liberty Bell April's Fool Day joke I saw a while back.

I always thought that Britain was big on the whole 'public trust' idea, more so than us Yanks.

Someone should ask these guys, if they are so keen to sell off items with no intrinsic tangible value, how much I'd have to pay for their sisters' virginities?

[wolf]

Yes, but they've got a royal wedding to fund.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by wolf

Yes, but they've got a royal wedding to fund.

Yes but they could make more money if they put all the trees in a tree museum and charged all the people a pound and a half just to see em.

[TheMercenary]

We do that don't we? We charge to enter many state and national parks.

[DanaC]

Every time the Tories get in the first thing they do is sell publicly owned assets. off. Usually they sell for bugger all to people who only have their own personal interests At heart. They did exactly the same thing last time. Britain, once a maritime nation no longer has shipyards; the publicly owned transport system was replaced with an inferior and more costly mishmash Of disparate private firms; the post office; the telecoms; many schools; the utility companies; the nation's gas and oil; the electricity provision.

There's more. What they can't sell they cripple like they did to the mines. A nation built on coal and we buy it in from the other side of the world. Our gas and electricity is mostly supplied by foreign corporations.

This is what they do. Why would they care about our forests when most of their major players are multimillionaires with land and estates of their own? They are ideologically opposed to any form of public ownership.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Why that's... that's... unsocialistic!

[Sundae]

We WIN!
YAY!

Tories back down on selling off the forests.
Oops, did they forget their party base is Barbour jacketed, labrador owning, welly wearing country folk?

Seems likey.

I would pick Bruce up on the fact that we're not a Socialist country (not under this Govt) but he's gone and it's meaningless without him. Or is that just my life....

[Happy Monkey]

The government is allowed to sell off 15% of England's woodlands in each four-year public spending period.

Wow. So they can lose over half the forest in 20 years?