The Spelling Lady’s not for burning at the stake, just grovelling apologies. Little Jemima and Gabrielle can continue to frolic in the forest counting ladybirds, secure in the knowledge that whilst Daddy may have their trust fund invested in acres of Conifer plantation, no nasty capitalists, nor even one of those charidees that Mummy works for, will ever have the right to restrict their frolicking.

Half a million of the middle classes recoiled in horror and wrote to their MPs and Downing Street, cardboard placards were printed up ‘hand’s off our woodland’ – an entire forest’s worth of paper used up in less than a couple of weeks – to emotively extol the virtues of the Forestry Commission as continued custodians of 7% of our wooded land. Who knows whether private owners would have continued to let them trample the undergrowth in their four x fours, or run company ‘paintballing’ week-ends? The risk was too great.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the British population muttered ‘what’s a forest’ as they gazed out of their tower block window and wondered whether their housing benefit would be cut to pay for this Yew-turn.

Back in Downing Street, a neutered Moggie by the name of Larry was plucked from the security of the Battersea Dog’s Home (there’s a joke in there somewhere) and subjected to the raucous shenanigans of popping flashbulbs and shouts of ‘this way darling’ as the media descended for an official ‘photo call’ before being ConDem-med to a life in 10 Downing Street, trying to sort out which rat to start with. Two legs or Four? How hungry am I?

Peering through the trees in search of the wood, I am minded to ask –

‘What was it that the highly professional Downing Street spin-meisters didn’t want us to look at this week whilst they tossed us this ‘bread and circus’?’

A feeble prize – Larry’s spare Balls, now rolling round Battersea perhaps? – to be announced when I get round to it, for the best suggestion!

woodsy42 February 18, 2011 at 17:58

Well I’m not especialy middle class, nor a member of the ‘Volvo driving
class’ as suggested by some idiot politician recently but I do enjoy woodlands
for walking and I think their sell-off plan was an appallingly poor scheme,
potentially extremely damaging, and to make matters worse introduced as a fait
accompli with the subtlety of a flying mallet.
So why do I feel that
way?
Because the public owned woodland is just that, it may fall under the
Forestry Commission but to many people it does not, nor ever has belonged to
the ‘government’. Rather people see open access woodlands as a part of ‘their’
country, to enjoy like village greens or common lands, not as commercial
assets to be privately developed. The plans failed totally to even consider
that aspect of ownership.
The government also spectacularly failed to take
early advice from any of the outside bodies or people who have an interest,
only saying afterwards, as their first concession to protests, that charities
and public groups would be considered or access safeguards would be
discussed.
Then the, to me, big spectacular public relations mistake, was
that they even failed to differentiate between commercial (pine) plantations
and older and diverse forests.
Those issues demonstrate for me just how
little they had considered people’s opinions or thought about the reality.
It’s not that the plan is necessarily wrong, maybe private ownership could
work, but given the circumstances of the plan’s conception and the
prescriptive ‘it will be sold’ aspect it had to be stopped dead because it
precluded other and possibly better alternatives.
Had they introduced it as
a discussion then I’m sure sensible alternatives would have been suggested.
For example, overhauling the (mostly useless) forrestry Commission to do the
job better. Or just selling pine plantation woodlands, for which most people
have less emotional affinity. I’m sure there are many options if they thought
first, before making any decisions.

grahams February 18, 2011 at 23:15

well said.

Francis
Urquhart February 18, 2011 at 17:42

Trees are important. I have several thousand on my Scottish estate!

Tacitus February 18, 2011 at 14:25

What a week in politics – and now it comes out that David Cameron isn’t a
tree hugger after all. Disaster! Will the country survive?

I would send for Ed Miliband, but he’s playing on his swing with Liam
Byrne.

Engineer February 18, 2011 at 13:59

Years of semi-interested political observation, and of life in general,
inclines me to believe more in cock-up theory than conspiracy theory. The
forest sell-off was probably one of those things rushed into without a careful
appraisal of all the details of land ownership or leases, access stipulations,
commercial (lack of) value of the scruffy bits of woodland often infested with
mountain bikers and other oiks who think they own it already, and failure to
ask the big land-owning charities like the NT or Woodland Trust if they were
interested.

It transpired that it might actually cost the public purse more in direct
subsidies if some of these woodlands were sold to private owners than if they
remained in the public estate. Maybe that’s the bit that the spinmeisters are
surreptitiously scraping into Larry the Cat’s food bowl.

Simon Cooke February 18, 2011 at 12:18

Yet again the mobb wins – whipped up by prejuduce, ignorance and
misinformation! And £4.6bn in public assets will continue to sit moldering
away generating a negative return to the nation.

Larry’s cool then – we need more cats in politics

Caedmon’s
Cat February 18, 2011 at 14:32

Amen to that! I’ve been saying that to Caedmon for years…

Dave H February 18, 2011 at 19:57

Did someone mention cats?

Gildas theMonk
February 18, 2011 at 11:57

Top punning!