BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands

Subject: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:04 AM

I'm almost out of !!!!!!!! about all these bastards are doing!

50% of Woodlands and Forests to be Sold

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:14 AM

It's really getting quite alarming the number of times I've had to agree recently.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:20 AM

:0)

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:34 AM

As I commented elsewhere, they're selling it off quick before all those they're going to make homeless take to areas of common land and start err using it to live on.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: theleveller
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:36 AM

It's certainly alarming with regard to ancient forests, of which only a tinay area remains. With other forests it's less of a problem as they are usually run on a commercial basis, with regular felling and replanting. Much of the forest owned by the forestry commission is pine forest which is itself often a blot on the landscape and has been planted in areas which were previously open moorland or much more environmentally sound deciduous forest.

The Woodland Trust is an organisation dedicated to saving our ancient forests as is the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:40 AM

It's a pretty core issue really, common land is the last refuge for the dispossessed. As we already know from past mass theft by the wealthy from the poor, taking the very land away from the people, is really attacking them at the most fundamental level.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: mauvepink
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:50 AM

Is it me or does this kind of slash and burn selling off of assets - natural, industrial and scientific - remind you of anyone else? I think they need to enjoy their moment of glory and power because at this rate this government will be doing all the advertising they need to save Labour the effort come the next general election. The really fearful thing is just how much damage will they have been able to do in that time? Is nothing sacred to these people?

Then again, no-one except the rich will be able to afford to visit the countryside at this rate....

:-(

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 06:54 AM

Erm.......yes......how long before labour would have done the same.

I suggest that benefits are taxed in the same way as income.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: mauvepink
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 07:05 AM

Some benefits are already included for taxable purposes and have been for sme time. That is why they issue a P60 every year for them to claimants

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Leadfingers
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 07:20 AM

First they sold off the Family Silverware . Then the Furniture - and now the wood to make the bloody furniture !!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 07:34 AM

Common land was mostly stolen long ago by the Inclosure Acts, and what was left was mostly stolen by the post-war commons registration scheme - if no-one applied to register rights of common they were extinguished after a fairly short period.

Larger areas like Oxshott common have long had statutory or bye-law restrictions on driving on them or camping on them.

As for means tested benefits I've said it before and I'll say it again, benefits should have a gearing to their marginal rate of tax - eg if family allowances were taxed at 2.5 times to marginal rate otherwise payable then those paying higher rate tax would derive zero gain from family allowances - but those below the tax threshold would get them in full.

The government could then save the cost of means testing, since HMRC could do the collecting.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 08:17 AM

"I suggest that benefits are taxed in the same way as income."

I suggest you spend the rest of your life having to live on benefits. Then, and only then, would you start to understand, and rage against prats like yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Stu
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 08:30 AM

Jesus wept - these bastards are finishing what the Acts of Enclosure started by taking our common heritage and selling it off to the wealthy and undeserving.

Time for the Neo-Diggers? Winstanley will be spinning in his grave.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 08:52 AM

They only 'finsih it' if we let them do so.....

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: theleveller
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 08:57 AM

As usual, the devil is in the detail - as Mark Avery of the RSPB points out, it depends which areas are sold. The Foresty Commission has apretty woeful record on conservation, as is shown by the vast acres of single species pine plantations where planting is so dense that there is no underbrush and practically no wildlife. These are, in effect, 'tree factories' and have spoiled many previously picturesque landscapes. In order to retain their diversity and usefulness, deciduous woods and forests have, for centuries, been managed. The traditional way was coppicing and this is now making a comeback as it is sound environmentally and can provide an income from the land.

Tdea of giving some woods to community groups and cahrites is a good one if it actually happens.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: theleveller
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 09:02 AM

"They only 'finsih it' if we let them do so....."

Lizzie, I'd be genuinely interested in knowing what you think we should do. I'll also await to see what the Woodland Trust and CPRE intend doing about it (I'm a member of both).

"Tdea of giving some woods to community groups and cahrites is a good one if it actually happens." should read: The idea of giving some woods to community groups and charities...

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: MikeL2
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 09:09 AM

hi

I agree with all the memebers who are appalled by the proposed sales of our forests.

What is worse; who are they going to sell it to and for what purpose ??

cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 09:26 AM

"Time for the Neo-Diggers?"

I was rather thinking something like that myself.

Since the mass trespasses of Kinder Scout and the like there has been slow but increasing progress with the public's right use of large areas of common ground. Now we have the 'right to roam' and camping is allowed in one or two areas designated as public parks. There are certainly groups who continue to press for greater public access including camping rights in other large areas and that's something I'd like to see more not less of.

Currently the numbers of people who live outside the secure confines of bricks and mortar on privately owned property are relatively few. So far such groups choose to as a matter of cultural tradition or general ideological discontent with 'the system'. But I can certainly see the number of people living outside 'normal society' (of what we perceive it to be from our immediate cultural myopia) increasing drastically in the next decade as these cuts in social housing and housing benefit start to take effect. The key difference being that for those people it will be more of a necessity than a choice.

As far as the fact that the bulk of common land has already been had is concerned, yes that's as may be. Yet the significance and resonances of this decision to take from the people what little is left them, echo deeply.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 09:28 AM

"who are they going to sell it to and for what purpose ??"

Theme parks and golf courses I should think. Or basically anyone who can make a profit out of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 11:11 AM

There are virtually no areas of "common ground". The Kinder Scout movement concerns the right of access to private land. It should not be private, but it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 11:26 AM

Crow sister says - Theme parks and golf courses I should think.

Ah, so creation of jobs!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 11:28 AM

"The Kinder Scout movement concerns the right of access to private land."

Yes, indeed. Yet there has been progress in terms of improving public access to and use of of wild land over the last centuary. It's possible to legally camp on certain large areas of publicly owned land - take the Scottish highlands and Dartmoor for example. My prior post was a bit of a fudge, granted, yet the principle of reducing what availability to land that the public currently have, still makes deep historic resonances. Ones which I feel may come to haunt us in the future.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: bubblyrat
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 11:32 AM

Perhaps they will only sell them off to people who sign a contract accepting that they (the buyers) promise to take full responsibility for the upkeep, maintenance and management of the forests & woodlands ?? In which case ,it would not be such a bad thing,IMHO , not that my Os are ever that H.
Having lived for many years in Christchurch, I have had considerable experience of walking/ exploring in the New Forest, and his always presented itself to me as an overgrown,undermanaged,damp,dank,mouldy,fallen tree-infested,malodourous,muddy,gloomy festering shithouse !! The sooner somebody starts taking proper care of it,thinning out the trees,clearing the forest floor detritus,and unblocking & clearing the myriad drainage-ditches, the better !!!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Stu
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 11:35 AM

"There are virtually no areas of "common ground"."

There certainly are (from here):

There are around 373,570 hectares of registered common land in England (about 3% of the total land area). The term 'registered' means land registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965. In general terms, common land is land owned by one person over which another person is entitled to exercise rights of common (such as grazing animals or cutting bracken for livestock bedding), and these rights are generally exercisable in common with others.

3% is what we've got left. If these snake oil salesmen get their way then a fair wodge of that will go, and once it's gone we will never get it back.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 12:03 PM

"Lizzie, I'd be genuinely interested in knowing what you think we should do."

We need to *somehow* get the message out, not just about this, but about so many other things as well. It needs to be out in the media, where people will HEAR it, not just read about it. It needs to be either on BBC Breakfast News, or on their local radio stations, exactly where the idea of the Poll Tax Marches came about.

I've said so often that it was ONE woman from Devon who started that ball rolling, by going on Radio Devon and saying the Poll Tax was wrong and we should all oppose it...The idea took off from that one interview.

I've already left a message on Shep and Jo's FB page, who are presenters from BBC Radio Devon...and I've got the email address (somewhere) of the chap who produces Judi Spiers show...

You find me the outlet, levells, I'll go on there and rage about my country and all that we have lost, all that we stand to lose...

I was thinking about this on the way home earlier, on the bus...what to call 'a movement'....I kept coming up with 'Battle of Britain 2'..but it's not just Britain is it, it's the whole damned world that needs to stand up against The Corporate Bastards. We're all in the same boat, being bled dry whilst they're living the high life..

And whilst I was waiting for my bus, up at St. Marychurch I was watching the decoraters putting the finishing touches to the newly decorated Lloyds Bank..and thinking of the newly decorated and refitted Barclays Bank in the main town, along with some of the smaller banks, also being done up......

And I started to seethe again....

I am permanently tinderbox seething at the moment....have been for years, let's face it...but selling off our ancient woodlands has sent me over the top....

And sorry, but I don't believe all the 'good stuff' that's in that article, although I agree about the pine forests needing to be sorted out. As the Union Rep said in there, once these beautiful, wild places are gone, they are gone FOREVER.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 12:06 PM

And by the way, because I'm banned from the BBC, due to the animosity of the Moaning Minnies, I'm also banned from nearly all their Facebook pages.

I have been TRYING to get the message OUT, levells, for YEARS!! But so many have been trying to silence me..and now, we are where we are..

But NOW, you ask me how I can get the message OUT!???????!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 12:07 PM

"with 'Battle of Britain 2'"

Not a bad ad. campaign there Lizzie. Though I think I'd run with:
"Battle For Britain"

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 12:19 PM

You can look up common land on "magic mapping, here

http://www.magic.gov.uk/website/magic/viewer.htm?startTopic=magicall&chosenLayers=commIndex&xygridref=442100,84500&startscale=10000

Basically, once you get smaller scale than the Isle of Wight fill your your whole screen they don't let you see the "common land" filter any more because there isn't enough to be seen!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 12:26 PM

I am in favour of Forest's being used for Woodland Burial Sites, where a tree is planted for each person who has departed this life.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 01:00 PM

I feel ill... physically ill. I just don't know what to say or do.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 24 Oct 10 - 02:05 PM

On Countryfile (BBC) now they are looking at proposals for States-like very large scale intensive-farming (including milking cows 3 times/day) for Lincolnshire.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: theleveller
Date: 25 Oct 10 - 04:00 AM

"selling off our ancient woodlands has sent me over the top...."

Lizzie, to protest effectively, we need to be sure of our facts. We don't know that they are going to sell off the ancient woodlands - it may just be the large commercial woodlands that the Forestry Commission manages.I've no problem with who owns these - they are usually an eyesore and detrimental to the local environment and are often only there temporarily. Ancient woodlands make up a small percentage of forests and they should certainly be protected from any further destruction. Newer woodlands tend to come and go across the landscape. In Britain there are actually more trees in hedgerows than in woods. You can get a good perspective by reading Oliver Rackham's book 'Ancient Woodland' and also the excellent book by my old friend the late Roger Deakin, 'Wildwood'.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 25 Oct 10 - 04:49 AM

Milking cows in Lincolnshire

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11610359

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 25 Oct 10 - 09:37 AM

If they sell off the sterile monocultural Sitka Spruce plantations that blight miles of Scottish upland regions, then I'm all in favour.
Nothing lives with them, they block out the light, and turn the ground acidic due to the amount of needles that build up underneath them.
As there is no law of trespass, unless criminal damge is caused in the course of accessing the land, then we will still be able to enjoy said woodlands, no matter who owns them.
Here is some balancing information.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 25 Oct 10 - 03:47 PM

I am saddned to read this and have to say I actually agree with Lizzie!

We are very fortunate enough to own a small portion of ancient woodland (25 acres) which will remain as woodland. (unless the government ever do the compulsory purchase thing) We spent Saturday there with our children. It saddens me to think that the state owned woodlands are going to be sold off and more than likely built on.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Oct 10 - 04:16 PM

Pre-1600 woodland is pretty rare.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 04:14 AM

If it happens that a piece of ancient woodland near you is being sold off, get a protection order placed on the trees - then they can't be legally felled.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: theleveller
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 04:22 AM

"It saddens me to think that the state owned woodlands are going to be sold off and more than likely built on."

Planning permission for building on green belt land are extremely strict - at least they are around us. There is practically no building allowed outside existing boundaries. If an application is made, you can fight it - if you get plenty of local support, you have a fair chance of winning.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Stu
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 04:42 AM

Exmoor Emperor Dead.

[(No posts were deleted from this thread:be sure to double-chech after posting]
] I'm re-posting this link because some kindly US mudelf seems to have deleted my original post (which, I admit was a bit of a rant but I certainly do not apologise). It was a rant because this story made me really angry and is relevant to this thread because it shows what we're up against, why where this animal was shot is important and the inherent class prejudice that underlies the Tories move to sell this land. Rich licensed hunters killing the largest single wild animal on the Island so he can stick it's head on his wall. The same people

Now, US mudelves listen up and try to understand: there is a profound difference in the wildlife biotas of our countries and the hunting that occurs in and of them. The huge majority of our country is cultivated land and that which isn't is generally upland which exists in National Parks (most often not wild ones like yours) and private land owned by rich people. The private land owned by rich people was taken, for the most part from our ancestors by the acts of enclosure or, if you're a highland Scot, forcibly in the clearances by rich Scottish nobles in collusion with the British government who wanted to break the Clans once and for all (the Jacobite rebellion was still in their minds). That and, of course, pure greed.

These acts of theft were both performed under the guise of 'economic reform', as the current act of selling of our forests and woodlands will be. Much of the vast area upland stolen from the people is now used for hunting; rich people paying for the privilege of blasting the shit out of animals for sport. Now, I don't object to hunting per se and as long as everyone eats what they kill and what they kill is not endangered then fine and dandy - I'll have a brace of pheasants for the pot myself, plus as in the US many normal people go out to bag a bird or rabbit for dinner and I would defend that right to the death. Many red deer (elk to our US brothers and sisters) are shot as part of managed culls - fine too. But much of the land is closed to ordinary people, and the rich landowners object to open access of our own countryside because it would affect the shooting for their rich customers, and the killing of the Exmoor Emperor signifies the contempt these tosspots (not a swearword - see Thomas Hardy etc) hold our common heritage in, and those of us not lucky enough to be stuffed to the gunnels with cash. They don't want the proles on their land, full stop.

In the UK we live with an increasing sense of distance from the land, which many of our ancestors have occupied for thousands of years - we have an innate sense we belong to the land and that the land is our common treasury which belongs to all who live on our Island. Whether people's families have lived here for one or a thousand years irrelevant in a sense; the feeling of belonging to a land is massively important to our wellbeing. We are losing that connection, and to many ordinary people (especially those in urban populations) any connection to the land they live on is an alien concept altogether. For every big stag killed like this, for every bit of woodland sold, that link gets even weaker and we become lesser people for it. We become more alienated, more angry and more spiritually bewildered and confused. We turn to more instant methods of gratifying this deep yearning to be part of the whole, and that gratification, in whatever form it takes, is ultimately hollow and transient and nothing more than a distraction.

If my original post offended, never mind. It was an outpouring of passion and distress at the situation we find ourselves in again under a Tory Government. They are not responsible in any way for the death of the Exmoor Emperor, but that death exemplifies a certain attitude to our heritage and land that they represent, and they are very, very wrong.

[(No posts were deleted from this thread:be sure to double-chech after posting]
]

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Penny S.
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 01:24 PM

I had some feelings I feel guilty about in response to the deaths in NI in the helicopter crash when I found they had flown over there for the shooting.

And I don't know if I have ever posted about the upperclass twit I stopped to see if I could help when he had driven his car into a ditch in Gloucestershire. Before mobile phones it was, and so, although I could not help physically, I offered to call the police or a garage. Someone had already done the second, apparently. He didn't want the police, because he had guns in the boot that a friend had brought in from Canada. I wasn't quite as deadpan as I hoped, because he excused them as hunting guns.

I was half a mile down the road before I thought "What the heck am I doing?" and it took a bit longer to find a phone. But I think the earlier person had also called the police because one went past, with its siren going, towards the idiot.

I think the only people in England who really hunt are the guys who go out for rabbit. It's for need, both of cutting the amount of damage, and the pot, or sale for the pot.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 01:35 PM

"I'm re-posting this link because some kindly US mudelf seems to have deleted my original post"

How peculiar. There was nothing offensive in that post according to Mudcat's policies.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Stu
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 01:43 PM

Ah, the first post was a bit of a rant which I wrote last night and posted to this thread as I fet there was some crossover, and it had some naughty words in. Possibly OTT, but I really care about this stuff so bollocks. No apologies this time. I've just cut and paste the last post onto the thread about the Exmoor Emperor, so I'll probably be in trouble there too.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Oct 10 - 01:47 PM

"Erm.......yes......how long before labour would have done the same."
Quite right - they're only a bunch of Tories under another name; as are the Lib Dems - leaving us with what..... three major parties working their nuts off on behalf of the already over-privileged.
Thanks for the heads up C.S. - missed this one.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Lox
Date: 27 Oct 10 - 07:50 PM

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Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 10 - 07:57 PM

ummm..SugarfootJack, I see it says up above that no posts were deleted.
Perhaps it was just one of those 'posts that didn't take' that we all experience now & then.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling Off UK Forests & Woodlands
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 27 Oct 10 - 08:16 PM