Thursday, February 17, 2011

The sound of a policy falling in the woods


As policies go it was a non-starter. The idea of selling off some 637,000 acres of publicly owned woodlands into private hands had England (and Wales) furiously writing on message boards, adding signatures to petitions and generally making a nuisance of themselves in an attempt to show that democracy still works.

David Cameron changed his mind twice in the first week that the idea was first made public and it was obvious the longer the public were allowed to express an opinion that the general opinion was this was an idea borne of desperation and doomed to failure. It wasn't even a new idea, both the Thatcher and Major Governments had considered selling off large tranches of the country's woods and forests and then changed their minds.

There is very little that is free these days and the notion that you would have to pay to exercise your dog, take a bike ride or just walk in woodlands that were suddenly in private ownership was an anathema to most people. Of course Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman must now wonder, given the very public rebuttal of her idea, whether or not she has a role to play in front line British politics, this was the sort of job that a couple of decades ago would have gone to Dennis Howell not somebody with a career ahead of them rather than behind them.

Leaving aside the ideological idea of selling off forests in the first place you do have to wonder whether there was any joined-up Government going on here at all.With all the pressure that the coalition are putting on charities and quangos, not to mention to decrease in income that charities are seeing where were these publicly funded organisations going to find the cash to buy the forests in the first place?

There is of course still the worry that the Public Bodies Bill, currently making its way through the House of Lords, might allow some watering down of the aborted proposals, I have to say I'd be shocked and slightly distressed (from a democratic point of view) if that were to happen. The Public Bodies Bill, on the face of it anyway, will give Ministers of State the right to merge and abolish public bodies it doesn't say that it infers the right to abolish a public body and replace it with the highest bidder.

5 comments:

Span Ows said...

There's several interesting articles around highlighting whgat was actually intended and not the hystrics from the media. Trouble is Cameron has decided that he should ignore the real and act on the made up. Very public slap down yesterday of Spelman, i agree. I suspect Dave tried to avoid (too late) the bad press. The idea was already put into people's minds of evil corporations fencing off their woodland. Completely wrong. The Coalition have a SERIOUS communiaction problem (as we've both said about various things in the last few months) and this forestry thing just takes the biscuit. If they ahd got the big players onside beforehand (National Trust etc) it could have got a better press and not nearly a smuch hoohah but they didn't think and just chucked it up and then didn't rebut the (obvious and expected) opposition.

Worth reading what was really intended...too late now though.

Paul said...

I actually found myself on both sides of thr argument here. I do have a problem with the Forest Commission's work in this area and I can also see the good that privately owned forests actually do.

It was a P.R disaster, focussing on the Forest of Dean and the New Forest was daft. The MP's for the New Forest broke ranks and were against it, although it was noticeable whenn questionned that neither said they would vote against it whilst in the Borders some poor M.P with a majority of 800 found a petition of 1,000 saying they would vote against him next time. Nothing like a little blackmail!

Span Ows said...

I know this will sound odd but I'm a bit of a Nature boy and could easily have been a tree-hugger in another life...BUT that isn't the point. The point here (for me) is that most the woods/forests/ whatever would be in better hands. And even (John?) Vidal in the Guardian said access probably wasn't an issue. This was a whole hysterical raving harie fest and screaming blue murder (I don'th think iot an idelaogical policy from either side, most natural Conservatives would have been against "selling our woods". Complete cock-up from start to finish...and have just read somehting interesting, apparently yesterday in Question Time a lady in the audience said it was all a smoke screen for something else (or maybe a feint to then back down making out they listen to "people power"); judging by Cameron's attitude and Spelman's "yes yes we were completely wrong" (even when she wasn't) would add to taht conspiracy theory.

Paul said...

After I posted my reply on Thursday I was listening to a journalist from the Telegraph on the radio who said that all it would have taken was for one member of the cabinet to stand up and tell everybody what the policy really was. He said that if they, the Government, couldn't get the message across in respect of something so relatively trivial as forestry what chance was there with the upcoming consultation on the NHS?

The Forest that is just up the road, about half a mile away, is in joint private/public hands and there's not been any trouble in the years we've lived here regarding access.

Span Ows said...

...all it would have taken was for one member of the cabinet to stand up and tell everybody what the policy really was.

Something is definitely not right!