Just had a response from my MP regarding the plans for FC land.

The Government has now opened a consultation on these proposals. The consultation itself can be found at this address; http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/forests/index.htm.

Time to read up properly and start arguing….

No-one?

This is this bit where you actually get to have your say!

This foerst thing – we each and every one of us pay about 30p a year for all the Forestry commission land/projects.

The forests belong to the people right?

If the government sell them off, they reduce the deficit, but we loose a national treasure. OK, I get that bit.

If all these forests are in private hands, how are the new owners.guardians going to get the money to maintain them? How are they going to pay for the loans to buy all these forests?

It cannot possibly be that these spaces will remain as free access to the public.

When in private hands, the new owners will charge much more than 30p each time you want to go for a walk, or whatever. I reckon it will be a fiver or more.

As the sums of money the government will save are insignificant, i’d say they should leave it as it is.

We’d do much better to cut foreign aid IMHO.

OHH – don’t be too disappointed, the link has been posted before.

Ben

how about this little piece, obviously evil lefty propaganda as no one would be so stupid…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/02/forest-sell-off-loss-government

as above linked in a thread a few days ago. The ‘consultation’ is an insult. It reads as though the government have already made their minds up about the central sell-off (no questions whatsoever about that aspect) and are just fishing for the right answers from the public so they can say that the public agree with them.

I did it and rattled on about the validity of the ‘consultation’ process in the free text boxes.

Then I emailed my (conservative party whip) MP who got back startliningly quiclky, but reading the ‘what did your MP say’ bit on the 38 degrees website and what he answered to someone else in our constituency, it looks like it was a rather cut’n’paste reply, making no reference to the actual questions I asked about the consultation process. Naturally, the whole issue of ‘how one goes about bringing in changes not referred to in one’s manifesto 10 months before, having formed a government without a single-party majority’ was also unanswered.

Shame, he has a pretty good reputation for being an MP for his constituents as well as his party. Not this week though?