More on the Forest Sale

In only the second post I wrote on this blog back in October I commented on the British Government's proposal to sell large tracts of English woodland to the highest bidder. I saw little redeeming features in the entire scheme, as the sole objective I could identify was the need to raise money to cut down the ever-increasing deficit. But making money is never an objective worth pursuing in itself. Without any goal except the need to sell and sell what Harold Macmillan - that great hero of the small-c conservative - the 'family silver', the entire plan is daft. When Mr. Macmillan criticised Margaret Thatcher for her obsession with privatisation he was thinking of the railways and the utility companies. Just imagine what he would have made of this selling of the nation's natural heritage. To give the full quote:

"The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go."

And the Canalettos are going indeed. The first Eton-educated Prime Minister since 'Supermac' is behaving in the most unconservative fashion.

Having said all this, I read in the Guardian this morning that the scheme gets worse and worse by strides. Previously I assumed that the objective of the sell-off was to raise money. Not so it seems. This government is turning out to be so incompetent that even simple value-based arithmatic is beyond them. A government report "shows that government can expect the disposal of the land to cost £679m over 20 years but the benefits will only be £655m."

Selling off the woodlands of Britain had no practical benificial purpose but money and now even that is no longer a valid argument. No one stands to gain from this sale, not the public, who will inevitably lose some of the rights they enjoy now to marvel at the indescribable wonders and pleasures of nature, not the government, who will lose acreage and money to boot, and not the companies and charities who are to buy the land, as the report shows that private ownership and usage is economically unviable. Still the government is pressing forward on the matter.

Perhaps, then, I was too hasty before. It is not the (if only remotely) understandable motive of monetary gain that is driving the sale, but the ideologically blinkered concept that privitisation is always good and public ownership is always bad. I'll leave it to you, reader, to decide whether this is true, but I hope you can infer my opinion on the matter from my two posts on the great forest sale.