Sir Peter can't see the wood for the trees.

 Some of us attended a public consultation exercise with our local MP and made it clear that there is no acceptable arguement for privatising the forests. 

Keep Our Forests Public! -Report from porkbolter

Dozens of people turned up at Worthing Tory HQ on Saturday to let Peter Bottomley MP know what they thought about the proposed sell-off of £100m worth of publicly-owned forest. The former minister adopted a polite tone but said little of any significance and gave no hint that public opinion would have any impact on his party’s determination to push through with the project, despite the tactical pause announced this week. Bottomley and colleage Tim Loughton have already voted in favour of continuing with the highly controversial plans, which were not mentioned in the manifesto on the basis of which the Tories gained enough seats to form the coalition regime. Once again, democracy is shown to be an illusion.

Half a million people have already signed the online petition at http://www.38degrees.org.uk/ and the protests haven’t really even got underway yet.

The Worthing group of Keep Our Forests Public! held its first meeting on Friday and will be meeting again on Friday March 4 at the Beechwood Hall in Wykeham Road, Worthing.

There was some discussion as to whether Friday was a good evening for meetings and, while it obviously suited those who made it on a Friday (!), representations from anyone who would like to get involved if meetings were held on another night should be sent via us here or via info@worthingdownlanders.org.uk until the new group has its own email set up.

More info on the forests campaign can also be found in the latest issue of The Porkbolter at http://www.eco-action.org/porkbolter/feb11.html