"Forest of Arden? £20 to you, Guv!"

In the great tradition of Maggie Thatcher, the Tories are scrabbling about for national assets to sell. Now that the oil, gas, BT, British Rail, entire manufacturing base etc. are all gone, there's not much left but the furniture. I believe your average Capitalist sees the naural world as pretty much his/her furniture; things to be bought and sold, diverted, changed, mined, exploited - trees are soft furnishings, too, they grow back faster than mountains, why not sell them off?

So, the National Trust or whoever can't afford to maintain the "old" woodlands of England, of which there are precious few left. Basically, the Government, who are cutting their funding, can't afford/be bothered with the woods of England, through which their forebears have hunted fox and peasant (no, I meant peasant) with such gay abandon.There's some talk of selling them to charities (which charities?), which means we, the notional charitable people, will pay; if a charity could afford to take on the maintenance of a whole forest, it would have to make it a public attraction to pay for it. And yes, it's only fair that people should  be able to visit if they're paying, but those forests need to be left alone. And we aren't talking the vast swathes of greenwood an American or Canadian might think of as a forest, either; England hasn't got a lot left. Less than a Twilight movie in total, I'd say.

Commercial interests are also being mentioned on Radio 4; philanthropists in the UK? I doubt it. No, the woods would have to pay their way as well, but possibly much quicker and much more - finally. You can never get old woodlands back. The New Forest near me, so-called because it was first established as a Royal Hunting Preserve after the Norman Conquest, so it dates from the early 13th century. No-one has 800 years to spare letting that unique ecosystem re-evolve. I wouldn't bet hard cash on the human race making 800 years, come to that.

Can we let the Tories endanger something as irreplaceable as our forests? We all know the abysmal short-termism inherent in such an idea, it's just screamingly obvious. No no no! I'm getting quite exercised; I protested against the Twyford Downs Bypass years ago and we lost that, and I still feel the wound when I go to St. Catherin's Hill. It's time we got angry. The people of the UK are suffering, true, but you could argue we all had a part in our society and we all have to pay a part of the price (and the equitable distribution of that moral debt burden is something I'll come back to, don't worry); the trees are innocent! And the legends that will go with the last of the wild woods, can we really afford to pave over the sould of our country?

I bloody hate the Tories, I always did, and Clegg sold the Lib Dems out. You can viscerally feel Vince Cable choking on his words. And for what?