If you love mountain biking...

Dunk_911

First of all, Im sorry if this is in the wrong section of the forum. I spend most of my time on the road side and am not overly familiar with this part of the site.

I dont know if any of you saw Countryfile on Sunday, but during the show a relevant article was that the sale of forestry commission land is on the cards as a revenue booster for the government.

The reason this matters to us is that if the land is sold off, whoever becomes the new owner of the land is free to do what they like with it and seeing as basically all of our trail centres are on forestry commission land and also often funded by the forestry commission this could cut any spending on maintenance and development or worse, potentially block our access to the trails.

So, if this is an issue that we are already aware of is there a petition I can sign? But assuming there isnt one if we raise enough awareness something can be still done.

Thanks for reading

PS, I dont watch Countryfile, It was just on TV before Top Gear

The Northern Monkey

Another one?

do a search!

Dunk_911

golden rule. Soz. :P

The Northern Monkey

I think there are about 5 or 6 different petitions to choose from!!

toby_winkler

Sign all of them.

spongtastic

Toby_Winkler wrote:

Sign all of them.

and then despair at the futility of it all.

sheepsteeth

i dont mind mountain biking, is there a petition to sign if you are not too fussed?

montevideoguy

Perhaps there will be some companies who will want to buy areas purely to develop for mountain biking?

sheepsteeth

no way, that would leave us nothing to be appalled about.

angry_bird

This is such a stupid idea that when I heard it I assumed someone hadn't quite grasped the concept that April Fools' Day is in April.

andyrm

Actually not all the trail centres are publicly run - everyone seems to have conveniently not seen the BBC feature with UPM Tilhill, a private sector landowner who have proved they can make a sustainable and profitable operation out of forests. But that doesn't give the left wind hippy crowd anything to protest about in the face of an evil union smashing profit encouraging conservative government does it?

http://www.upm-tilhill.com/NetsiteCMS/p ... Press.html

montevideoguy

Can I start a petition to petition against the petition about this?

andyrm

Montevideoguy wrote:

Can I start a petition to petition against the petition about this?

I think you should.

delta5

Montevideoguy wrote:

Perhaps there will be some companies who will want to buy areas purely to develop for mountain biking?

Some sort of conglomerate mashup of Redbull / Fox / Shimano / Specialised / Endura?
Maybe they could set up a chain of trails centres.
With McDonalds providing the grub :twisted: (bleurgh!)

They'd get sheds of publicity and exposure, but somehow I can't see them going for it . . .

Northwind

andyrm wrote:

Actually not all the trail centres are publicly run - everyone seems to have conveniently not seen the BBC feature with UPM Tilhill, a private sector landowner who have proved they can make a sustainable and profitable operation out of forests.

While sucking up subsidies like a big sponge. Llandegla was mostly built with public money, but UPM profit from it. Nice.

Northwind

Sorry, I'm going to spam this into a few threads, it seems important.

In Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday it was shown that the government's own figures prove this is not a money-maker. DEFRA's survey concludes that the total revenue from the sales and leases will be £655 million pounds. But over the next 20 years alone the cost to the taxpayer of the sale is expected to be £679. As the leases proposed are for 150 years and the sales will be permanent, that's only going to get worse in future.

Also it was pointed out that the proposal states that any charity taking on land will be expected over time to "become less dependant on state support" whereas there is no such expectation for privately operated forestry, whose ability to claim state support has been guaranteed.

sheepsteeth

what does that mean?

Northwind

Just what it says... First that the entire project is going to lose us money, which will either go straight down the drain or into the hands of the companies that take over the forest. Doesn't really matter, either way we're left with less forests and less money.

Second, that private lumber companies have been guaranteed government handouts after buying or leasing forests, in order to carry out normal forestry ops. This has happened already, literally means they pay us for buying the forest then we pay them for having a forest. In the long run (150 years for the leases, forever for the sales) we'll end up giving them more money than we gained from the sale- worse than giving it away.

But if you're a charity or a community group wanting to use the forest for some other purpose, you'll get funding at first but then this will be reduced, and you'll be expected to pay for the forest yourself- so the charities etc are operating under worse terms than the loggers. There's guaranteed handouts for profitmaking companies, but charities will be expected to fund themselves

I don't think anyone can think any of that's right tbh. It just makes no sense at all