Nigel Oakley

Answer: when they announce (quietly) that they’re still going to sell off a chuck of our National Forest. So, it’s ‘only’ 15% this time, but this amounts to forty thousand hectares. (For those interested in recent history: between 1997 and 2010 [Labour] four thousand one hundred hectares of forest were sold, whereas one hundred and seventy-nine thousand hectares was sold between 1981 and 1997 [i.e. under the Tories]. Maybe there is a lesson for someone in there…)

OK, so this Tory/Liberal government have set up a ‘commission of enquiry’… but you’re really going to tell me that this commission – appointed by the government – is not going to come under any pressure about selling off more forests? Are there really no conflicts of interests because absolutely no-one on this commission represents organisations that the Government were intending to sell Forestry Commission land to? Is this government really going to stop at ‘just’ this 15%, ‘just’ this forty thousand hectares of forest?

It looks to me that it’s very much a case of watch this space. In my opinion the government still has its sights on getting rid of our forests. If it can’t do it one way it’ll try another, and another – as a result of the Government’s decision to reduce DEFRA’s budget by 25%, the Forestry Commission is going to have to lose four hundred jobs, and if the Forestry Commission hasn’t go the staff to manage the forests then the solution is obvious, isn’t it?

Actually it ought to be obvious that if our National Forest are supposed to be so profitable they can be sold off, then the taxpayer ought to be getting the profit – as well as the benefit of public access – and not some private company or other organisation… but we live in a world where, it seems, only private profit is good and publicly run organisations must be inefficient. But then, private companies only have to consider the bottom line – what their shareholders get in dividends – and public organisations have to consider other things too: like the public interest. The question for us all is surely to ask whether the National Forest is just another commodity to be moneyfied, or whether issues like public interest, public access, and environmental concerns (to name but three areas of concern) ought to trump giving more money to private investors.

Japan and its earthquake. Egypt and its government – indeed Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya. Of course, Libya. And the Ivory Coast. The Ivory Coast? Yes, the Ivory Coast.

Not every crisis makes the news. Not every crisis stays in the news if it makes it into the news in the first place. This is not to say that the Ivory Coast should displace Japan, or Libya, or Egypt from the news – no doubt if it did, there would be those insisting on those places being re-instated. And perhaps there is only so much news we can take: ‘compassion fatigue’ was a fashionable phrase a few years ago, when there was yet another time when disasters (natural and man-made) followed hard one upon the other…

But: the Ivory Coast. A contested election, the incumbent (Gbagbo) re-instated, but this is unacceptable to the opposition. Outsiders brought in: a five person panel from the African Union who say (after much debate) that the opposition leader (Ouattara) should be made President. Of course, this is, in turn, unacceptable to the incumbent and his supporters.

For ordinary folks, life is harder as medical stocks are getting low due to the embargo on imports. Also the banks are closed. The government has nationalized the two main ones and is, at present, finding money to pay state workers. But any ‘private’ bank users are stuck.

It looks like people are prepared to “fight”: be it by peaceful sit ins or by taking up arms to save the ‘integrity and the status and constitution of the Republique of Cote d’Ivoire.’

And this is in a state that isn’t making the news….

When you hear of wars and rumours of wars… often you just carry on regardless. When you hear of a bank chief having a reduced bonus that means he only has £10 million as recompense for his work last year, you shrug. But when your child has a problem at school, you react.

So, yes I was in school last week, talking about my son’s progress in class. As my previous posts have said, I’ve taken an interest in what the government is doing about our forests, but Egypt? Libya? Bank bonuses? It’s all too easy to assume that nothing we do will change anything – after all the protests, Rupert Murdock is still poised to take over BSkyB. And even when we win, and the government backs down on selling off the forests, we still need to look at the small print: who’s going to be on the commission they are setting up? What are they going to do with the 15% of the forests they can sell under current legislation? How are they proposing that the Forestry Commission manage the forests if that Commission is one of the quangos to be cut or abolished?

We can sit back and let it all wash over us, or perhaps we need to take account of one of the themes of liberation theology, that doing nothing, pretending that it (whatever ‘it’ is) has nothing to do with us, is simply giving covert support to the status quo. Can everyone, or indeed should everyone, go out and campaign on every issue? No. There is only so much energy that each person has: not everyone is an activist – some of us are more suited to back-room activity – but we can write emails, we can contact our MPs, we can be members of pressure groups that seek to engage with the issues. And if we won’t always win, we will in the end, have to be taken account of. After all, liberation theology hasn’t won (yet) in its own base of Latin America, but it hasn’t stopped trying to show what ‘a preferential option for the poor’ means and how that option should be worked out.

Well, we didn’t stop Murdoch, but given that the decision was in the hands of a Culture Secretary who was a known supporter, were we going to get any other decision? Maybe our revolution will have to be ‘tweeted’ or ‘Facebooked’ – we’ll see when we have thousands of students mired in debt before they’ve had a chance to earn a penny. We’ll see as more and more people who’ve had their benefits cut, their jobs cut, access to transport cut as costs rise, realise that the wealthy (whether individuals or as corporations) pay less tax, or pay no tax due to tax avoidance schemes.

Oh, we know there is nothing illegal going on, but then, any lawmaker who wants to change the law will surely suddenly find the finding they need to remain lawmakers drying up… won’t they? One wonders whether any of our political parties will ever gather the courage to take on the big boys: the ones who take the money and threaten to run if ever they are asked to give any back. The question really is: how many times are the poor going to be made to pay for the mistakes of the rich before they say enough is enough?