Forestry Commission Trade Unions - www.fctu.org.uk
GMB Forestry Branch Executive Committee
GMB's work in the FC is coordinated by its Forestry Commission Branch Executive Committee whose members are listed on the right.
Letter from Branch Secretary 23rd February 2011
Dear Member
Having listened to the all of the recent debates and political spin coming from the government I am absolutely disgusted.
When the shop keeper’s daughter came to power (date) we lived through that - with every thing for sale as corner shops do. We were told to become home owners and better your selves and pass something on to your family. This of course turned in to your own care plan for retirement. We are all now hoping to suddenly die in bed so we can pass something on before it’s sold from under us. Council housing stock was never replaced, forcing more and more people into private rental. Thus inflating the house values and thus more into private rental and the cycle went on till it went pop and we the public paid for it. Did the bankers care?
And so the Tories and their lap dogs started just where they left off, with the selling of your forests. But now we have ‘The Big Society’, they say. Communities are what society is made of but where are all the communities now the steel towns have gone? What’s left there now? Where are the communities now? Where is the cheap coal from abroad? Where once there were good communities are now shut mines, closed ship yards, engineering closed, destroy communities, 100 years of coal lost for future generations, engineering expertise lost - not for any great public benefit or financial gain unless your were one of the very lucky few. We should not forget that it was the Thatcher government that destroyed these industries, along with the communities around them, for short term gain. We should not forget that it was the same government that told us not to worry - the financial services are what we should all be focussing on and we don’t need to do all those dirty jobs as the city money would make every thing good.
Now they have the audacity to lecture to us about society. The only society they are interested in is which privileged upbringing their cronies had and how they can help their fellow members to more public assets on the cheap.
The Tories also sold all our own British power companies. They are now owned by French public power companies. They now want to do the same with our forests, not just for the tax avoidance, but also as biomass fuel will be a fast growing market in the future. This will make the forests more profitable, and we can’t have the public benefiting! The same money men as before want this too. They do not, however, want the bits they cannot ring a profit out of. So when you think of the Big Society, remember all these communities that the Tories have destroyed and will destroy with their new plans.
If these plans go through, where you once enjoyed forests with your family, in a very few years you will have to climb the fence and force yourself through the overgrown paths. We as a society need to fight this for our children and their children. There are many ways to make any entry to these forests made deliberately unwelcoming to the public and overtly keeping us all out … for the few to enjoy – or reap undeserved reward from.
Yours faithfully
Roy Laird
Branch Secretary
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