Gimlet Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 I saw on the news this morning that following the Government's U-turn on the sale of State owned forests they are signalling that they might legislate to protect public access to these forests in perpetuity. The Woodland Trust and various public access groups are now pushing for specific legislation to gaurantee unrestricted public access to all woodland, private and public, a move which seems to be supported by the Lib Dems. What do people think of this? I have no doubt that such legislation would effectively mean the end of woodland stalking in Britain and would destroy thousands of acres of woodland as places of sanctuary for wildlife where species are currently largely protected from human disturbance and predation by dogs. I also believe that should such legislation be enacted it will very quickly expand into general right of public access over all farmland. Leaving aside the vested interests of shooters, if the impact of public wandering where I live is anything to go by the effect on wildlife and fragile habitats nationally will be catasrophic. That's my feeling. What do others think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
39TDS Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 Many farmers have been well aware that this would probably happen for many years now. That is one reason why a lot of them will not plant new woodland. Stupid move IMO. Why should there be free access to any areas of privately owned land? Makes no more sense to me than bringing in a law that makes it legal for me to come and have a walk around your house if and when I feel like it. Oh and by the way I will be fetching my dog with me so he can take a dump. Not to worry though cos I will wrap it in a special little bag and leave it on the sofa for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harnser Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 Bet ,there wont be public access to the woodland on the Sandringham estate . Harnser Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harnser Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 All land at one time was used by the people who lived here and was not owned by any body . Successive greedy kings and queens decided that the land would be owned by the crown and they stole it all . It was then sold bartered and given away to the nobility who took control of it . The nobility still have control of most of the land in this country . Harnser . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
39TDS Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 My dog and myself will be visiting your lounge first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Green Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 I can see a lot of adder sancturies springing up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gimlet Posted July 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 All land at one time was used by the people who lived here and was not owned by any body . Successive greedy kings and queens decided that the land would be owned by the crown and they stole it all . It was then sold bartered and given away to the nobility who took control of it . The nobility still have control of most of the land in this country . Harnser . Pre-feudal land rights, in so far as they ever existed, are all very well but unfortunately the bronze age was a while ago and the population has expanded somewhat in the meantime. Applying prehistoric freedoms to an urban population of 70 million doesn't strike me as a model of responsible stewardship. Only a minute percentage of people living in the countryside work on the land or have any connection with it beyond casual usage as a public park. There is little or no perception of farmland or woodland as a man-made and man-managed landscape, nor as a place of food production nor, least of all, as private property. I don't think many people are even particularly conscious of the rural landscape as habitat. For most, wildlife is televisual wallpaper and the countryside somewhere to go for a run, play with a toy or take the dog for a squat. If in the course of those pursuits some hapless creature is glimpsed as it flees for its life, it can be chalked up as a wildlife experience or perhaps a nature interaction. When anything is given to 'the people', 'rights' are noisily asserted while care and maintenance becomes someone elses proplem. In other words, total abuse. The concept of public ownership, particularly of land, doesn't work. If it did, as 39TDS says, people would happily welcome stranger's dogs into their gardens for a ****. Personally I think we have a duty of care to the landscape and the wild things that live in it, and open access directly conflicts with that. Why must everything be reduced to a plaything for urban man? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crosshair Posted July 4, 2012 Report Share Posted July 4, 2012 I was in a meeting prior to the "right to roam" and I asked the question, "In Wales there are over 20,000 miles of public footpaths, half of them overgrown through lack of use, why do you want more". Despite many requests to answer the question, it was never answered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clakk Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I was in a meeting prior to the "right to roam" and I asked the question, "In Wales there are over 20,000 miles of public footpaths, half of them overgrown through lack of use, why do you want more". Despite many requests to answer the question, it was never answered. the ramblers association is latin for do as i say ,NOT AS I DO.bunch of obsessive anal jellyfish who want to walk through your toilet while your sat on it.they dont care if they disturb nesting birds ,deer with young or any other animal as long as theyve got a kagool,map and a stick they will go where they please young man.most of them probably vote LIB DEM hence the goverment doing their bidding.youdve thought a tory goverment having many a rich landowning member would block this but obviously cameron is afraid of clegg and his guardian readers,so private property is no longer private bet a lot of farmers want to scream at the lunacy of this event :no: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 the simple answer is you have to thin them nicely round the boundaries easiest to get in. Get enough bramble going and the most keen rambler gets stopped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gimlet Posted July 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 the ramblers association is latin for do as i say ,NOT AS I DO.bunch of obsessive anal jellyfish who want to walk through your toilet while your sat on it.they dont care if they disturb nesting birds ,deer with young or any other animal as long as theyve got a kagool,map and a stick they will go where they please young man.most of them probably vote LIB DEM hence the goverment doing their bidding.youdve thought a tory goverment having many a rich landowning member would block this but obviously cameron is afraid of clegg and his guardian readers,so private property is no longer private bet a lot of farmers want to scream at the lunacy of this event :no: Well said. Cameron seems quite happy to sacrifice good stewardship for cheap votes. The Lib Dems like all leftists don't like farmers or landowners because they think they've 'stolen' the land from the people. I've challenged trespassers who've retorted that they pay farm subsidies through taxes so the land belongs to them and they have a right to go where they like. Fine I said, and I pay for the education of your children, so I claim part ownership or your house and garden. I'll be round this afternoon for a wander. "That's different!" Well no, it isn't, it is precisely the same and that is why property rights are protected under law. What maddens me is that (with the unlikely and honourable exception of Germaine Greer who got in all sorts of trouble for highlighting the damage that dog walkers and general public access has done to ancient woodland) not even conservation groups or ecologists bother anymore to defend wildlife against human encroachment. They seem to have swallowed the leftist line that mass human invasion and native wildlife can somehow coexist in Disneyworld harmony. They can't. An ancient wooded hilltop near me which once had the benefit of being relatively isolated from roads and rights of way and so free of traffic and human interference, was recently desiginated an 'open access' area. Now a road way has been made, there are picnic areas, forest bark paths, a cycle track with hordes of mountain bike riders and a constant stream of cars day and, for reasons that don't bear thinking about, night. Walkers and dogs have spread out across neighbouring farmland. Every day there are people clambering over gates and fences and dogs racing around in fields of livestock. Every few feet the ground is befouled by dog ****. Litter hangs in the bushes and in in almost every respect the place has become an urban park except that no-one comes round to clean up the mess. This kind of vandalism is apparently what constitutes stewardship in Britain now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yates Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 All land at one time was used by the people who lived here and was not owned by any body . Successive greedy kings and queens decided that the land would be owned by the crown and they stole it all . It was then sold bartered and given away to the nobility who took control of it . The nobility still have control of most of the land in this country . Harnser . I take it that you're not a Royalist then Harnser Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Livefast123 Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 (edited) Why should yuppies/townies/chavs be allowed access to privatly owned land, you've only got to see the state of their own houses to realise how they will treat the countryside. My uncle has a footpath running through his farm and the amount of grief he gets from I can walk anywhere ramblers and dog walkers disturbing his expensive horse stock is beyond belief. Edited July 5, 2012 by Livefast123 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harnser Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I take it that you're not a Royalist then Harnser I am a realist and a patriot with a strong belief in fair play and hard work . Harnser . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vipa Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I have no doubt that such legislation would effectively mean the end of woodland stalking in Britain and would destroy thousands of acres of woodland as places of sanctuary for wildlife where species are currently largely protected from human disturbance and predation by dogs. Why would it? Right to roam hasn't ended woodland stalking in Scotland! it just means you have to be acutely aware of your arc of fire and doubly sure of your backstop... no problem there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 scotland the population density is somewhat lower than down south, its more the disturbance and damage that would be an issue here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
la bala Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 All land at one time was used by the people who lived here and was not owned by any body . Successive greedy kings and queens decided that the land would be owned by the crown and they stole it all . It was then sold bartered and given away to the nobility who took control of it . The nobility still have control of most of the land in this country . Harnser . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieT Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 To be fair the public have had access to FC land for years and generally this has not been detrimental to sporting uses. Also remember that to gain access to much of the privately held woodland requires rights of way across private farmland. It's all easier said than done. However, looking at it fairly, if tax payers money is spent on forestry grants why should they not have access to something they have contributed towards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
39TDS Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 However, looking at it fairly, if tax payers money is spent on forestry grants why should they not have access to something they have contributed towards. I do see your point but does the same formula apply to nuclear power stations, army ranges and all the other things that tax pays towards? My tax goes towards police cars but they got really upset last time I took one for a spin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gimlet Posted July 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 However, looking at it fairly, if tax payers money is spent on forestry grants why should they not have access to something they have contributed towards. That's true. But as I've said I contribute to the education of other people's children; I contribute to their tax credits, their council tax relief, their street lighting, without receiving any of those things myself, but that does not entitle me to plonk myself on their sofas in the evening or set up a deck chair on their lawns. And nor should it. My real issue is not fairness or who has paid for what, its the utter absence of care for the landscape and wildlife at a public as well as private level. Why should human recreation trump all other considerations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieT Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 I do see your point but does the same formula apply to nuclear power stations, army ranges and all the other things that tax pays towards? My tax goes towards police cars but they got really upset last time I took one for a spin. Not quite the same. Tax payers money going in subsidies to private forestry enterprises where the tax payer receives no direct reward, yet the owner reaps the profit, seems somewhat one sided. Granting access to such woodland would, to me, seem a fair return for such subsidies. F.C. woodland on the other hand, is publicly owned and more akin to MOD land which in many cases offers public access. I write this as someone who has received grants from the tax payer for woodland. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clakk Posted July 5, 2012 Report Share Posted July 5, 2012 Why would it? Right to roam hasn't ended woodland stalking in Scotland! it just means you have to be acutely aware of your arc of fire and doubly sure of your backstop... no problem there! maybe ramblers could go on the general game licence ,theres a lot of them and they would take a lot of thinning out.like just after the war when u were paid to shoot pigeons .dunnno 30 to 50p seems right to cover costs :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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