Vegetable manufacturies
WOULD the Commission raise £1,500 million for a government which plucked up courage and sold it off? The answer would be in that government's own hands, for the value of British woodland is a function of the present system of grants and tax concessions. Would these sheltering boughs have to spread above another three million acres? If they did, would the Government lose from one pocket much of what went to the other? The point is made: into forestry, public and private, the State is diverting more resources than would naturally flow there — by implication, doing so at the expense of the rest of the economy. Why? For economic reasons? Why should other industries pay for this one? For aesthetic reasons? By all means preserve stately trees in stately parks, but all those mountainsides of regimented pines — 'vegetable manufactories', as Wordsworth called them? For reasons of employment? The Commission on its three million acres employs fewer than 10,000 people. Its absence would be felt in the London Stock Exchange, whose Christmas tree is an annual present from — no: wrong: from the Stockholm Stock Ex- change. But a nice girl in the Commission's Edinburgh office is always most helpful over fixing up the import permits. All credit to her, and no credit to a govern- ment which leaves her employers alone for no better reasons than that with the com- mission, as with much else, it will now be easier to do nothing than to do something.
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