Don't spare that tree
I SUPPOSE we can be grateful not to have a Mistletoe Commission. Instead we have the nation's largest landowner sustained at the public expense to grow far too many Christmas trees. The Forestry Commission has long outlived its 70-year-old purpose to safeguard the supply of pit-props. Never mind, it can always think of other reasons to exist, like providing jobs in Scotland (watching trees grow?). An alliance of pro- ducers and public servants continues to put it across consumers and taxpayers. Now comes Robert Rickman, who advises on investment in forestry, to ask why the Com- mission is still in business. In What's Good for Woods (from the Centre for Policy Stud- ies) he says that its commercial plantations, which the Commission misleadingly labels its Enterprise, should he sold off. What would survive? A National Forestry Authority, he says. You wonder how Robin Hood got along without one. It is, though, a solution straight from the textbooks of institutional survival. Under its broad branches, the Commission's furry denizens would find shelter and a new lease of life. I would take an axe to it.
Previous page
