Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
How MPs voted on the Save Our Forests debate
On Wednesday last, MPs's voted on whether or not to demand a rethink of the government's plans to sell our forests.
This vote was not binding - it was an "opposition day debate".
You can see how your MP voted here
In short, Lynne Featherstone voted yes to the policy as it stands and David Lammy voted no to the policy as it stands.
UPDATED with links to how to write to your MP, access the original debate in Parliament and previous discussions on this topic
contact your MP to discuss their vote with them, via the Write to Them site
If you don't want to filter your knowledge of how your MP is voting through a campaigning site, you can access the user friendly site They Work for You,
For those who wish to access the debate on this issue in full so that you can be more fully informed on how parliament sees the issue you can find it on this page
You will also find all previous recent discussion on the site on this issue, by clicking on the tag forests beneath this post
Tags for Forum Posts: forests
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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What a bunch of gutless wazacks politicians are, bar one or two every MP voted in line with their party. The Lib Dems are certainly enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame in bed with the Tories. Credit to turncoat Goldsmith though, well done.
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Permalink Reply by Mr Growbag on
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In short, David Lammy voted yes to saving the forests and Lynne Featherstone voted no to it.
Would query whether this is really an accurate summary of what the vote was about?
As I see it, the proposed legislation is not to "save" the forests or "not save" them; it's about ownership. Based on what I've read it seems that even if the 18% of forests in England that will be affected are sold, they'll still be subject to the same protections for rights of way, environmental and planning safeguards that cover them at present.
Personally, I don't feel qualified to say if private, rather than quango, ownership is the best way forward, and it would seem that environmental groups also seem to be divided on this issue. But compelling as the mental image of David Lammy hugging a tree to protect it from an axe-wielding Lynne Featherstone is (I fully expect to see this cartoon coming through my door next time we have local elections), I'm not convinced this reflects what's really going on.
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I was only summarising the page that I linked to, Mr G, to save people the trouble of looking for the names of their MPs. I am sure there is much more to it than tree-huggers v axe-wielders.
I leave it to more informed people on this issue than myself to flesh out the arguments for and against and perhaps to write to their respective MPs to ask for their reasons for voting the way they did. Links on the page linked to above.
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Sorry to be a pain, but I'm not sure those links are going to help flesh out the arguments at all: the 38 degrees page is a campaigning site trying to encourage people to sign their petition against the sale.
Although I've posted this link to an article from the Ecologist on another thread, I hope you don't mind me reposting it here. I was impressed by the neutral attitude it seemed to strike and it seems to cover a lot of the issues.
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I actually meant the links to contact your MP that are provided on the page. This can equally be done easily via the Write to Them site and of course, if you don't want to filter your knowledge of how your MP is voting through a campaigning site, you can access the user friendly site They Work for You,
For those who wish to access the debate on this issue in full so that you can be more fully informed on how parliament sees the issue you can find it on this page
You will also find all previous recent discussion on the site on this issue, by clicking on the tag forests beneath the original post
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Thinking of buying a woodland Mr G?
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No, not polarising, just baldly reporting the vote.
One voted yes to the policy as it stands and one voted no to the policy as it stands. I then took note of Mr G's comments and went to the trouble to link to the original debate as published word for word. I have expressed no personal opinion on this issue at all so far, perhaps because I don't feel I know enough about it. You cannot however, blame people Will for being wary of 'private' since most people's experience of selling things off to private ownership has not been to see a blinding success, the railways to name but one. Perhaps you can enlighten us as to where a publicly owned asset that has passed to private hands improved on what went before, has achieved success and all round customer satisfaction and doesn't demand tax payer bailouts every time it makes a mess . I'm struggling to think of one but then, as I say, I really don't know enough about it.
As far as I'm aware, the vote in the Parliament wasn't treehuggers to the left, axe-wielders to the right, yes buts abstain , just ayes and nos in the rather quaint language of Parliament, however if the HOL pedants society, of which I am a founder member, wish me to rephrase the original post and put all the links that I have rather cunningly hidden down here in the comments to put off those with a short attention span up at the top than of course, I can find time to do that.
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Original line in thread above now changed. Let's just leave that one there shall we?
No, don't throw it back at me Wil to prove there is a public company that is better than private. As far as I was concerned, my experience of public ownership in a school meant that things got done, and after it was privitised, we in Camden had to ring a call centre in Ealing to get the Ealing office to schedule the caretaker who was in the same building as I was (who we used to ring up ad get things done the same day) to do it. It took 6 months to get a hand dryer fixed, but that example is as miniscule as a cafe in the Bernie Grant centre
Just one public to private company that is better than it was before, not 'no worse' or 'it will take time' and I don't mean a cafe in Tottenham, I mean a company that was nationally owned and now sits in private hands and that we are all happy with and does not drain the public purse at periodic intervals.
We have had privatisation of public assets for a long time, very little remains in public hands. I am asking you as a proponent of this policy to explain to someone who has little knowledge of it to give me concrete examples of marked improvement, customer satisfaction and total independence of the public purse which is the point of privatisation, is it not? to put the burden of responsibility onto share holders and not onto taxpayers and provide a more efficient service.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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In my experience, BT has improved immeasurably since privatisation. Liz is too young to remember the days when there was a 6 month's waiting list for a line and a coloured phone was a luxury indicative of moral degeneracy. The most significant technical advance in 50 years was the introduction of the curly cord.
British Rail was not noted for performance and customer satisfaction in spite of huge subsidies from public funds.
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Thank you for that charming compliment John re my age, and we had a coloured phone.
Where have the improvements come from privitising railways? High fares, overcrowding, poor stock and high customer dissatisfaction with the network, in effect, owned by the public as the private sector couldn't make it pay.
Most efficient train services in the world are supported by public money (I'm sure Steve if he's around, will correct me if I'm wrong on that), BRs problems were not solved by passing into private hands (not even the sandwiches) but accountability became harder as the services passed into private hands.
BT, well you may have something there. There is competition which does allow for some choice at least but there are still issues around access to telecommunications services for rural communities and poorer areas which private companies are reluctant to get into because of lack of profitability.
I am actually not against some off-loading into the private sector of small scale things like park cafes to independent businesses and co-operatives. If people want to run their community centre and think they can, then government should support them. I'm not even against the idea of coffee bar franchises in libraries (yes Will even a big name) as happens in Hillingdon. Large companies running municipal leisure centres may work but there is the danger of asset stripping, as happened to a centre in poor part of Camden which was run down and sold off by a company within a couple of years. As with any of this, if the profit margin isn't high enough, the community is abandoned and left with nothing if the company decamps even after elaborate promises,
My experience of anything bigger than that e.g. school dinners, school cleaning, buildings maintenance was that in order to increase profits, wages were laughable, the materials cheap and nasty (tomato paste on white bread sold as pizza anyone?) and the ability to complain as nightmarish as a kafka novel.
So I remain a sceptic on the issue of privitisation I'm afraid based on what I have seen happening so far here in Britain, however, I am always open to persuasion.
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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John D* Using your logic we could say that: 'this government has spent more on health care per capita than Henry VIII therefore life is better per capita due to increased spending'.
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@James
'.... spent more on health care per capita than Henry VIII ....'
Be fair to Henry who was a kindly king. He'd have taken greater care of the Boleyn and Howard ladies' heads if capital transplants had been more advanced in his day.
btw. Why does English say 'per capita' when it should be 'per caput' ?
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