It was interesting to read in the TTJ (August 17/24) about one plywood importer admitting that illegally felled logs are being used, in some instances, for plywood production and in the same news story environment minister Michael Meacher was reportedly asked why the government wasn’t setting up laws specifically aimed at timber.
Well, far be it from me to write anything controversial, but aren’t we getting a little carried away here?
There is obviously a big problem regarding these matters and I can recall being told at school that we were losing an area of tropical forest the size of Wales each day/week/hour or whatever. I left school some time ago and Wales is fairly big, but somehow it hasn’t turned out quite as terribly as forecast.
What’s more, the amount of timber brought into the UK from these areas is probably extremely small in the scheme of things, but it’s easy for environmental campaigners to scale up the scaffolding of a government building here, with the media all lined up ready, knowing they’ll get a nice policeman to help them down afterwards.
I wonder when we’ll read more about real action in the countries of origin, where the decisions are taken. It would be interesting to see what sort of reception they get when they climb down in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur or, even better, Singapore, where I seem to remember it’s about 20 strokes of the cane for chewing gum, so I hope they don’t scratch the paintwork!
