FANTASTIC! As I write, there’s only a couple of weeks to go until the general election. And by the time this reaches you, it will all be over bar the shouting.

But as I contemplate at least a few of the promises and the future plans in the main party manifestos, I have to ask myself what can be gleaned from all the tumult which could have any serious positive implications for us in the forest. Or, for that matter, on farms, in the broader rural environment, for the climate and all that.

Yet another week goes by without any positive policy for land use getting a mention, while not millions but billions are earmarked for health and social services, for defence, for education. I didn’t know, until well into my middle years, what a billion means. I’m still not sure. Billions of pounds cease to have any real meaning, don’t they?

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Forests and climate change have, then, gone off the agenda. From being top of the pops at the previous encounter between the major players to not being worth a mention this time round. But I live in hope. I reach for the zapper on my television as soon as the dreaded announcement of an imminent party political broadcast hits the screen, so I might have missed something, but somehow I don’t think so.

Years and years ago I was dispatched by my then editor to interview the current director general of the then Forestry Commission in his newly appointed office in Corstorphine Road, Edinburgh. We talked. It was very clear that nothing much would happen to the current hot potato, the taxation of forestry. I said so. He smiled and said to me, as we parted, that its usually better to adopt a low profile while quietly getting on with the job.

So, enough politics – at least until after the APF which is now only a few months away. I’m looking forward to seeing 300 exhibitors, £80 million worth of working machinery (or was it £80 billion?). And what on earth is the world Log-to-Leg Championship? Could it be about prosthetics or even about cricket? I’m glad to see, in this electronic age, that horse logging still survives.

Perhaps you wouldn’t have guessed at my antecedents, from my last Diary, which had the effrontery to criticise the Yorkshire Dales for being treeless. A relative tut-tutted about my birth and complained that “the lad will never play cricket for Yorkshire” as you then had to be Yorkshire born and bred to be selected for the county team.

APF is the UK's largest forestry event APF is the UK's largest forestry event (Image: FJ/Jack Haugh)

This same uncle recalled an old Yorkshire poem in local dialect about an early adventure into horse logging, another trade cherished by the APF exhibition. it recalls how, after a somewhat fruitless day spent extracting thinnings, the two loggers and their veteran steed decided to call it a day and go home:

We took him home through Tommy Whitley’s wood, to see if that would do him any good. 

He bumped his bum agenst a tree. “By Goom,” says Jim, “He’s barn to dee!” Which, being translated, means that James, the horse owner, viewed the future of the nag with misgiving, making him unlikely to put in an appearance at the APF. He’s barn to dee = he’s going to die. Comes to us all in the end. Copies of my Yorkshire dialect dictionary may well be available at Ragley. 

I just hope that such a spectacular occasion as the APF gets the kind of media reception that it deserves. A 30-second slot in the local TV news is a wasted opportunity. We should be getting on with a major PR programme whose objective is to go national and publicise the massive event that it really is. And we should plan a programme which follows the felled final sawlog through the breakdown phase and ending up on stick. Show the public. It’s a fascinating story. People love big saws and where better to watch them than among our many experts at the APF?

And we deserve good weather. Climbing trees is altogether a better proposition in dry and sunny conditions. Less slippery. And finally, the minutes of discussion meetings again need a wide circulation. Our leaders should view the various meetings arranged as a platform to publicise the story of forestry in the UK.

If the latest set of party manifestos is anything to go by, there will be a good gap, a good opportunity to make a positive noise.