WAS pleased to read Liberal Democrat councillor Mike Barker’s comments at a meeting of Darlington Borough Council (Echo, Jan 29) about Conservative plans to dispose of woodland areas.

The Lib Dems may not be flavour of the month these days, but part of their role in this coalition Government is to moderate the tendencies of the Conservative ethos to privatise anything they can. It appears most of us strongly object to this plan and they have yet to give sound reasons for it.

Conservative councillor Ian Galletley argued that only 19 per cent of forest is controlled by the Forestry Commission – surely a reason to maintain, not relinquish, control.

He said the commission had made a loss, seemingly implying incompetence. However, this fails to take into account that as well as managing commercial plantations, such as Kielder, in Northumberland, the commission has to bear the cost of maintaining many other smaller, non-profitable deciduous woodlands.

Logging companies will only be interested in the profitable resources of timber so who will fund and manage the ecologically more desirable sites?

It looks like a case of off-load the cream for as much as possible and let those who cherish the environment find the money to maintain the rest.

Maggie would be proud.

Geoff Hill, Liberal Democrat Party member, Darlington.

GIVEN that the sale of state-owned forests and woodlands will raise an estimated £100m, why not keep them in state ownership and take the relevant amount either from the billions being spent on the Olympic Games or from the taxes gained from bankers bonuses?

However, given that those private health care providers who made massive financial donations to the Conservative Party have been awarded multi-million pound health care contracts (Echo, Jan 22), should we be surprised if those allowed to buy state-owned forests and woodlands had also made similar donations to the Conservative Party?

Given the Conservative Party’s past record, should we be surprised if, in the next few years, Tory MPs started obtaining directorships with firms which were either awarded health care contracts or allowed to buy state-owned assets?

CT Riley, Spennymoor, Co Durham.