FriendBurst Blog

This week MPs had their first chance to vote on forest sell-off plans – so we took our Save Our Forests campaign to parliament.
Nearly 100,000 of us emailed and phoned our MPs. We ran full-page
newspaper adverts publicising the number of names on the petition. Every single MP felt the heat. [1]

It’s starting to work! We pushed six government MPs to rebel and vote for a rethink. MPs from all parties stood up to talk about problems with the sell-off. Even David Cameron has started making vague hints that he might be willing to back down. [2]

From the postcode you put in when you signed the petition, it looks like you live in Bristol West constituency. That means your MP voted against a rethink of the sell-off plans. So now’s the time to get back in touch. Let’s tell them we noticed how they voted, and will be keeping up the pressure until they start standing up for our woodlands. [3]

Please email your MP now to tell them to start fighting to save our forests:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/email-your-mp-forests-voted-no

Every single MP heard from hundreds of us this week.
But a lot of them will be hoping the fuss will now die down. We need to
get back in touch quickly, to prove we are here for the long haul. MPs
need to feel we’ll keep watching them until our woods are protected for future generations.

The next time MPs vote on selling off our woodland, it could be a make-or-break vote to pave the way for privatisation. We need to keep the spotlight on every MP. They need to keep hearing from us by email, on the phone, and face-to-face. Together we can make them realise that if they vote to sell our forests, local voters won’t forgive them.

We’re showing politicians that they can’t get away with pushing
through policies that nobody voted for and hardly anyone supports. We’re
standing up for the principle that some things are so precious that no government should be allowed to sell them off. If we keep going, we can save our forests – and also stand up for our right to be heard.

Click here to email your MP and ask them why they didn’t vote to save our forests:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/email-your-mp-forests-voted-no

Thanks for being involved,

David, Hannah, Johnny and the 38 Degrees team

PS If your MP has replied to you, don’t forget to share what they said here: http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2011/01/24/save-our-forests-what-did-your-mp-say/

NOTES

[1] See for example Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab): “Literally
hundreds of my constituents have written to me saying that something
must be done to stop the sale”

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/02/forest-sell-off-cameron-listens

[3] If that doesn’t sound right to you click here to search all MPs http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/content/forest_vote_table/ ,
then write to your MP. There are over 1 million postcodes in the UK and
in a few cases our database can’t work out which constituency you are
in.