It's looking like the UK will be one long stretch of concrete and Keep Out signs if the Tories push to sell off the country's woodland and forests comes off. I've signed petitions against it, so you have to hope that people power works, but the Tories are cunning as well as being the only people who can speak with forked tongues, so it's not over by any means.

Should they be wielding the auctioneer's gavel, then God helps us. We'll be crowded round the gates peering in watching the Tories and their well-heeled chums enjoying themselves in what was once public domain; or having to traipse to a Tree Museum to remind ourselves what a tree used to look like

There was a witty, but depressing comment from Simon Hoggart in yesterday's Guardian about the woodland horrors the Tories could trigger if they get this through Parliament.

The Tories' crazed plans to sell our forests and woodland will, in spite of their claims, change the British countryside forever.

I suspect they will have to drop the scheme. But imagine the loss to our literature if the best-loved parts of the countryside are privatised.

"Out of the Hundred Acre wood came a sad procession. There was Pooh Bear with his last jar of honey, Piglet, Kanga, Tigger, and Eeyore, mournfully waving his tail from side to side. Behind them a man with a roll of barbed wire was planting a placard in the Heffalump Trap. 'Keep out! Property of Globex Holdings Inc. Trespass at your peril.'"

Or "Mellors cradled Constance softly in his arms as they lay on the blanket in his hut. 'Thart a good lass, with a gradely backside,' he said with spurting tenderness. Suddenly they heard a hammering at the door. "We're bailiffs, and you're evicted!" said a rough, unlettered voice. "Injunction from Van Hoogstraten Properties! Out in 10 minutes!"

Robert Frost's best-loved poem would start:

"Whose woods these are I think I know,

Entailed to the Halliburton Co."

And the Gruffalo wouldn't have a chance, gunned down by paramilitary gamekeepers employed by some vast multinational which wants to raze the copse to build a luxury spa.