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Not me in the video, thoughts?
Pours drink and sits back
link not working?
Sorry edited, should be now
Didn't see an assault and I couldn't really hear what was said.
This is probably racist but I find people with that accent getting irate more comic than threatening.
Having said that some bloke manhandling you and your bike is probably threatening whatever accent they've got.
What a tugger. I'd probably tell him where to go if I were trying to get on with my job as well. Heavily edited also...
Text book bulb-endery from camera-wielding confrontation seeker (TM) - hassling FC employees about the impact of their big machines on the poor ground. One of them loses their rag - Victory! you can now go crying on youtube looking for sympathy for being a shithouse.
It beats looking for confrontation on the roads I guess - a lot safer.
Always the ones with cameras that get hassle. Perhaps they should turn them round.
Not withstanding the incident in the end the forestry guys were quite right, the only places outside of designated trails we have permission to ride on FC land is the fire roads which don't get wrecked by the harvesters.
The forests as has been said before are primarily there for tree cultivation, that is gradually shifting towards leisure activities but it's happening slowly in some places.
The rider should've realised quickly they weren't interested in his point of view and got on with his hobby while they got on with their work. He should also have had a better understanding of his rights before making a fool of himself.
It does come across like he was provoking them, what was he expecting to achieve? Ah yes because you have had a moan at us we,ll not do our job today?
Locally, we ride all over Forestry Commission woodland. It's working woodland so if a trail is wrecked so be it. It's a small price to pay for having a free accessible playground.
What a tosser - the guy with the camera that is.
the guy with the camera is a numpty - nice smug little chuckle by him when he rides off. they should have run the evil machine over his delicate face
FC 1 - **** on a bike 0
Clever editing and provoking an argument there, the forestry cut trees down using machines, they repair some areas after and replant the trees that's what they do. Bike rider just appears to be a tool who went out with his camera looking for an argument. I can see the bike being pushed a bit but no assault.
the only places outside of designated trails we have permission to ride on FC land is the fire roads which don't get wrecked by the harvesters.
eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.
In Scotland we have the right of responsible access anywhere, so unless there was a harvester working in the vicinity then IMO he has the right to go where he pleases in the forest.
Whilst i agree the guy was looking for an argument and it was probably unwise to direct it at the people who are least likely to do anything about it, there is no excuse for the guy speaking to him the way he did.
EDIT - the harvesters dont wreck the forest roads, the timber haulage trucks do 🙂
eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.
No it's not they lease some land from private owners too.
Edit: I googled Wentwood and found this interesting bit.
A small area remains in private ownership. Both the Forestry Commission and Woodland Trust have an open access policy for quiet informal recreation.
Fair point Drac but in general the vast bulk of the land is ours and they simply manage it for us.
It's always nice when someone engineers a confrontation with people trying to do their job and then tries to get them sacked by posting the very mild results on the web. Even in the heavily-edited video I fail to see anything that constitutes an assault.
Are the FC supposed to harvest wood with secateurs to avoid interfering with unofficial trails?
Just because something is managed on our behalf doesn't mean we can make unrealistic demands about its management to suit ourselves. We haven't done badly from the FC in general, but they still need to carry out their main operations.
This guy's point of view is misguided, and his actions stink.
genericbikerelatedname - MemberLocally, we ride all over Forestry Commission woodland. It's working woodland so if a trail is wrecked so be it. It's a small price to pay for having a free accessible playground.
Quite right, same here too.
eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.
No it's everyone in the country's land, and it makes money. say the 99% of people not on mountain bikes would rather it lowered their tax bill by harvesting as opposed to being un-harvested for the benifit of the 1%.
No it's everyone in the country's land
yeah, thats why i capitalized OUR. its the peoples land, not specifically for MTBers...
sneaky edit. I dont think harvesting actually makes very much money at all for the country.
The guy on the bike was looking for an argument, judging by the tone of his questioning. Very confrontational. I don't think the guy was an FC employee either, looked like one of the contractors to me.
Hmmm. Numpty provocation yes. But if the "big man" can get charged with assault then taffy there should too.
What a tosser - the guy with the camera that is.
Yep!
The rider should've realised quickly they weren't interested in his point of view and got on with his hobby while they got on with their work. He should also have had a better understanding of his rights before making a fool of himself.
Well said.
I ride at margam park with a number of mates on a fairly regular basis. There are a lot of really good trails there, some of which one mate in particular has put a lot of effort into making and maintaining. However, we totally accept that it is a working forest and that any section could disappear from month to month.
this thread could also be titled 'mountain biker being an annoying prat', surely?
If you keep pushing and prodding some people don't be suprised if they get a bit lairy.
The figures I have for FC for 2010 are (in £ millions)I dont think harvesting actually makes very much money at all for the country
Expenditure :
Harvesting and haulage 41.2
Recreation, etc 56.0
Other 58.1
Income :
Timber 77.4
Recreation, etc 18.7
Other 23.0
So income from harvesting supports both management costs and expenditure on recreation.
Harvesting and thinning are also necessary for managing the forestry, particularly where spruce plantations are concerned.
This strange presumption of self-righteous entitlement that is spreading among riders is a real shame. What we have at the moment is an ideal situation where there are plenty of places to ride, from purpose built centres to natural areas to sneaky secret trails, with minimal interference in terms of insurance, admission fees and licences. The minority mouthing off at other FC-land users and workers will cause problems for those of us who just want to get out and ride.
[i]The minority mouthing off at other FC-land users and workers will cause problems for those of us who just want to get out and ride.[/i]
This.
My approach is to keep my head down, be polite and realise I'm their on sufferance.
Keeping off cheeky trails until night time helps.
Not a Wentwood local, but my impression is that the trails there are at least semi-sanctioned (I seem to recall Dragon Downhills being held there in the past). I think if they were destroying my riding spot I'd be getting pretty chippy too.
http://www.wentwooddownhill.co.uk/track.html
By contrast when the FC recently thinned a local wood in Bristol they were at pains to point out that work was temporary, anything damaged should be looked at as an opportunity to rebuild, etc. It might have been just a token bit of diplomacy, but it was appreciated.
Anyway, regardless of the rights and wrongs, acting like a nightclub doorman is not going to win you any friends.
acting like a nightclub doorman is not going to win you any friends
Acting like a total bellend to people doing their job isn't going to win you any friends
Well done OP 🙄 - that's my local patch too and I've always found the FC workers more than courteous - always a cheery smile, stopping machines to let me past on fire roads, etc. It's a working forest and there's a lot of thinning work taking place at the mo' - tracks disappear, new ones are formed, get used to it! I've lost count of the number of cracking little d/h runs which have come and gone over the years I've been riding there but hey, change is good right? Although the Wentwood d/h site doesn't appear to be up to date, as far as I am aware, as Mr A says, the main d/h track is sanctioned and remains maintained and undamaged.
what a fool..
A more satisfactory outcome would have been if passing riders had intervened and sent the sillybiker packing..
Can we see the full & unedited video please?
[edit] then again, don't bother.......
as much as I hate the FC (or their contractors) harvesting and ruining trails, everything the guy in the yellow jacket was saying was correct, we only have rights to ride on the stone surfaces,
no need for the assault though,
I've got a foot in both camps these days (working for a sawmills) and, yes, forestry in GB is a large industry. My only gripe with harvesting is when all the brushwood isn't removed on clear fell, leaves hell of a mess.
As Adam [amt27] will know here in the FoD, cheeky trails get built, the area gets trashed, new trails are built; and so it goes on. The new Verderers Trail pretty much follows the RDFCC Enduro course which itself followed earlier cheeky trails.
It's a working forest and, whilst tourism, recreation & leisure is becoming a larger part of the pie, the production of lumber and all that entails is still the main industry and this has to be acknowledged and recognised by other users. In my 45+ years riding in the FoD, the ground pretty much always recovers.
now being investigated by the forestry commission 🙁
why can't people just leave things be, only result I can foresee is forestry workers will dislike bikers & bikers will have restrictions on riding in the future, will someone please give that Utube idiot a step ladder so he can get down off his high horse 🙄
Usual story here - somebody trying to start an 'us and them' argument, when the real situation is that there are wrong-doers in all camps.
To tell the workers that he would ride where he wanted and that they couldn't stop him was somewhat inflammatory, and the workers' reaction to the goading was ill-advised.
If the cyclist had just let the guys get on with their job (or was a bit more polite in his questioning technique) then none of the confrontation would have happened.
For the record, our local woods suffered from extensive logging work a couple of years ago, but returned to a usable state in a surprisingly short time. You'd hardly know that it had happened, considering that it looked like the Somme at one point.
There's currently a lot of working going on to remove invasive rhododendrons but, based on previous experience, we know that it'll recover fairly quickly so aren't too fussed about it.
Just happy to have somewhere local to ride our bikes - life too short for arguments.
<pantomine>Oh no it isn't!</pantomime> 😉
+1 psling
Not saw one bit of harvesting last year that the Fc / contractors removed here in the FoD and the brushwood. With the value of wood so low they take cheapest option and leave it like bomb site. And we still get blamed for making a mess!
eh, its OUR land! FC are custodians of the land on behalf of the government(s), they most definitely do not own it.
No it's private land owned or leased by the governement in much the same way huge areas of the countryside are managed by the MOD (which is often restricted). The FC remit was originally to make sure we didn't suffer another timber shortage like the one in the first world war.
That remit has (quite properly) expanded to include a leisure remit. We are however only one aspect of the leisure users. If a blind eye is turned to cheeky building that's very much down to local staff, upsetting them isn't going to help the cause. Where the trail centres are springing up (Gisburn for example) the local forestry team intialy worked very hard to get it up and running with little direct support from the FC as a whole (something that is now rapidly changing).
Timber prices have also recently gone up, last year was a bit of bumper harvest for the FC which is why so much has been felled recently.
forestry commission thug...?
no, as has been suggested above - it's just some silly sod with a camera.
Wonder what else he got for christmas except a camera, he probably wanted Viagra, as he is a small prick
"quick to listen, slow to judge"
Surprised by some of the comments on here. Ok, so getting fed up with video vigilantes but this guy starts politely enough. Should have know when to back off - not going to stop me riding my bike etc. That was the main error.
But FC worker also a tosser trying to intimidate.
No winners in the end though!
and it's also been cut just before the fella gets really angry, wonder what he said?
hopefully the guy wont lose his job due to some up himself little tosspot looking to be the next pootube video hero
1. Be born a knob.
2. Go out biking and start asking FC workers dumb questions.
3. Carry on for 10 minutes asking them dumb questions.
4. One of them gets fed up of you being a moron whilst they're probably trying to get some work done and 'helps you on your way'.
5. Go back home, upload video to computer, edit out the middle 9 minutes where you're pissing the guys off soo much they're on the verge of snapping so all viewers see is a question being asked and a FC worker nudging you a bit.
6. Put on youtube and are dumbfounded when people start slagging you off.
The key thing I took away from the video is that he was riding on his own. Something I suspect he does a lot.
Wow - that is some list of assumptions?
But agree with final conclusion 😉
I suspect he probably drove home in an Audi/Merc/BMW to a new'ish build house he shares with... erm, nobody.
Want me to continue?
where he ate a finest range ready meal for 1 before going upstairs for a master-cry...
Nah, just becomes a list of prejudices.
Always the ones with cameras that get hassle.
That might be because they're the only ones documenting it...
I agree the rider acted like a knob but the FC worker physically pushing him and his bike when not himself provoked in any physical manner is just not on.
[My only gripe with harvesting is when all the brushwood isn't removed on clear fell, leaves hell of a mess.]
Difficult to remove it - a lot of it is needed to keep the machines up (on wet sites) and until recently there wasn't a market. There is now a developing market for it as biomass - heat & power plants, so an increasing number of sites have the brash removed, which loks a lot better.
The timber should currently have a high value to us taxpayers, but when has a state owned organisation been best placed to realise financial value......
Video has now been taken off UTUBEs....
Well, in the spirit of making assumptions, was the video done by one of our forum? Who would have thought such a massive knob could possibly be a member of STW.....
he FC worker physically pushing him and his bike when not himself provoked in any physical manner is just not on
I think the twit on the bike was lucky to get off so lightly.. I'm not a violent type myself but many blokes are..
we had some FC thinning work done locally, looked like a panzer division had been through by the time they had finished. It's still such an eyesore that the previously popular resurfaced bridlepath through the area is now overgrown and unused a year later. Mind you always found fc staff friendly even when i've been where i shouldn't
hopefully the guy wont lose his job due to some up himself little tosspot looking to be the next pootube video hero
HR will send his as down the river .....
The Video maker also had it posted on this Mpora page
[url= http://82.197.69.8/rydersmtb/ ]http://82.197.69.8/rydersmtb/[/url]
Also seems to have been taken down.
Can't see the vid in the link for some reason.
What's the title so I can search for it. Sounds funny
I love camera wearing trouble searchers 😉
[i]nealglover - Member
Can't see the vid in the link for some reason.
What's the title so I can search for it. Sounds funny [/i]
stumpyjon - Member
Video has now been taken off UTUBEs....
zangolin - Member
The Video maker also had it posted on this Mpora pageAlso seems to have been taken down.
HTH 🙂
I'm guessing he is from 'ere as the YouTube vid said "as seen on stw". Also noticed yesterday someone claiming to be from the fc saying they were shocked at the workers behaviour. Looks like an out of YouTube settlement has been reached.
AS an aside I thought the brash was left so as it rotted down the nutrients went back into the soil?
He is certainly a member on here... quite quiet on this thread though, eh?
>No it's private land owned or leased by the governement<
On behalf of the nation....
There are some very compelling reasons for getting 'our land' out of the clutches of successive Ministers and quite posibly the FC for that matter:
http://www.andywightman.com/wordpress/?p=116
As for the OP the guy with the camera is clearly a knob but the FC guy handled it very badly for someone in the front line.
the FC guy handled it very [s]badly for someone in the front line[/s] amenably for a labourer simply trying to get a cold and miserable job done.
FTFY
Balls to your fix. He didnt handle the situation amenably at all - quite the reverse.
That much is obvious Heatherbash..
I think what I'm insinuating is that the FC guy isn't 'on a front line' but far from it.. quite the opposite in fact.. he's very likely a heavy plant operator.. not a maitre d'
although it [i]is[/i] certainly true to say that he's at his cold wet place of work.. following instructions and being confronted by a rude and persistent wally..
I've seen fine upstanding hardworking blokes lose their patience far more dramatically with less provocation..
Not seen the video, but most people lose the rag because it's simply the last straw. Maybe he'd had a load of other arseholes having a go at him all week, or he's having problems at home, or just found out he's about to be laid off, or thinking about how badly paid forestry work is... then some self-important twunt pushes his buttons and BOOM! Carnage 😉
He is certainly a member on here... quite quiet on this thread though, eh?
Enlighten us!
>No it's private land owned or leased by the governement<On behalf of the nation....
Still doesn't mean we have any right of access to to it. The government owns large numbers of buildings but you wouldn't expect to use one of those whenever you felt like. There's a very big difference between being owned by the government and open for access.
It's a tree factory. You wouldn't expect unlimited access to ride your bike through a car factory, even if it was publically owned. And if you tried, you'd not be too shocked to have a factory worker boot you up the arse.
[url= http://singletrackmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/forestry-commission-announce-investigation-into-assault-video/ ]http://singletrackmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/forestry-commission-announce-investigation-into-assault-video/[/url]
Lifted from larger quote by FC spokesperson:
Good relations with visitors to our forests – and, indeed, their safety – are extremely important to us.
Good grief. 😐
Someone should point the Commission to this thread, to emphasise that these forest visitors, who One would think likely side with the cyclist, actually think he's a MAHOOSIVE bell-end and does us no favours at all.
I ride Wentwood all the time. And never had a problem with Forestry Workers often stop and chat and all have been cool.
Never saw the video, so cant really comment.
I built and riden 🙂 and lost 🙁 many trails in Wentwood. But thats just part of our game IMO.
The NEW Trail will be better. However, I never really got over losing the "Lost Trail" over Gray Hill way :-(.
+1 for rusty
+1 for rusty..
mtb bell end IMO
edit: and name and shame the bell end please...stw pitchforks at the ready 😆
Came here via the ST front page too...
Expenditure :
Harvesting and haulage 41.2
Recreation, etc 56.0
Other 58.1Income :
Timber 77.4
Recreation, etc 18.7
Other 23.0
Agree with all the comments about the provocation of camera boy, but as an aside I found these figures interesting, especially the difference between what the FC spend on supporting recreation as opposed to what they get back from car park fees, etc etc...
AS an aside I thought the brash was left so as it rotted down the nutrients went back into the soil?The brash is left until most of the needles have fallen off as they contain most of the nutrients. Also the income from the brash is greater than the cost of applying fertliser.
The timber income acheived by FC for it's clients (us) is far less than the private sector acheives for it's clients
Leaving brash also fulfils the requirements of FSC accreditation to leave 'x' amount of wood on site for habitat. With bio fuel power stations, it's now quite easy to sell the brash if you have a baler, but FSC/UKWAS accreditation is still valued.
The clear up is also more likely to fall to a different team/contractor to the felling. If the site is replanted the brash will probably be rowed up and if you are lucky, you will find that brash mats would have been built over trails to protect them during harvesting.
FC timber fetches lower prices as the standard tends to be lower than private estates. They also conatin a lot of Larch which is getting crap prices right now due to Phytopthora ramorum flooding the market with the stuff.
Not seen the video due to it being pulled, but one of our biggest problems at work is numpties coming through barrier tape and onto site, just because you can't see us or a big machine, doesn't mean there isn't a tree flying your way or hanging over your head.
I know one contractor that works over that way, but he isn't a patient man and this guy would've had a lot of shots of his intestines.
And remember, trees are a crop, like wheat, just a bit slower.