Right to roam on rights of way

IN SHORT:

We cannot even be given the right to roam on public paths and footbridges, let alone expecting what is either side to be given to us as open access land!

MORE DETAIL:

However, I chose 'Right to roam on rights of way' (it has a nice ring about it and I love alliteration!) because I do feel that right to roam on publicly owned land, as at the South Downs, north of Brighton last month, is already happening without any repercussions, whatsoever.  It does not even need new stiles or gates or footbridges!  Therefore, that campaign is far less important than enabling access for walkers who have difficulty clambering over rickety stiles rotting away and, without steps.  In addition, of course, footbridges and their attendant rights of way are closed permanently, even for the vast majority who can easily climb stiles, because local authority funding is never available for this very basic, elementary kind of right to roam.

I fear the phrase, "right to roam" is being used to invite trespass on wealthy people's private land.  Although I do that myself, it is either unintentional or, always done to ask for the permission of the very first person I come across in the hope that he/she is the landowner.  In addition, we need to keep the very blessed wealthy landowners on board to give us permissive paths on old railway lines and, even to fund stile replacement/maintenance and for footbridges to be replaced/maintained.  After eleven years of austerity, we are becoming more and more dependant on the wealthy to sponsor, to donate and to help out the state's insistence that taxes - even from the wealthy - must be kept as low as possible.

I think it is far more important to have simply the ability to roam on existing footpath infrastructure that is being taken away from us through neglect and the passage of time.  That kind of right to roam is pretty basic but is being lost.

I do think that with this present kind of Conservative government, with the Police Bill, HS2, cutting overseas aid but vastly boosting expenditure on the arms trade, armaments and nuclear weapons, it is totally unrealistic to expect them to even countenance their donors and supporters giving us the freedom to roam, officially and without prior permission, all over their vast private estates, largely given over to arable and dairy farming anyway - unlike swathes of upland in Scotland that has full open access.

Having more land designated as open access when it is already, unofficially available would be nice to have but, it is access to existing official rights of way that must come first and be foremost in any campaign, I think.  I am deliberately hi-jacking the "right to roam" phrase for a much more noble and vital cause!