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Trees - good or bad?

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  1. chdot
    Admin

  2. neddie
    Member

    Pure neoliberalism, asking individuals to look after public amenities.

    You know how this is going to run - people with the time and resources will look after their trees. On the other hand, the ones who are struggling to keep their heads above water, won't, and their trees will die. So their neighbourhood becomes a ghetto through no fault of their own. Rinse and repeat for any public amenity

    Posted 1 year ago #
  3. acsimpson
    Member

    @Neddie, that seems about right. Perhaps we should change the number of lampposts on streets based on the amount of council tax being collected in the street while were at it. That seems about as progressive.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  4. chdot
    Admin

  5. chdot
    Admin

  6. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    Just wow. We don’t deserve to exist as a species.

    Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian's Wall 'felled overnight’

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-66947040

    Posted 1 year ago #
  7. chdot
    Admin

    A 16-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the felling of one of the UK's most iconic trees.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-66952980

    Like I often say - life is strange.

    But it’s not like this was a bit of casual vandalism of a sapling in a park.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  8. acsimpson
    Member

    I'm not sure I can blame the boy. There is clearly something very wrong that has happened in his life to cause this. As tragic an inexplicable as it is I'm grateful that the felon didn't attack his fellow school pupils.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  9. Frenchy
    Member

  10. chdot
    Admin

    At the heart of the conflict was a gulf between the way campaigners and the council thought about the city’s trees. Despite the six years it took to formulate and negotiate the Streets Ahead contract and assess the risks, no one at Sheffield city council seemed to consider a basic fact: people love trees. Urban trees provide a burst of natural beauty in otherwise congested environments, a sense of the sublime entering human-made spaces. Many of today’s street trees were planted more than 100 years ago, making them a living, breathing connection to the past. There is a reason that “leafy” is such a popular word on estate agent listings. “Trees are one of the few things in environmentalism that might actually cross the culture war divide,” said Paul Powlesland, a barrister who has advised a number of tree campaigns, including in Sheffield. Other environmental issues – sea level rises, global heating, Amazon deforestation – can seem impossibly huge and distant. But as Sheffield city council discovered, urban trees are something that people will take action to defend

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/24/chainsaws-disguises-and-toxic-tea-the-battle-for-sheffield-trees

    Posted 1 year ago #
  11. chdot
    Admin

  12. chdot
    Admin

  13. chdot
    Admin

  14. chdot
    Admin

    Posted 1 year ago #
  15. ejstubbs
    Member

    Pity they got their URL wrong: it's https://www.tree-time.com/free-trees, not treetime.com which is a commercial organisation selling artificial Christmas trees (the pros and cons of which are probably a separate topic for debate).

    There are lots of free tree events upcoming in November on the correct web site. I'm tempted, since we are about to lose a terminally sick crabapple.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  16. Greenroofer
    Member

    Glad to hear that I'm not the only person with a terminally sick crab apple. It's not old, it's just not growing. Why can't I get it to thrive?

    Posted 1 year ago #
  17. chdot
    Admin

  18. chdot
    Admin

    National Highways has withdrawn claims the deaths of thousands of trees beside a new road might have been due to government pressure to open it early.

    Many trees died soon after they were planted alongside the 12-mile (19km) section of the A14 in Cambridgeshire.

    A National Highways project manager told a council meeting 850,000 trees were planted out of season after Number 10's intervention.

    The company has now apologised, saying there was no request to open early.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-67308830

    Posted 1 year ago #
  19. chdot
    Admin

    Catastrophic ecosystem collapse is not inevitable, and is not yet occurring in the UK’s forests. “We do have time to make a difference, and there is a lot we can do to make our forests more resilient,” said Tew, who described the paper as a “call for action”.

    Solutions include increasing the diversity of tree species within a wood, planting trees of different ages, promoting natural regeneration and managing deer populations. People can help by using the online Tree Alert tool to report possible tree pests and diseases. Tew also said people should make sure their boots are clean before walking in a new woodland to avoid spreading disease.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/uk-forests-face-catastrophic-ecosystem-collapse-within-50-years-study-says-aoe

    Posted 1 year ago #
  20. chdot
    Admin

  21. chdot
    Admin

    Alan Pearce, a tree warden from the area, said: “It certainly ought to be a fairly wide consultation because it’s part of our heritage, grown-out hedges that go back hundreds of years. Once they’re gone you’re talking about 200 years to regrow. The stumps look nearly all of them perfectly sound and solid. I can’t see they can say they were diseased or dying. We’re meant to be planting trees, not felling them.”

    He said people were “absolutely horrified”, with one walker in tears over the decision, which he suggested may have been taken in order to improve grazing land in the adjacent field.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/21/colaton-raleigh-devon-village-shock-felling-100-ancient-beech-trees

    Posted 11 months ago #
  22. chdot
    Admin


    “For decades, this section of road has been a bottleneck because it’s the last bit of single carriageway between Birmingham and Camborne,” says Nick Simmonds-Screech, project director at National Highways. “We’re hoping to dramatically reduce journey times and create safer journeys end-to-end, while removing the county’s worst accident blackspot [the Chiverton roundabout].”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/31/cornwall-new-anti-gridlock-road-dual-carriageway-trees-a30

    Posted 11 months ago #
  23. neddie
    Member

    Disappointing to see the Guardian repeat unchallenged the views of a handful of people, that “traffic will now flow”, “the smog will go away”, “benefit to the economy”, “open up Cornwalll”, etc.

    And as for:

    “Our biodiversity net gain is currently around 20% and that could rise because we’re building miles of traditional Cornish hedgerows which are great for wildlife.”

    “Biodiversity net gain”, oh please! Massive roads are known to decimate wildlife habitats. Most species won’t cross roads or live anywhere near a road because of the noise. Amphibians have a 70% mortality rate if they try to cross. Many of the smaller species are invisibly made locally extinct…

    Worth reading “Traffication” by Paul Donald

    Posted 11 months ago #
  24. neddie
    Member

    The absolute last thing St Ives needs is more cars trying to enter it. We were attracted to go there on holiday by the very fact it was difficult to access by car. Equally, the roads around Lands End are very narrow and windey. We met people on the circular bus (another thing that attracted us to the area) who were on the bus because the roads were “too much of a nightmare” to drive.

    Now that all these new cars are coming into the area, will they completely spoil the exact thing the tourists come for by widening those lanes into A-roads?

    Posted 11 months ago #
  25. chdot
    Admin

    Or to put it another way -

    ‘Still in the grip of motor madness and those promoting it make up all sorts of nonsense to defend it’.

    Some might even believe it…

    Posted 11 months ago #
  26. gembo
    Member

    Rick Stein can open another restaurant on the road down.

    I was. At St Ives as a boy, no cars really. Though we had to stay an extra week in Nottingham on the way home whilst we waited for a money transfer to get the big end fixed on our motor,

    Very rural and lovely.

    Now I think it is mainly Carmageddon in the summer.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  27. neddie
    Member

    It is still a bit carmageddon, gembo. The council could go much further - I’d start by shutting the harbour wall car park to all but blue badge and harbour vehicles (with permit). But cars are at least somewhat restricted during day time hours by unenforced signs and the physical nature of narrow streets. The parking for our accommodation in the centre, which was useless to us as we came by train, was located a mile away from the cottage

    Posted 11 months ago #
  28. neddie
    Member

    Big-end. Ooft that’s a biggy. Happened to our Hillman Hunter two weeks after we sold it. New owner not happy. We did tell him not to exceed 55mph.

    But in those days it shows that flexibility was built in to holidays, for those very scenarios. Nobody needed to book hotels, restaurants and attractions months in advance and lose your money if you don’t turn up. You just turned up to places, and if you needed to stay an extra day or two because of a flooded tunnel, it was no problem, you just got on with it.

    None of these tiny violin stories about having to pay another £1000 to get the next available Eurostar because you booked a day trip and restaurant to Paris with no flexibility, that can’t be cancelled. Won’t someone think of the poor who can’t afford an extra £1000?

    Posted 11 months ago #
  29. gembo
    Member

    Think it was a Hillman Hunter. Got us too Cornwall but not back,

    Maybe 1977 very hot summer

    Stayed with my Godmother’s family in Farnsfield.

    The holiday snaps do show my penchant even at a very early age for a Stetson. Inthink a yellow and black banded one from the beach at St Ives.

    Posted 11 months ago #
  30. neddie
    Member

    Photos or it didn’t happen! :-)

    Posted 11 months ago #

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