Lotusflower

Re my bold above. NO! That is absolutely not what I mean. That is your own misconception. As I advised you previously...do some reading on the subject. The articles have been posted many times but people who have already made their minds up don't want to be confused by facts...or at least that's the way it appears to me. During my time in the armed forces it was often the case that the officer was the only in step on the parade ground and expected everybody else to change step. Enjoy your holiday in France Captain Longcol.

Re my bold above. Please explain what you mean in greater detail. ---------- Post added 19-03-2016 at 07:54 ---------- Where are you getting this 1% figure from? I would also like to know where you are getting the information to make the statement in your last sentence. "No benefits"...really?

Re my bold above. Part right, part wrong as I understand it.

May I respectfully suggest you ask your friends in the council.

Re my bold above. If the council are on the wrong end of the judge's decision next Tuesday I'm guessing that ultimately council tax payers will be paying. Do you think that in that eventuality any blame should be apportioned to campaigners?

Why do you think that's a good question?

The arboricultural big hitters continue to shed light on the actions of Sheffield City Council and their contractor Amey. Heritage Tree Management Here is some essential reading for all highway managers and tree enthusiasts concerned at the loss of highway trees in the UK because of poorly integrated planning and highway policies. The Trees & Design Action Group held a discussion meeting in Nottingham to explore the barriers to getting new trees into the highway realm and how we can improve our performance. This document summarises the main points and will be useful for all those interested in making our highways less dangerous and damaging to the communities they serve. http://www.tdag.org.uk/uploads/4/2/8/0/4280686/roads_to_places__integrating_green_infrastructure_for_highways_workshop_notes_final_draft.pdf This is timely information in the light of the Sheffield residents hearing into highway tree mismanagement by Sheffield City Council at the High Court in London next Tuesday. Jeremy Barrell. http://www.tdag.org.uk TDAG.ORG.UK The campaign will, as Jeremy Barrell states, be taken to the Royal Courts of Justice in London next Tuesday where Sheffield City Council and Amey seek to have the injunction lifted and the campaign case dismissed. Update on Stop the Felling of Mature Highway Trees in Sheffield Dear Supporter The hearing for the judicial review in the ‘Save Sheffield’s Trees’ case is listed for 22nd March to be heard in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Tomorrow, Friday 18 March, we are re-opening our crowdfunding campaign in order to raise £10,000 to cover further legal fees. The link will be the same as last time, https://www.crowdjustice.co.uk/case/sheffield-trees/. Sheffield City Council, the defendant, and Amey, the interested party, (who signed a £2.2billion contract with the City) are strongly contesting the case saying they (the City) did not have a duty to consult local residents on the tree felling proposals and that there is no environmental harm from the proposed tree felling. They are also contesting that the Aarhus Convention applies to the claim saying the City's action has nothing to do with environmental harm. The Council and its contractor Amey have instructed a senior barrister and have lodged huge quantities of documentation - it is plain that we have a fight on our hands but there is a huge disparity of resources. The firm Richard Buxton Environmental & Public Law and barrister Charles Streeten have stepped up to the plate and are making it possible for us to fight back by agreeing to work on a part conditional fee arrangement. We are re-opening the crowd funding so that we can try to cover their fees. We are hugely grateful for your generosity! Without it, we wouldn’t have got this far in saving our trees, and hundreds of trees would already have been felled. The injunction gave them a reprieve. Now we ask you please to consider giving a little more. Or just pass the link https://www.crowd justice.co.uk/case/sheffield-trees/ on to others, share widely, so that others can contribute too. Small donations make a difference, any amount helps to cover our costs and save our trees.

Copied and pasted without comment from me. Letter defends Sheffield Council and slams ‘lack of perspective’ of tree campaigners Trees under threat from Sheffield City Council in Rivelin Valley Road in the city Picture Dean Atkins Trees under threat from Sheffield City Council in Rivelin Valley Road in the city Picture Dean Atkins 11:05Friday 19 February 2016 15 HAVE YOUR SAY Trade union leaders and academics have defended Sheffield Council’s tree felling programme and suggested campaigners are more worried about property prices than the environment. A letter signed by representatives of several unions and a number of university lecturers and researchers accuses campaigners, including Nick Clegg, of an ‘astonishing lack of perspective’ and ‘navel-gazing’. ADVERTISING But campaigners have hit back, calling the letter ‘wholly misleading and unjust’ and saying they are fighting for the ‘health and well-being of Sheffielders now and in the future’ rather than profit-making. The tree felling programme was stopped last week after the High Court granted a three-month injunction. The letter, signed by 17 people including president of Sheffield Trades Union Council Bob Jeffery and president of the University of Sheffield Students Union Christy McMorrow, said the city council did not ‘hate the environment’. Is said: “Sheffield has an estimated two million trees within its borders, giving it a strong claim to be the greenest city in Europe. The council is proposing felling and replacing 14 per cent of the 36,000 street trees, or 5,000 in total. After this process is complete, Sheffield will still have a strong claim to be the greenest city in Europe.” The letter said the council was felling trees because professional tradespeople had deemed them to be in danger of falling down, damaging pavements and potentially hampering the mobility of the elderly and disabled. It added: “It is difficult to escape the conclusion that opposition to the tree felling has as much to do with the protection of house prices in the leafy suburbs as it does with environmental protection.” And the letter called for perspective on the issue. It said: “We also want to contrast this issue with what we would see as some of the more pressing concerns facing the city of Sheffield at this time. “The city has been badly hit by economic recession and ongoing government austerity that has seen £350 million slashed from the council’s budget. Many residents have been rendered destitute by a toxic cocktail of the bedroom tax, benefits sanctions and cruel and perverse medical assessments that have seen the terminally ill deemed fit for work. Air pollution deaths are estimated to stand at around 500 per year, overwhelmingly concentrated in Tinsley and the northeast of the city, and yet this had provoked no outcry from the residents of Dore and Totley. “Emblematic of the astonishing lack of perspective and navel-gazing of those who would seek to make tree felling the defining issue of the moment is a certain Nick Clegg MP, who has recently gone on the record as stating that the council policy is a ‘national scandal’. This from the man who has the lowest attendance record of any Member of Parliament since the 2015 election, a man who has indebted an entire generation of students and has consistently shown to be no friend of the Sheffield ‘common people’. “So please, while we are open to sensible debate about whether trees actually need to be removed and replaced, can we ask the people of Sheffield for a little more perspective on the issues facing our city.” The letter is signed by the following, all in a ‘personal capacity’: Bob Jeffery, president of Sheffield Trades Union Council; James Bangert, president of Sheffield College Students Union; Christy McMorrow, president of University of Sheffield Students Union; Abdul Galil Shaif Alshaibi, Sheffield Yemeni Community Association; Muna Abdi, doctoral researcher, University of Sheffield; Martin Mayer, secretary of Sheffield Trades Council; Andrew Yeardley, secretary of Unite bus drivers branch; Dave Smith, chairman of Unite bus drivers branch; Zahira Naz, Labour candidate for Darnall Ward; Sohail Mumtaz, Sheffield Muslim Community Forum; Jonathan Marsden, community organiser and Richmond resident; Cheryl Robertson, community worker, Drop the Knife; Simon Murch, branch secretary, National Union of Teachers; Daragh O’Neil, treasurer of Sheffield People’s Assembly; Peter Davies, GMB regional organiser; and Jonathan Dean, senior lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University. But Save Our Roadside Trees campaigner Louise Wilcockson hit back at the letter. She said: “As a mixed heritage person, originally from Broomhall and from a single parent family, I find the statements in this letter to be wholly misleading and unjust. Over 15,000 people have so far signed the Save Our Rustlings Trees petition showing that this is far more than a neighbourhood situation.” She added: “We are thinking of the health and well-being of Sheffielders now and in the future - and not short-term goals of convenience and profit making - only to have a costly health bills and other lasting consequences caused by the loss of our highway trees. “We also object to the myth being perpetuated by Labour supporters and some of the Labour councillor that there is one choice - safety or the retention of our highway trees. They are not mutually exclusive - both are possible with good management. “This is a £2.2bn PFI contract into which alternative specifications and other options should already have been factored. No one is suggesting the council should beg from Peter to pay Paul.” Louise said campaigners were still waiting for the council to publish a breakdown of the ‘bizarre’ £26m figure given for potentially retaining Sheffield’s roadside trees, and for the council to ‘explain to the people of Sheffield how it is even possible that 200 trees will each cost up to £100,000.’ “It beggars belief and is arguably bad management on their part or exaggerated figures,” she said. Deputy leader of the city council Lib Dem group Coun Penny Baker also responded in an open letter to council leader Julie Dore, claiming the letter was a political move by Labour. She said: “To label the tree campaigners as middle class people who only care about their house prices is wildly inaccurate and inflammatory. The tree campaign is fuelled by a variety of causes, concerns about not just street scenes, but air pollution, Sheffield’s heritage and more recently it has become a cause symbolic of a lack of democracy in this city and the way your council treats the opinions and feelings of the people they are elected to represent. “I am appalled, along with many others, at the indifference and contempt the signatories of the letter appear to show for public opinion. Despite a barrage of complaints and petitions, including but not exclusive to a petition with 15,000 signatures from the Rustlings Road area, another with 6,000 signatures from Nether Edge and numerous individuals letters and fundraisers. Although this may have started in the so called ‘leafy suburbs’, the issue is now far more widespread than that.” Cabinet member for environment and transport at Sheffield Council Terry Fox welcomed the letter. He said: “I’m pleased to see some perspective. We all want to keep Sheffield green, and we need to pull together as a city to do the best we can for our trees. We’ll work closely with communities to get this situation sorted out as quickly as possible.” Read more: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/letter-defends-sheffield-council-and-slams-lack-of-perspective-of-tree-campaigners-1-7739862#ixzz41wa22ZLK

Hi, Hope this helps. Published in the Star this week. Sheffield Council has entered its defence against an injunction that has put its tree-felling programme on hold. The High Court granted the three-month injunction to Heeley tree campaigner Dave Dillner in February. A Sheffield Council spokesman said: “Our legal team have today (March 1) filed papers in the High Court in response to the recent injunction preventing essential work on the city’s street trees. We will be vigorously defending the claims that have been made in the injunction in relation to street trees. “Our street tree maintenance programme is designed to protect and enhance the city’s trees for future generations. We have a clear strategy for achieving this and ensuring that Sheffield remains the greenest city in Britain.” Read more: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-council-files-high-court-defence-to-tree-felling-injunction-1-7763448#ixzz41vT1eSeY

The weight of opinion from the world of arboriculture continues to condemn Sheffield City Council. https://ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/another-national-expert-unimpressed-with-sheffields-approach-to-street-trees-read-on/ https://ianswalkonthewildside.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/assessment-of-tree-strategy.pdf

I'm discussing nothing with you! If you want to indulge in playing with another contributor's user name to please yourself and broaden the smirk on your avatar's face so be it. I will not be joining you in the playground. Find another to indulge you!

Here's an idea wibbles. Stop wibbling and don't dare to presume you know anything about me! I do not own a car! I don't work! I walk to most places and use the bus when not on the hoof! There is nothing disingenuous about air pollution and it is not the "mainstay" of my argument! I care deeply about air pollution and have campaigned to raise awareness of the issue in Tinsley and Hillsborough Corner! Add to that raising awareness of pollution city wide! To attempt to reduce the level of this debate to the lowest common denominator as you are doing is, IMO, petty in the extreme! If this is really the best you are capable of I shall no longer respond.

Apologies to anyone reading this who is glad pantomime season is over... ...Oh yes I have. Not just me either. There are none so blind as those who will not see!

If it makes you feel better to believe you are right carry on believing it. I've been through this many, many, many, many, times with you and all you do is bat everything back...all the links...all the research figures...all the weight of arboricultural evidence and opinion. Everything I say is wrong...including the people who have produced the research and the experts who have spent years qualifying at the highest levels of their profession. We are all wrong and you are right. Congratulations! You win! There...happy now?

RE my bold above. Apparently it's the one you keep missing. Are you being deliberately disingenuous or is there another motive! Are you really suggesting we trawl back through all the evidence about the value and benefits of mature trees adjacent to the roadside where pollution from traffic is at its worst? Well, if that's the case we are done here. Enough links have been posted by myself and others. Go and find them! In other reports released this morning there are over 40,000 deaths annually as a direct result of air pollution.