UKC

https://www.dropbox.com/s/920h0kbkq9gcu8r/APR1.mp4?dl=0

Having been stymied by peaceful protesters in Sheffield having some success in preventing trees from being felled along the streets of Sheffield (the contract for this having been tendered out to private company AMEY by Sheffield City Council), in the absence of any legal recourse, 'bouncer's in Hi-VIS are now being employed by AMEY to remove anybody disrupting the felling of street trees.

So far, none of the tree protectors/protesters have had any success in finding out the identities of these large men in HI -VIS, exactly who is paying them, and the authority under whom the data gatherers are operating when recording footage of the (peaceful and none violent) people who are trying to save Sheffield's trees.

Those who are on facebook, can find out about what has been happening by looking at the 'STAG' group,, and it's googleable for on twitter too, as well as having been covered in the national press, along the lines of democracy being at risk when private companies take on certain public functions, due to accountability being at risk under the guise of confidentiality - so far there has been no success had in finding out the exact details of the contract agreed between AMEY and SCC, and thus the justification for the cutting down of healthy street trees which help to compact air pollution, when engineering solutions which have been used elsewhere in the UK, could be used to solve any problems which may occur when trees and roads and pavements share the same space.

In reply to Timmd:


If it's a public place, then they need no authority to film. Just as you need no authority to film them.

[not condoning the actions of either Sheffield council, or Amey, merely pointing out my understanding of the law]

In reply to Timmd:

Presumably someone has called the police? I would have thought that was a pretty quick way of finding out what legal authority the bailiffs are (presumably) working under.

Lots here https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/video-security-staff-drafted-in-over-sheffie... and there's a piece on Look North right now. It seems Amey have hire a stewarding company to enforce the High Court injunction.

They did my road a few months ago, it was odd as the security people wouldn't say what was happening as the tree surgeons were literally revving up the chainsaws.

In reply to TobyA:

I believe the police are being contacted.

In reply to captain paranoia:


I think it's the fact they wouldn't say who was employing them which gives some people a sinister impression, it adds to the opaqueness (next to the details of the contract over the management of public spaces being withheld from the public).

A friend was followed home after (legally) entering into an inadequately secured felling zone, and saved a tree, and got home to later have a court summons posted through her door addressed to 'Persons unknown'. The judge threw it out because of the technicality mentioned.

It's suspected that the council will have to pay AMEY a shed load of money if AMEY can't get on with it's contract, hence why any attempts at entering into dialogue over the felling of trees haven't been successful.

The financial reasons for felling healthy trees now and planting saplings in their place, but not always in the same spots, make a lot of sense, that over the term of AMEY's contract they'll make a profit, but when it comes to managing the air quality of the city, the benefits of mature trees on roads for mental health (people on average feel seven years younger {don't ask me how they worked this out} and less stressed), and from an ecologic perspective, as well as being very helpful in reducing air pollution, which Sheffield has a lot of, it makes absolutely no sense at all

In reply to Timmd:

I believe the police are being contacted.

I assume that Special Branch will deal with it?

In reply to FactorXXX:

Baddum tish

In reply to timmd:
I walked down one of these streets earlier. When I got within 10m of a barrier I was accosted by a 'bouncer' with no ID, who did not identify himself or who he was working for and made a point of shoving his chest mounted camera in my face to capture me. I suggested that wasn't very polite and I was simply walking down a public street. He said: "I don't have to explain myself to you."

Lovely people.

In reply to Timmd:

A friend was followed home after (legally) entering into an inadequately secured felling zone, and saved a tree, and got home to later have a court summons posted through her door addressed to 'Persons unknown'. The judge threw it out because of the technicality mentioned.

That does seem like a rather far fetched story...

In reply to FactorXXX:

I don't know about this one, but protestors have been handed court summons in the street and followed home, even when they haven't entered a safety zone. Two cases the council brought failed because they didn't have evidence of the injunction being breached. The summons handed out in the street has no legal value and isn't actually the same wording as the actual injunction.

In reply to FactorXXX:

Unless that was another pun...

In reply to FactorXXX:


Well, believe it or not, it's up to you, I frankly can't do anything about you deciding not to, and don't really give a shit, due to that.

It's up to you what you think. I know her well and she doesn't lie, and I don't too. So take it or leave it.

I've no inclination to try and post during the rest of this thread to convince you, you'll decide to believe or not by yourself, is my thinking.

I'm curt, because it's annoying when people question what has actually happen in something of a knee jerk manner.

Edit: I'll ask her if it's okay to pass on the names of her and the others she went to court with, and the different rulings for them.

In reply to Wil Treasure:

I don't know about this one, but protestors have been handed court summons in the street

An actual 'Court Summons', or something else that isn't actually a Court Summons but another piece of paperwork issued?

In reply to Timmd:

I find the storey as told doesn’t ring true - a document to “persons unknown” is not and can not be a summons, and as it was not addressed to your friend, she did not get it. She found it in her house - it was not sent to her.

You say that a judge “threw it out”. But what do you mean by “it”? Presumably not a court case because that can’t exist for “persons unknown”. So do you mean that the Jude threw the summons out? What exactly was the not-actually-a-summons thrown out of? Why was a judge looking at it?

Perhaps I am wrong - won’t be the last time - but the event you describe seems nonsensical. Are you lacking a complete description of what happened from your friend, or have you passed on an incomplete description here?

In reply to FactorXXX:


It’s not unknown for for organisations to sail exceedingly close to the wind (law on harassment) with official looking legalese intended to bash members of the public into line. TV Licencing / Capita I’m looking at you... In particular that at-first-glance convincing looking not-actually-a-summons you keep sending me...

In reply to FactorXXX:

A document purporting to be a court summons. As stated, has no legal basis.

In reply to Wil Treasure:

A document purporting to be a court summons. As stated, has no legal basis.

In all likelihood, an actual legal Court Summons has not been issued then?

In reply to Timmd:

From The Star article ...
"Many are afraid to speak out about this - with one resident privately admitting to the council that he no longer asks his grandchildren to visit him because of the masked people outside his house, while another has complained of people in masks sat outside his house at 6.30am in the morning.

Go on then, who's going to reveal their identity first?
If you haven't got the balls to protest in the open, showing your faces etc., who are you to criticise others not revealing their identities when they're doing their jobs?

In reply to wintertree:



I've calmed down now I've had a bath.

What's happened, is, when tree protesters in Sheffield started to have their pictures taken, they started to wear disguises, simply from not liking not knowing why their pictures were being taken, due to not being told why - even if it is legal to take pictures of people in public. Following this, a blanket injunction was served, banning anybody from entering a work zone, which meant that protesters continued to disguise their identities when entering work zones to prevent the felling of healthy trees.

When she entered the inadequately secured work zone, my friend was wearing a disguise, and so wasn't identifiable to anybody there who would have been recording events on behalf of AMEY/Sheffield City Council. She left where she'd been protesting and went home, and before being contacted more formally/officially by name, had a piece of paper through her door addressed to 'persons unknown', telling her that she'd breached the injunction and was due in court. Whether what she got through her door had any legal weight, or whether it was something produced by another party to let her know she'd 'been found out', I'm not clear, but following receiving this piece of paper through her door, she was officially summoned to court by name, along with 9 or 11 other people.

None of them were sent to jail, some of them were charged with court/legal fees, and my friend had her charges looked at by the judge (events being recorded by both 'sides' proved the work zone wasn't properly secured), who decided she'd not broken any kind of injunction at all against entering work zones around the trunks of trees, which happily meant that was the end of things for her. That whoever put the piece of paper through her door, didn't know who she was, and that it was posted through her door shortly after she got home, makes her think that she was followed home by somebody, a person unknown to her working on behalf of AMEY/Sheffield City Council.

Edit: Basically, everything possible is being tried to stop people from preventing healthy trees for which engineering work-arounds can be found from being felled, and this is just one part of it.

In reply to Timmd:


Aha. This bit of information and your explaining your supposition that she was followed home significantly changes the picture painted from your first post. It makes sense now. I can think of various explanations for the unknown person paperwork, none of them particularly savoury but also probably not illegal.


Well this “simply not” is your interpetation of why they’re going masked. A less charitable person might wonder if their willingly violating an injunction has anything to do with it as well... I am not plugged in to the contextual factors around all this so can’t comment with any views of my own, but if someone is wilfully violating a court injunction whilst obscuring their identity it’s not exactly surprise-of-the-month if the people requesting the injunction want to find their identity now is it?

Generally - what a mess when you have masked protestors battling private security in the vicinity to live chainsawing and tree felling. It’s hard to believe that state of affairs is in anyone’s best interest.

In reply to Timmd:
Could be worse, matey.
If you lived in Iraq, or any number of other interesting places. The private security contractors, would be armed and, from many accounts, seem to get away with murder.

The bouncers will probably be the sort of stewards they use at football matches, and the like. They will all be CRB checked and have first aid qualifications. I'd imagine that they would be squeaky clean, and not the sort to put their employers in the spotlight.

If they are there during the day, who protects the sites at night? It would be terrible if people went there at night and spiked the trees. A couple of meter long bits of iron bar or studding, hammered through at an angle, would cause all sort of issues around health and safety. If one were to inform the loggers and the council, then a risk assessment would have to be done. The whole process could grind to a halt, for a while.

Edit: I'm not suggesting or inciting anyone to break the law, because that would be bad. Just mentioning a 'what if...' scenario. I think the good people of Sheffield should demand that the security guards are there 24/7 though the cold and rain, no matter how much it costs, to prevent such actions.

In reply to wintertree:


But you have done anyway? They started to wear disguises before the injunction was served, as written in my post to which you've replied. The 'simply not' isn't just my interpretation. The cameras came out, and then the disguises did.


My friend didn't violate an injunction - so technically there was no reason for anybody to want to follow her home and later find out who she is. I feel it needs stressing, to convey the climate which things are happening within, that disguises were worn before the injunction was served, due to the people taking pictures not saying who there were working for and why the pictures were taken. Things have been rotten right from the start, to do with the approach of Sheffield City Council and AMEY towards the (imho) legitimate questions people have been asking.


I entirely agree. That's before one looks at the impact on Sheffield's air quality because of the felling, and the impact on attempts towards the creation of 'green corridors', to link together different green spaces within the city and around the edges of Sheffield, to benefit wildlife and biodiversity. The streets aren't nearly as restful and calming to walk down after many of the trees have vanished, too. Anything to do with quality of life is diminished.

In reply to wintertree:

I'm not sure if you've followed the tree saga in Sheffield but it does seem to be getting entirely out of hand with the council basically trying to criminalise a large number of people for objecting to roadside trees being felled for no reason but short term profit of a private company. You might think that given council is paid for and meant to act on behalf of the people they might be less confrontational.

Timmd: Apparently in California when redwoods where being felled to similar objections, one effective solution was to bash metal stakes into the trees. If these are hit by chainsaw this it is highly dangerous so making the felling difficult/dangerous/impossible. Could be an approach - although obviously tell the council so no one is hurt.

In reply to MG:

There's the sense that rumours are put out by anybody in support of AMEY/SCC. Something in one of the papers was to that effect, metal being hammered into trees, and members of STAG wrote in to say there was no way on earth that any tree protesters were doing things like that.

Objective reportage in The Sheffield Star and The Sheffield Telegraph on this can be hard to find at times.

In reply to Timmd:

Well maybe they should?

In reply to MG:
Maybe they should, at the moment the concern seems to be about 'keeping on the side of goodness' while trying to stop trees being cut down. There's been a disguised guy sitting in a tree, but nothing like you suggest so far.

I'm not sure myself about hammering things into trees, there's the need to keep the people of Sheffield on side too, I think. There'd be a fair few people who would side with anybody 'just trying to do their job' in cutting down the trees if metal was hammered into them, I would think.

In reply to MG:


I don't think the council has ANY interest in trying to criminalise anyone and it is far from clear that the tree felling is just about short term prophets for anyone. Maybe the contract was poorly designed but no one seems to have suggested that it was just about passing money to private company - I guess that would be quite obvious fraud.

In reply to TobyA:

The concern isn't about fraud or corruption, it's that money is too much/more of a motive for AMEY than best practice (in the management of city trees) when it comes to managing Sheffield's trees.

A concern which can be argued to be well founded, when there are cities within the UK which use engineering solutions to keep mature trees and pavements 'coexisting' in the kinds of situations where Sheffield's trees are being cut down.

If you're not a STAG member, and would like to find out what's been going on, it's easy to join and find out. I think I remember you posting about being on facebook in the past.

In reply to TobyA:

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/sheffield-council-threatens-stalinist-...



It's widely reported (and not challenged by Amey as far as I can see), that the aim is cut down tress early in the contract and replace them with saplings that won't cause problems, thus saving Amey a lot of cash. That sounds exactly like short term profits being the aim to me (I couldn't comment on the prophet angle).

In reply to MG:
Thank you, it's exactly so.

Edit: It's worth mentioning that Brian Lodge isn't to be believed. The council stand to lose a lot of money if things go too wrong, and he has been found to have 'misrepresented the truth', to do with the number of people asked in surveys and what they've said about trees being cut down, especially.

In reply to Timmd:

I would tend to suspect that healthy trees get cut down due to the ongoing cost of tree surveys to ensure that councils don't get sued when the inevitable happens and a tree falls into someone or their property.

In reply to timjones:
I'm sure that's a part of it. I understand that it depends on whether they're pollarded, and regularly enough, among other things. Which costs money, more than cutting down a tree and planting a sapling in it's place, which is a no brainer financially speaking over a 20 year contract. This is what Sheffield is up against.

In reply to Timmd:

A better answer might be to accept that trees fall down occasionally and tell the ambulance chasing lawyers to f' off

In reply to MG:

I've been telling Y8s that prophet and profit aren't the same too much recently! I'm losing perspective.

I read all that stuff back in the summer, including when they did our street. From the YP article I mainly took that Councillor Teal hasn't studied much modern Russian history if she thinks that's Stalinist.

The same article also notes that the CPS dropped charges in the early arrest cases and Billings said the police would be avoiding arresting protesters in the future because they obviously don't feel it's their place to try and adjudicate this on the streets.

In reply to TobyA:



Well maybe but it was the council attempting to take her to court. The CPS and police are clearly weren't buying the idea that they should act to support the council.

Am I being overly cynical in predicting the council leader involved in this will get well paid jobs with Amey as Strategic Vegetation Consultants in due course?

In reply to MG:


Indeed.

In reply to dread-i & wintertree

Could you stop all this talk of spiking trees. It's an absolute tw*ts game that could seriously injure someone.

In reply to Ridge:



I can’t stop it, because I haven’t done it and the other posters who have discussed it are not me and are not under my control.

In reply to Ridge:
I agree. That's why STAG members jumped on the rumour of that being done. Everybody is 'nice and middle class' to stereotype, so nobody would do anyway. Incidentally, somebody tried to write an article painting it as a class issue, as if the people in Nether Edge and Hillsborough (where trees have been cut down) are all comfortably off with nothing more to think about than liking trees (it's a stereotype anyway, there's hard up people protesting, too). London Plains especially do a very effective job of helping reduce air pollution, and the air around Hillsborough (which isn't middle class) where some have been cut down is very poor.

In reply to Ridge:

I understand your concern, but no one has suggested doing anything to injure anyone.
I wrote:
"If one were to inform the loggers and the council, then a risk assessment would have to be done."
MG wrote:
"Could be an approach - although obviously tell the council so no one is hurt."

If they have to guard every tree night and day the cost would make the process uneconomic. Not, if Bob the lumberjack looses an arm, they'll stop.

In reply to Lusk:

Sorry but f**k right off. Protest is a right.

If I am on the street outside my house, which is in S8 with a few trees that just might be on Amey's list, and a masked security guard comes up to me and demands to see my ID. Well he can f**k right off. And if I get a summons for parking outside my house but haven't had a notification then that is totally illegal.

Their jobs do not transcend the law, you are starting to sound like an apologist for a concentration camp guard. Tool.

In reply to wintertree:


Apologies, got you mixed up with MG.

In reply to Graeme Alderson:

Round of applause.

In reply to Graeme Alderson:

Calm down dear.
If you care to check my initial post, it's masked protesters hanging around peoples houses at six in the morning I was pointing out.
Check the video, no men in hivis have masks on, they're evicting people who have no right to be on a work site; no hard hat, no hiviz, probably no safety boots and probably the only eye protection is their masks to hide their spineless faces.

In reply to Lusk:
In certain situations, the people in masks have asked householders (while not wearing their masks) if they can stand in their front gardens to stop trees from being felled, and the response has generally been yes.

In reply to Timmd:


Do you have a case number? This should be on the public record.

In reply to Lusk:



I wouldn't exactly call people willing to risk going to jail to stop trees from being cut down because of their ecological value and their benefit to human health spineless.

It seems clear that you hate them, but I wouldn't call them spineless to be honest...

In reply to Timmd:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-leeds-42193555?ns_mchannel=social...

Latest news...

In reply to Lusk:


I wish we had a thousand of those spineless masked protesters for every nasty little man like you.

Bravo tree protesters of Sheffield, I fear time is not on the side of the trees you're protecting but I hope revenge at the ballot box will be sweet (and Green).
jk

In reply to Ridge:




As a native of S10 my drive across sheffield to the works has passed probably 30 badly barriered open holes and obstructed pavements with trip hazards everywhere, amey left plastic barriers unsecured creating problems for pedestrians. The Council refused to act stating that its Ameys was self auditing and therefore their responsibility.
Also im noticing the pavements and road surfaces begin to break down 8 months after being laid so this winter will show the cut price job thats being churned out by ameys subcontractors.

In reply to muppetfilter:

This is the same Council which pulled up the paving slabs and tamacked our pavements, then a year later dug up the pavements to install streetlights. Still waiting to have the road resurfaced, but on the plus side at least the potholes act as improvised speed bumps.

In reply to Jenny C:
And the same contractor that has spirited away a shitload of old cobbles in the process of resurfacing all those roads.

Have a look online, or stick your head round the door of an 'architectural salvage' yard such as Swifty's up the road from the Works, to see what "reclaimed antique cobble stones" of that quality are worth, for the driveways and patios of the well-heeled. Possibly even more valuable than a couple of tons of rather beautiful UK-grown hardwood.

In reply to Ridge:

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting doing it secretively in order to hurt people. Quite the opposite.

In reply to Timmd:
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the council


http://www.atimes.com/article/another-uk-china-deal-ice-amid-secrecy-confus...

In reply to deepsoup:


Yes, heritage ones (which shouldn't be removed) have vanished from near Kelham Island, but it's unclear whether this is temporary at the moment, or whether it can be made to be temporary by enough people making a fuss.

In reply to Timmd:

More coverage - by the Huffington Post.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/increasingly-desperate-amey-and-acorn-...

In reply to Timmd:


Unbelievable. Outrageous!

In reply to Timmd:

Heath and Safety corners have been being cut in the rush to cut down trees, and this is the foreseeable result. A passer by (in this case a child) being hit by the branches of a tree while walking past as it was felled.

In reply to Timmd:

I forgot the link to the story. It wasn't a 'freak accident', it was caused by negligence.

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/boy-four-left-needing-surgery-after-being-hi...