tree forks Scotland - Arb' Association talks..or lack there of..

[Gary Prentice]

Shame you missed out on it.

 

But generally I'd agree with the sentiments of this thread. Scotland and the north do seem to get the rough end of the stick (similar topics currently going on on the UKTC forum)

 

looking at the AAs email today. At next years CPD events, there's nothing I'd like to attend at Myerscough or further north 

[Gary Prentice]

19 minutes ago, jfc said:

The course in stirling was fully booked up. I wanted to go but was too late. So there is demand up here! Duncan slaters talk in the botanics last year was very well attended too.

Full of southerners well, me from Manchester, a Planner from Hackney, London & a fellow from Durham. 

 

Sorry for for taking places from locals but it was worth going to. I think Chris who ran it would do it again if there was interest, we discussed other subjects for training events. 

 

Pm me if you'd like his email

[scotspine1]

To be fair the Scottish Branch has run many interesting courses, seminars, workshops and meetings over the last 20 years or so. This year for example: Chris Simpson of Informed Trees ran a seminar on hazard tree assessment. Slater presented his theories on branch forks. There was a recent climbing workshop in Cumbernauld. The free to attend AGM in Dundee had Kevin Frediani of Inverewe Gardens and Keith Sacre of Barchams Trees giving interesting talks. 

 

Seen many people come and go at the Scottish Branch events over the last 20 years. All associations or club type organisations are cyclical by nature, you get a few core enthusiastic folk for 5-6 years then they move on for various reasons: have a family, move away, leave arb altogether etc.

 

In the meantime things get quiet for a while then more enthusiastic folk appear and things start happening again. 

 

As an example in the late 90s to mid 2000s the Scottish Branch ran well attended treeclimbing  comps in conjunction with the ISA at various venues around Scotland. These events stopped completely but the Scottish Branch continued putting on relevant climbing related workshops. 

 

If you want more AA representation and events in Scotland join the Scottish Branch and help put on events and suggest ideas. Alternatively start a new organisation call it Arb Scotland or whatever you want and organise events yourself with a few like minded people. You don't need the AA to do anything. Even a Facebook group could organise a couple of events/speakers/workshops every year. 

 

[ArbMish]

20 hours ago, Andymacp said:

 

Ah cock, I’ll get back in my box

 

 

I would still say that a handful of courses run in a year in the whole..sorry the southern part of Scotland... isn't enough. There is so much talk on improving our industry and making it better respected but we don't get much chance to better ourselves through an association whose main point is the improvement of the industry! Or perhaps that's not what it's for...

[Gary Prentice]

13 minutes ago, ArbMish said:

 

I would still say that a handful of courses run in a year in the whole..sorry the southern part of Scotland... isn't enough. There is so much talk on improving our industry and making it better respected but we don't get much chance to better ourselves through an association whose main point is the improvement of the industry! Or perhaps that's not what it's for...

Can you see the chicken and egg situation?

 

There's no point in having quality people in an industry when no-one outside the industry even recognizes the importance of trees. Try standing on a site with a chartered engineer, project manager, geologist etc, you're still the 'tree man' Where's no arboriculturist high in the department of the environment. 

 

So where should the industry, or the AA, be directing their energies, for the people doing the job, or to raise the industries standing so that the people doing the job are recognised as professionals and viewed by others as professionals. 

 

 

[ArbMish]

5 minutes ago, Gary Prentice said:

Can you see the chicken and egg situation?

 

There's no point in having quality people in an industry when no-one outside the industry even recognizes the importance of trees. Try standing on a site with a chartered engineer, project manager, geologist etc, you're still the 'tree man' Where's no arboriculturist high in the department of the environment. 

 

So where should the industry, or the AA, be directing their energies, for the people doing the job, or to raise the industries standing so that the people doing the job are recognised as professionals and viewed by others as professionals. 

 

 

Is it not one and the same? If you give those doing the job the means to learn more in order to 'be better at it' (for want of a different way of saying it). Then the standard will be higher, it also means those same people are able to explain to customers why they are doing a certain thing. That knowledge gains respect. When you act like a professional - standards, knowledge etc - you are viewed as one are you not?

 

I'm not saying every customer would listen but there are people like that everywhere. Plenty of times I've explained to customers why I'm doing or not doing something and each time they've listen and been impressed and then passed this on to other people. I'm travelling almost 100miles to go to college to learn more, to be better than 'someone who can use a chainsaw'. However to learn anything outside of college I have to travel to the borders or England. As I understand it a lot of Scotland is made up of small businesses, it's hard to finance the training, travel, accommodation and loss of work to attend something when it's over a hundred miles away. Therefore justifying going is that much harder. I would think if you make courses more easily available then they are more likely to be attended, thus leading to people in the industry having more knowledge/respect.

 

There is now heavy arboriculture involvement in construction where there wasn't before. Protecting root zones for example, in some cases this is now even monitored using TMS. Tree protection is becoming a much higher priority within council planning. Air spading to deal with root compaction in street trees is more widely used, for example. We are behind in Scotland for sure but should we not begin the change at the roots and let it work up?

[Arctostaphylos uva-ursi]

On 26/11/2017 at 21:44, AA Teccie (Paul) said:

To be fair, the previous day I delivered a BS3998 seminar and we had circa 15 people attended that. The upshot is we're just never sure what events will or will not prove successful and I applaud the initiative here in getting this off the ground...hopefully.

A good number of those were from the highlands too!  When did the AA last put on a training event in Inverness Paul?

 

[Arctostaphylos uva-ursi]

21 hours ago, jfc said:

The course in stirling was fully booked up. I wanted to go but was too late. So there is demand up here! Duncan slaters talk in the botanics last year was very well attended too.

Ha ha that's interesting! As I received an email from the AA saying that the Slater talk was not well attended.  Someone is telling porkies.

[Arctostaphylos uva-ursi]

21 hours ago, Gary Prentice said:

Full of southerners well, me from Manchester, a Planner from Hackney, London & a fellow from Durham. 

 

Sorry for for taking places from locals but it was worth going to. I think Chris who ran it would do it again if there was interest, we discussed other subjects for training events. 

 

Pm me if you'd like his email

I was another who missed out on this. Cheers Gary ya bugger!

No but seriously if it was run again I would be interested.  Perth would be a great venue for this type of thing.

[Gary Prentice]

24 minutes ago, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi said:

I was another who missed out on this. Cheers Gary ya bugger!

No but seriously if it was run again I would be interested.  Perth would be a great venue for this type of thing.

Gretna would be better

 

it it was a good deal, a cheap course with lots of CPD hours, good venue and I even managed to fit in Dinner with Jules (Daltontrees)

 

i would contact Chris Simpson though, that was his first course but I’m sure he’d be willing to do more if the interest is there. I’d have no hesitation in coming back again