AHPP

How could Mick have won the deodar job for €5000?

It’s just a web of competing subjective values, like the rest of life. Some people like an environment where paperwork and compliance for compliance’s sake makes the money and workers are stalked for contractual transgressions and the opportunity to invoke penalty clauses. Some people like a joint at lunchtime while cutting hedges and going home on a bicycle. People usually find the right enough people to deal with on this spectrum and their little corner of the world works while other people’s works for them.

I think arb is often poorly paid (for employees, freelancers etc) because it’s often quite pleasant so they’ll take less. Building sites are hellholes filled with morons and arseholes with clipboards. Arb sites to me are gardens, tea and cake on tap or site clearances where you can enjoy the industrialist’s satisfaction of making a big difference quickly with machines etc. I’ve found the majority of arb types pleasant enough and an above average number of them above averagely interesting. Like many, I’m not in it to get rich so these pleasures are worth it to me. As for why the amount end clients are charged is low compared to builders etc, I don’t know whether it is. With small firms, the boss is often on site working so enjoys the tea and cake and the pleasures of the job. Some people don’t care about that so want more money instead. Likewise bigger firms who are just sending men to addresses on a screen are more on the numbers. I’m beginning to feel like I’m rambling on this second half but hopefully someone is getting something from it. I price very little work for end clients and always go in high and safe when I do. The joys of eating the icing off the cake as Mike said earlier in this thread.

He’ll want €100/hour to talk to you now.

The Arb Association is completely within their rights to maintain the normal level of detachment popular among the professionally aloof. It's their loss though. The industry talks on here.

Have you got a photo showing the union from the side?

Likewise. People often say good job, impressive, I couldn’t do that etc. A kid drew a picture of me once. That’s domestic work though, people pleased to have their gardens back. To a developer or maintainer of land/property, perhaps the tree people are just forgettable necessities for clearing a site before you can put a visible money maker like a bricklayer in. I don’t even buy that though. Getting rid of a tree in the way of a Starbucks drive through is still productive work.

Which model? I was scrambling to buy one to perk a fire up the other day but passed on an AK battery model. I’ve used an AP model before and was impressed enough but it was ages ago.

I considered being outraged but the Arb Association doesn’t matter.

Small fry but a nice split. Why should one die while two live? Pretty similar amount of cambium on all.

On bio oil, I've got fifteen or twenty litres of blue/green stuff in the shed that I'm never going to use. Anyone near Newcastle upon Tyne welcome to collect. Free or a bottle of cheap red wine if you felt inclined.

It amazes me that that people buy chain oil in such small quantities. It doesn't go off. I'm only a freelance climber (and don't use very much) and buying 25l drums still seems fiddly considering I have the space for a 210l drum. Now questioning why I haven't done that actually... I'm constantly amazed when firms that have the space to store a chipper, stump grinder, two trucks etc turn up with 2l and 5l bottles from saw shops. Ridiculously expensive and inconvenient. I'd be wanting tanker deliveries like heating oil if I ran an outfit of any size. TL;DR - Buy the largest quantity you can store. More is usually cheaper per litre.

Bloody forget it...

Moving some auxiliary accommodation onto the driveway would rapidly reveal them but is rather rude. Land reg, £3 ish.

My girlfriend was recently looking at a house on the market for 220. She offered 222. Agent came back wanting more so she offered 240. Then they invited her to offer 276. A rumour in the area now exists, that 305 is the latest high bid. But while apparently swimming in these competitive offers, the place is still for sale, six months on… I call bullshit.

This swear filter is stupid, Steve. If you can’t call an estate agent a c..t, who can you call one.

Call him a babe, reduce your offer and tell the owners why.

Hartlepool particularly offends me. It's next to quite substantial industry on Teesside, nuclear power station, oil rig recycling, big chemical place etc. Surely loads of opportunity for support and ancillary work. I tried to get the wheels aligned on the van, a perfectly ordinary 3.5t small commercial vehicle, a perfectly normal example of support work to heavier industry. Nobody had a big enough shed, nobody answered the phone, nobody committed to a time, nobody cared. A complete absence of get up and go. When I eventually found somewhere, they tried to con me into a four wheel alignment and only relented when I asked them to show me on the rear hubs where they planned to make adjustments. Their neighbour did it after I'd hung around for ages. He dropped it off the hoist, took more money than quoted and had ****************ed off by the time I was back two minutes later to tell them the steering wheel was off sixty degrees. "Well it drives straight doesn't it." By the time they'd finished lunch and deigned to have it back in, I'd spent 6 hours trying to accomplish a 20 minute job. Utterly feckless town.

Same as Hartlepool and any number of other post-industrial shitholes up here. Lovely buildings and great history but the towns as they present themselves now do themselves no favours. I was passing through to some soulless new build estate at Ingleby Barwick, two financed Audis on the drive etc. I hate those places but the top and bottom of it was that I was able to buy a bike helmet and fiddle about fitting it for ten minutes sat on the bloke's front lawn while he filled my bottle. The same transaction in the centre of Stockton would have come with the risk of hep c. There's gritty and then there's just shitty.

Aye. That’s fairly hard to find an excuse for. I went through Stockton on a bike the other day as it happens. Didn’t stop. Shithole.

It's a silver birch. It'll get to 12" DBH (if it's lucky) and rot enough that he'll have it cut down. Fifteen minute climb. Discount for cash. Or in some desperately unlucky future, it'll get TPOd, get to 12" DBH (if it's lucky) and rot enough that it falls over, in all likelihood doing literally tens of pounds' worth of damage. OP, I wouldn't be worried. Take Stubby's advice.

I can be as cynical as the next man about beggars, drugheads etc but do keep a bit of an open mind. You don't know whether the man in front of you is lazy scum with no excuse or whether he's gone down a path that started with his dad's mates taking turns to rape him while his dad put fags out on the back of his neck. Or something in between.

It’s a metropolis.

I've driven through Penistone fifty times and always noticed the very smart barn and the logs for sale signs. I don't suppose that's you is it?

Back up again. What hashtags are people using to look at tree killing machinery? Diggers, skidsteers, grapple lorries, telehandlers etc.