tree-fancier123

Sorry I should have put it another way. I dont think maybelateron was being preachy. It seems to me he said something along the lines of 'I dont like the thought of getting questioned by HMRC and found out. His was a concern about punishment. But I tried to talk about another reason for being honest - because one day you may need expensive treatment on the NHS, so when you're on the table and your life is in their hands you can think Ive paid in as per instructions, not tried to be some flash Dan getting away with whatever I can.

He (maybelateron) is ex NHS, so I expect he has a certain moral standing on this, after all his wages came out of taxpayer money. I have commited fraud many a time and I know full well I will burn in hell.

too late in my edit - caught out and off to dunces corner

also the timing of cutting is a consideration - I would try to avoid autumn when majority of fungal decay spores are released, now would be good except as Stere mentioned there is already drought stress. Early summer if no drought or late December/ January good times.

Tree management isn't like mathematics, so yes opinions prevail, but you should see a trend emerge if say 10 consultants were asked on where to cut that lapsed pollard with a view to removing 2 and retaining 3 stems. Also I've no idea who the best consultant is thought to be. Jeremy Barrell is a famous one, but there are probably a dozen really good ones, with another 1200 people holding the level 6 qual who sort of know what they are on about

with big wounds right near the ground it could be more prone to decay getting into the 3 retained stems, the leaning one could be cut into the field a bit and still give access, for the reason of slowing/preventing infection I would suggest 10ft above ground. I'm not a consultant. If you paid the best consultant in the land for their advice you would be very upset at the loss of so much money, but your tree may end up happier.

Downing Street is tech. Soon the PM will be AI , as we are told they are less prone than humans to circuit malfunction. It will be illegal to discriminate against artificial MPs, just coz theyre not flesh and blood.

Rogozin tweeted 'we are creating AI not Terminator' yeah right

“I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it,” “I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal." Elon Musk

Everyone should have a place called home, even if they are criminals and tax dodgers.

I feel sorry for the people who put their life savings into moving into a place in a nice village, only to have the gypos arrive and build a camp. Happens all over the country. It's an invasion and should be repelled by the armed forces.

Gypsies use 1,000 TONNES of rubble and 12 dumper trucks to build illegal camp in just three days | Daily Mail Online WWW.DAILYMAIL.CO.UK Around 12 dumper trucks arrived on the land at Blackbrook, Staffordshire, at 3am last Saturday. Travellers built an illegal...

although I would like to think a human doctor will be checking on scans and x-rays too, just in case some damp gets in the circuit boards. This damp in the circuit boards always worries me, what about circuit malfunctions in self driving cars - maybe they will take out a row of benefit claimants on the pavement

one thing AI and robots are already beating humans is reading medical scans - an AI machine doesn't have an off day when it's mind wonders to matters outside work

an affordable rough terrain robot to trim a big hedge on sloping ground should be here within 200 years and when it's introduced it must be made to pay income tax

the story has made the New Statesman too, ah well, I'm voting MarkJ at the next election, can't wait to put my feet up on UBI

ah yeah, but in good faith is a phrase with a different meaning If something is done in good faith, it is done sincerely and honestly by the looks of Cummings blog editing antics it doesn't look like he was acting in good faith

well there's a turn up for the books - caught out by the waybackmachine, instead of just making a new post he included the material along with the one I linked to about risky virus experiments in secure bio labs. That is pretty bad imo, it may have been done innocently, as he thought it was relevant to his previous post, but it does look like Cummings was out to deceive people into thinking he was on the case before he really was. If he was trying to deceive, then all the science in the world shouldn't save him - off to a remote beach and disenfranchised is the recommended method. He certainly has left himself wide open by adding corona stuff to the biohazard post AT SUCH A TIME AS THIS APRIL. If he had just added the stuff to that post without a pandemic currently flaring up it wouldn't have mattered. The two blogs pages before and after modification in the link below, it does look bad. The haters have got him by the balls with this bit of sleuthing. Wayback Machine WEB.ARCHIVE.ORG

and use it to guide policy decisions, which is the bit I like. Of course he will get lots of things wrong, but most people, politicians included just don't spend the time trying to understand the current state of scientific knowledge. Cummings is not going to be the oracle, but he is at least having a good go.

I have to agree that Cummings has ruined the idea of people being obedient and as people have said today his actions may have put many lives in danger if it results in people copying him, finding their own ways to justify bending the rules. However, I still think he is more of an asset than a liability. The fact he wants politics to be steered by science marks him out as a visionary. Most advisors are only about business and economy. I think Cummings tries to bring a lot of different disciplines together for an interesting perspective.

meaning you haven't read much, or any of his blog in any detail, but it gives you a buzz to put him down. His blog is full of ideas - sure you could be selective and quote sections from his blog to make him look bad, but I doubt if there are many other advisors with such a genuine interest in science and technology. There are links right through his blog to many of the most respected academic institutions in the world. The guy is actually spending time learning stuff. Not just spewing out drivel for something to do.

Because you were rubbishing Cummings, without really knowing much about him at all. Of course he could be got rid of for his error, but I believe Boris knows he has someone particularly talented on his team, so has decided to let it ride. From Dominic Cummings' blog dated 4th Mar 2019 The most secure bio-labs routinely make errors that could cause a global pandemic & are about to re-start experiments on pathogens engineered to make them mammalian-airborne-transmissible – Dominic Cummings's Blog DOMINICCUMMINGS.COM ‘Although the institutions of our culture are so amazingly good that they have been able to manage stability in the face of...

so you want to see between individual trees in a line to a view beyond, not look over the top of a hedge? if so then if your budget can stand it buy taller specimens and plant 4 metres apart, or two metres apart if you want to mess about thinning every other plant in 5 years or so. Edit- if you want to look between individual trees to a view beyond, then even at 4 metres apart you will be loosing a few as they mature .As it's a windbreak maybe the holm oak mentioned above is worth considering, an evergreen would shelter the whole year. You would need to do some research on your soil acidity and expected moisture to see what candidate species are most likely to flourish. On a hill it will probably get dry and you will need to water the beech a lot, even as they mature it is possible the beech won't like an extremely hot dry summer. Holm oak may be more drought tolerant, I'm not 100%, but they are native to much hotter regions of europe than UK, they do seed across hillsides. (images of Ventnor, IOW) Have a read of this free tree species selection guide http://www.tdag.org.uk/uploads/4/2/8/0/4280686/tdag_treespeciesguidev1.3.pdf holm oak is listed as drought tolerant, hornbeam as moderately drought tolerant (p353-354), but common beech is listed as moderately sensitive to drought.

Scotland and Norway aren't in danger of water shortage, unlike many other countries today not married - too many weird habits, no one wants me. I must change, or die a lonely man

Not wut, water - lack of which causes more deaths than covid ever will. So if Singapore say if its yellow, let it mellow, its coz they want to drink and grow crops, without importing, or expensive desalination. Men using the sink as a urinal can clean it with say 340-342ml of water, much less than needed to flush a loo. Drought is the biggest threat to increasing world pop imo