Gary Prentice

Would I dare do that? Can't help myself from preaching can I?

Strange that Paul, I wonder why we, as an industry, are so slow to change from meeting others over a desk, on a site etc. Makes no sense but it's pretty regular for me to meet an architect, structural engineer, demo lads, arb contractor, project manager, QS and geologist/site remediation specialist (plus LA planning bods and TOs) 99% of the time some sort of video conference would be much more efficient, cheaper and environmentally friendly. Maybe the truth is that everyone likes an excuse to get out of the office and push off home early straight from the meeting to instigate useful change? Edit, many happy returns for Sunday. I like that photo, really tranquil.

Definitely David. Looking at Horse chestnut in and around Manchester these last couple of years has been 'interesting'. Plenty suffering with leaf miner and Guidnardia (SP?) but many/most with 'healing' wounds of Pseudomonas Makes you wonder how many trees were removed preemptively without at least trying an alternative. Still the more resources like this the better, gives the mere mortal arb something to discuss, an option to try, rather than to bear the cost of felling as well as all the other environmental tree benefits associated. Clients like two things, saving money and pictures to explain the point simply

Thanks for following up on this David, I've looked at the original post a few times when considering similar options and wondered how things had gone.

Should be doing both where there are suitable sites, provide diversity in age classes and habitats

Sorry Mesterh my using the word 'protection' in has mis-directed the conversation. No argument from me r.e. schools provided meals for 'truly derived kids, BUT after identifying the problems the education department job should be seen as done - the same as any NGO/LAGO,or other oganisation. Identify the issue, report it and move on. Education department is to educate the students, not to make up for failings for every other department/quango/whoever who aint doing theirs.

Depends entirely how, where, what size is involved ( Middle of brand new yorkshire stone patio for example, in heavy deep clay with no drainage in pit ) Totally aside I have a scheme in front of me where a developer seems to think that sorting 20+ 20ft tall trees in <1m square pits is gonna be cheap. Every earlier planting in the precinct is already lifting the pit surround and surrounding paving. "Just make good and make right" "Open your cheque book!"

If You and yours catch it and survive it what's to worry about? Might be a dent in long term plans but you can always earn more money - might be some hardships in the future for a lot of folk but still a better option than jossing it

Shouldn't child protection be the task of social services? Not the education system? Sorry, forgot what an utter waste of time social services actually is IME

after the great storm e 80's I had a lot of opportunities to inspect old cables and rods. in trees that had pretty much most of their crowns just blown out. I can't remember more than 1 or two where a cable itself had failed with the failed limb/stem being held in the air . So in a way they were fit for purpose in preventing limbs falling on targets below. BTW these tree were mostly in Cambridge University college gardens and of many different (some more exotic) species |definitely consider the potential benefits of reduction/reducing static and dynamic loading as an option

I'm only staying around to keep an eye on you eggs. But relax, I'll come back to haunt you

I stand corrected

Adelges picea is Balsam Woolly aphid (Try to keep up ) I think I'd have that as my best guess based on some very poor photos.

I'm 54 and immunosuppressed. I'm also DNR at the moment so I doubt I'd survive it.

What are the symptoms of 'Small Pond Envy'? Can you go for medical enhancement or are there adverts in the back of certain magazine?

If you're pinning your hopes on getting a bed, I'd give up now. Based on my own experiences bed management in my local health authority is woeful. Several times I've been stuck in A&E when there's a clear requirement to be moved into ICU, but there's no beds available. What was surprising a couple of weeks ago when I was in is the percentage of beds taken up by stroke victims. I appreciate the monitoring that need due to the risk of further incidents but had always thought they were on specialised walds to cover their monitoring and observations. Anyway, that seems unlikely to change. The holdups to realise beds is blindingly obvious. Once discharged (to return home or move to another hospital or specialist unit. the pharmacy fills the consultants prescription. Until that is provided the patient sits tight, occupying a bed/single room. On average, and if you're really lucky, it'll be at least four hours, ofen 6-8hrs before medication arrives and you can. So a good percentage of beds are still taken by people who no longer need them. All staff say is "pharmacy is backed up normal! I presume that a manger is earning £60+K a year but no-one seems to realise that delayed discharges due to pharmacy levels create a road block in freeing up beds! Another obvious failure is inadequacies in hospital transport services. When I was in a couple of weeks back I was booked to go to a specialist renal unit. Packed and ready to go. On each occasion transport was a problem, the last time a consultant came to Oldham from Salford to oversee the move. After he arrived he was told it wasn't happening due to transport issues. What's annoying is the abuse of the transport system. I've seen dozens a people arrive for outpatient treatment in an ambulances. People seem to treat that as a right. You might need hospital transport for an appointment if you must travel with medical care, but lots of the people arrive and twenty minutes family and friends arrive (presumably under there own steam) to offer support or to translate. There's something amiss when alternative transport is available; public/taxi/family, friend or neighbours for what afterall is a day to day appointments (not emergency) which creates a barrier to operating at the levels where transport needs are often pretty urgent - getting seriously ill people to the best unit available for their problems. This is a bit of an aside, but I saw something monday that just highlighted some peoples ignorance of basic hygiene. I had an outpatients appoint for IV chemo treatment. Bare in mind that the ward and clinic is full of cancer patients with suppressed immune systems. I sat in the waiting room, I fellow came in and started coughing, continuously, covering his mouth with his hand. So anything he's coughing is now coating his palms. Now that they well covered he starts picking up magazines. Then he goes to the flasks where you can make yourself - let's make sure everyone gets a chance to catch whatever I've got then! I gave it a couple of minutes and then and moved as far from him as possible. "Is there a problem?" he asked. My reply just got a blank look. I just said, "look I'm immunosuppressed, like most of us in here. I don't want to sit near anyone with an apparent infection showing complete disregard for anyone else. Due to your ignorance you're putting people at risk, how about coughing into a tissue rather than covering your hands and touching everything else? Then go and wash your hands and use the hand-cleansers situated all around you. Nurses got me moved into a treatment room immediately - causing trouble again

But therein lies the problem Khriss. We all want advances in medicine to our improve our lot and longevity but on the other hand we want it 100% risk free. You can't have both. When you 'need' an x-ray, you want it. But who really considers that MC died as a result of her experiments to initially introduce radiography? Next time you have any sort of medical procedure, take a new prescription etc - look at the data you're given. Most possible/potential adverse side affects are statistically broken down, but in almost everything there is a very low (1-2%) of a reaction resulting in death. As an aside, I wonder how many people who throw Thalidomide into the ring when arguing vaccinations are even aware that a newer version (Lenalidomide) is currently being used (often quite successfully) in todays cancer treatments? Maybe we should think about the greater benefit to the greatest percentage of the population when we consider medical trials and errors.

The government making rash, poorly informed decisions, in a rush to jump on a band-wagon? Well, bless my giddy aunt, who'd have thunk it?

surely that would be pre-brexit coal? So all produced to fulfil the same environmental targets across the EU? Can't possibly be anything wrong, can there be?

Usually quite carefully, cos they're used to being in a position with limited means of escape.

Training videos are always going to be a chicken and egg scenario. For basic stuff, okay demonstrate the safest, by the book method. It would be unthinkable to demonstrate the easiest/quickest/most efficient methods used by an experienced climber to a novice and expect them to have the competence to make the right decision every time. It's only experience and practice on a multitude of tree species that an experienced climber falls back on when making a decision as to how they'll do something. It can't be learnt from a video, only by years of practice.

My bro-in-law got stopped in the early hours the other week, picking his lad up from somewhere. They were just checking why a commercial was out and about at that time. Police were fine with him and he had no problem being stopped. Just the way good policing should be, or used to be. Maybe if snowflakes stopped moaning about civil liberties we'd see more proactive policing.

And pray that the wagon is still there to put the tools back into

Okay, okay. Maybe I should have written.... Personally I would get someone to hand dig. Seriously though, If it was my project, yes I would do enough of the grunt work to make sure that the tree was moved with enough of a viable root ball to become established. I actually like jobs like that. If the tree was just a tree within a group planting or something like that, you'd be right. But avenues are different. The whole point of an avenue is uniformity. They don't provide the same aesthetic impact when there are different varieties/forms/cultivars and ages/sizes. They are very difficult to manage (particularly as hey age and trees are lost through natural causes) Is an avenue of even 50 year trees an avenue when there is new plantings in the mix? It would easier to chuck in a new tree, of similar size, but in this instance I can see where the owners are coming from. The trees the same age as the avenue planting, presumably the same genetically (bit of a bugger after 50 years of growth to see a mismatch in the avenue because the genetics included slower growth rates)) Peter Glasser (Sp?) the head forester at Burleigh layered shoots from the collection when he planted a 1/4 mile double row avenue twenty years ago (100's of plants) to ensure that in a hundred years time the new avenue would contain identical matched trees (as far as is humanly practical). Burleigh has a lot of avenues planted by Capability Brown, Worth a visit just to see how just one different variety of lime spoils the look.

That'll teach me to rely on Wikepedia, as a reliable source "This mushroom is found predominantly in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria and Northeastern India. It is found in the wild on decaying trees "