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The groundie seems to be the common scapegoat ….. Technology moves on but the blame stays the same [emoji23][emoji23]

Not without a hint of sadness I bet. ! Should of sold it years ago you old dinosaur [emoji39].

£4.5 k for it was a bargain. That’ll earn its keep in no time. Good find.

Just to be clear .. forestry / coppicing work ? J E Homewood in Haslemere have been struggling to find guys to coppice chestnut for fencing.

Let’s hope they carry on that way and broadcast their true colours to the nation on TV. Our lives are generally impacted by their crime, mess and shoddy workmanship tainting industries like tree surgery If you have absolutely no experience / knowledge of them people can tend to be sympathetic to them and look at them through rose tinted lenses romanticised by the ‘old ways’ of tinker / gypsy lifestyle and wax lyrical about them having their rights to roam blah blah blah. I hope they shoot themselves in the foot on national TV and lose some of these sympathy votes. I haven’t watched it but these programmes are all the same. I’ll wager it starts off exposing some dreadful behaviour ( which it sounds like it has ) then there will be a shift showing their struggles in living their way portraying them as victims and then something showing how tight knit they are, the ‘values’ of their culture and Ed will walk away with a different but undecided view posing a few questions both good and bad. I accept within their Race/culture there are genuine old school travellers. Rightly or wrongly I differentiate them by terminology. They are travellers. Those recidivists out there committing scams and theft are termed pikies ( or worse ) and looked at differently That’s mirrored in every culture though

Or crap at life and only have business [emoji23]

Best to stick it as a deposit on financing something newer. 8k for an arb tipper and you’ll be looking at something pretty tired I should think.

My dear old Nan says if you help take her to the cash point she can get the money for you …

Here’s some. 5 nice expensive stolen caravans found on one traveller site recently. Stolen from farms across the country. 5 is pushing coincidence a little far

Yup. London must be such a pain in the arse for domestic tree work. Crap parking / access / congestion charges , LEZ blah blah. Even going pricing would incur these issues. Probably want to up my ballpark figure now [emoji23]

If you want lots of shade keep it. I think it will quickly outgrow is position there and give too much shade. I wouldn’t want to look at an ugly pollard slap in the middle of the lawn. Get rid and replant something elsewhere that doesn’t shade the lawn out. And as@stubby said. Get that conifer gone. Hideous thing. I don’t think it will compromise the house though.

Element of diversionary tactics looks to play a part. The commissioners role is a pretty vulnerable one and easy to squeeze someone into submission … The met have had plenty of scandals over her tenure, plenty recently too. Flushing her out as incompetent detracts from any investigations into number 10 and makes the met generally look bad. What a poisoned chalice the commissioners role is.. who wants it in the current political scene I can’t think of any that have left that role on a positive note in recent tenures.

I wouldn’t get too het up about it. Just about everything is ‘bought’ on lease hire or lease purchase these days. The chances of monthly payments adjusting and certainly adjusting to any uncomfortable level is slim. You will hold yourself back more worrying about the Ts and Cs then you will if you get the machine and get it earning. No one likes the concept of ‘borrowing’ money (other than the lenders) But from a business perspective my opinion is it’s better leaving your capital in the bank account and leasing your larger purchases. Especially with small businesses such as most of our companies. Plus you will end up with the machine you want not the second hand headache you can afford…. We’ve all done that. I’ve got a pain in the arse tractor in my field I wish to God I’d never bought ! Others may have a different stance but i hope you get your machine and it does the business [emoji106].

Including the stump removal id say ball park £2500 to £3000 plus vat Photos can be very deceptive so it’s an approximate figure.

Interesting. I naively thought they’d be a UK problem and gypo’s on the continent might be more traditional Romany without the crime and leaving rubbish everywhere

As above. Avoid sundays. Leave that for rail / highways stuff Farmers having a general exemption due to seasonal nature of the work for their machinery Certainly a no no for domestic work. We did a hedge trimming job on a bank holiday at a school once. 4/5 trimmers going all day. Not out of choice more running out of time to do it. Got a couple of complaints. One was particularly irate. Offered apologies and finished as quick as poss. The bloke was right. Besides. It’s Sunday. Have a rest and do something other than work.

Are the french pikeys much the same as the other side of the water ? And despised by the general population as much ? What’s the slang term for a pikey in french [emoji23]

And in this case they became offenders themselves knowingly receiving stolen goods.

Generally because acquisitive crime has less of a priority in an over burdened system , As a general rule the lines of enquiry are limited aren’t they , reactively attend , capture any potential forensic opportunities left at a scene. Ie a lock up broken into. Thieves are very forensically aware now so that usually doesn’t go far. CCTV is usually rubbish from an identification point of view. Usually no witnesses at night. Stick the machines serial numbers on a data base and wait for it to get stopped. What Matty has is specific information of the whereabouts of stolen machinery and the details of people offering said machinery. That offers a high chance of recovery and opportunity for proactive investigation as opposed to reactive. But if they don’t get offered that info to act upon we aren’t helping ourselves in the industry. Matty had / has really valuable info there. That needs to passed on. It’s hard to call them useless or uninterested if we harbour and don’t share info like that. Use crime stoppers anonymous if it bothers people talking to them directly.

Sounds like you had good intelligence to help with a ‘sting’ style operation that could of proved fruitful for the authorities or assisted with grounds for surveillance on organised crime gangs. Or perhaps recovered the two stolen chippers in use by presumably two shonky tree outfits. Did you pass it on.?

About sums it up. Pricing is the most difficult bit about this job. Staying competitive, making a profit, getting the work, growing your company….. Climbing, cutting and chipping is straightforward in comparison As others as said, go and work with someone who is happy to be transparent about their pricing with you. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be. Look at the trees/jobs. Keep a mental note or even a pic on your phone with how many loads of chip and logs and time for the job, how many people doing it etc etc That really helped me in gauging waste and time etc I still slip up now once in a while but don’t we all. Generally if your diary is looking a little empty you’ll price it keener to fill the days. Try not to go too low. Easier said than done. You’ll start the job and spend the whole time thinking ‘what was I looking at when I priced this? Not this tree for sure ..’ Accept you’ll f up to start when pricing. Don’t let customers beat you down too much. Show willing and compromise but don’t be had over just to get the work. I wish the OP the best of luck learning. He will get there , quickly hopefully

Biomass any day of the week. No contractor will buy that off you. You’ll be paying for removal of it. On the plus side it’s a nice enough domestic job so people will be interested in it from that point of view.

Let me know the date. You’re not far from me. We’ll drink to our legs. Hopefully we won’t feel a thing after a few [emoji38]

Isn’t tumeric supposed to be the latest craze for aches and pains. Loads of sportsmen / women advertising it online atm

Yup. It should make a full recovery back to normal. Whether it plays up in years to come who knows. It’s just life. , I might make the end of this season of the snow is good at Easter [emoji23]