Rustling Road trees are being felled right now

[Vaati]

The insults can now cease, otherwise you are likely to lose access to your accounts...

[Squiggs]

Men with chain saws and shredder out on Hall Road again today but the 'save the trees' brigade are conspicuous by their absence. Just wondered where they are, are they ok

 

They were in both Nether Edge and near Hillsborough today. And they seem okay, quite buoyed by the packing-up of the Amey/Acorn felling team for the day. I'm sure they'll be glad of your concern - and I'm sure you'll be gratified that they are not disregarding other areas.

[Cyclone]

They council has said that there is a backlog owing to lack of tree maintenance over recent years so they would say they are just catching up with that.

 

I don't understand why they can't produce a proper explanation for each street and then consult properly with residents. E.g.

 

"This street has lots of very tall trees growing in close proximity. They are overshadowing the houses and give the street a dark and overgrown feel. The younger trees on the street are not receiving enough daylight. We propose to remove trees A, B and C so that the trees near to them have less competition, to allow daylight through and to allow younger trees better growth prospects".

 

I'd find that easier to accept than "yes our Independent Tree Panel says it should stay, but we'll chop it anyway!"

 

They do consult. They then ignore the residents and the ITP and cut as many down as possible in the name of private profit.

[harvey19]

They do consult. They then ignore the residents and the ITP and cut as many down as possible in the name of private profit.

 

On Radio Sheffield last week there was a phone in where an official stated households on an affected street were contacted about the situation before any action was taken.

Only a tiny minority replied.

[Squiggs]

On Radio Sheffield last week there was a phone in where an official stated households on an affected street were contacted about the situation before any action was taken.

Only a tiny minority replied.

 

"An official stated that..."

Ah, must be right. It was an official.

 

There is more to this. One of the complaints from some householders who ended up supporting the tree protesters was that it seems that the survey arrived in a plain brown "To the Householder" envelope, amongst the deluge of pizza hut offers and other detritus, looking like just another piece of junk mail.

 

Thus people say they never received it. "The official" says that they did, and their lack of response indicates acceptance, rather than "an unknown number of people read and did not object, and an unknown number of people just slung it with the latest "2 for 1 on Crapseal Double Glazing" offer. Only later do people realise that they may indeed have had a junk-mail-looking envelope sometime in the past.

 

Go on the Britain First website and try one of their polls where 100% of people agree that Muslims should be force fed dripping butties. If you click "AGREE" your vote is counted, if you click "NO" you leave the page.

 

Not QUITE the same but to illustrate there are ways of effecting a poll, in the BF version, 100% of recorded votes supported their view. But not 100% of people.

[harvey19]

You agree householders were contacted but did not read the correspondence or did not reply.

[NewBiz]

They're happily hacking away at some nice mature tress down the bottom end of Wisewood. Horrible to see

[Cyclone]

On Radio Sheffield last week there was a phone in where an official stated households on an affected street were contacted about the situation before any action was taken.

Only a tiny minority replied.

 

Only a minority voted to leave the EU. Should we ignore that vote?

 

---------- Post added 14-02-2017 at 16:30 ----------

 

You agree householders were contacted but did not read the correspondence or did not reply.

 

Which doesn't mean that they a) knew about the survey, b) agreed with the action, or c) that a specific street with a low response rate wasn't the one deliberately mentioned by the official.

[Squiggs]

You agree householders were contacted but did not read the correspondence or did not reply.

 

Yes. As happens in all correspondence which is why, in my job, I have to monitor email open rates and identify if a message is not getting through

 

For instance, if I were to send a question to a mailing list of 150'000 people, and of that, only 4000 people replied "YES!", that does NOT mean that an overwhelming majority of 63% thought "NO!" if the open rate was 10% and the response rate was 3.2%

 

It would be possible for me, using email and a poor message title and from address to engineer a lower open rate to ensure less responses if we were to count the % of people that the message was sent to, who did not respond "NO".

 

I'm not suggesting that the junk-looking mail was a deliberate act - though it would certainly be possible to use that if you did want to ensure a low response - I'm suggesting that the survey method was inherently flawed and does not give an accurate representation. Whilst there certainly are people in favour of the tree felling, there may be more in favour if the survey was carried out in a better manner in which case there would be no argument. Or there may be many more opposed to the felling.

 

The point is that WE DON'T KNOW, which means the survey was nigh on useless as it has clearly failed to establish the feelings of the majority, relying on a simple count of responses against.

[Olive]

Our street was surveyed and there weren't many responses. I thought it would be a lot higher after all the furore on Facebook, but in the end of those who did respond, the majority were in favour of the trees being replaced.

 

I've got to say, the letter notifying us of the survey was pretty official looking. I wouldn't have said it looked like junk mail.

Edited February 14, 2017 by Olive