Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Zarain Burnette got a question for him, A girl, Yes,
Speaker 2: you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Oh do I yes? I do? Okay AI Yeah, fully ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Alvin Iverson Yes, for many reasons. Artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: Oh, the other AI. We should call it that, the
Speaker 2: other AI.
Speaker 3: The other AI. Well, so the other AI truth. And
Speaker 3: but what's really ridiculous is when you kind of turn
Speaker 3: AI loose to write things or draw images. You know
Speaker 3: we've all missed totally. No, it's not well, I mean,
Speaker 3: unless you're going to mash up AI and an obituary.
Speaker 2: No, I'm over here like Kurt Gibson going around second
Speaker 2: pumping my arm.
Speaker 3: So AI. So someone had a I write this obituary
Speaker 3: and it is so amazing, and I it and I'm
Speaker 3: going to read it to you, okay. Brenda Tent retired
Speaker 3: from living at the age of old, surrounded by family
Speaker 3: and natural causes. A librarian from birth, Brenda was an
Speaker 3: avid collector of dust. She had a sweetheart and married
Speaker 3: her high school. She loved having hobbies and helping her
Speaker 3: sons to be disadvantaged youths. She had no horses, but
Speaker 3: thought she did. The church gave her a choir because
Speaker 3: she sang like a bird and looked like a bird,
Speaker 3: and Brenda was a bird. She owed us so many poems.
Speaker 3: The funeral will be held in nineteen seventy seven at
Speaker 3: Heaven in lieu of flowers. Send Brenda more.
Speaker 2: Life, ever.
Speaker 3: I love she had no horses, but thought she did poems.
Speaker 3: I think we found biobituary when the time comes. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: it's perfect. So my fine feathered friend is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Okay, Well that segue is really nicely into
Speaker 2: what I want to tell you today, which is equally ridiculous.
Speaker 2: If you have a moment, You got a moment, Yes,
Speaker 2: all right. As storytellers, Elizabeth, yes, we both know how
Speaker 2: one word, just one ill turned phrase, can ruin a
Speaker 2: whole story. Oh yeah, right, and sometimes like it's just
Speaker 2: even a mispronounced word, like on my.
Speaker 3: Part all the time, sometimes a little bit on purpose.
Speaker 2: Oh now, in this story, one misunderstood word, it led
Speaker 2: to a multi year war. It was a bloody affair
Speaker 2: there for a while. It was really bad, like private
Speaker 2: security guards were scared for their lives. Elders were going
Speaker 2: over the barricades to attack the police. It was lawless.
Speaker 2: It was chaos, Elizabeth, it was wild, and it all
Speaker 2: came down.
Speaker 4: To two words, mature trees.
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
Speaker 2: Heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 2: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Elizabeth Zaren. I saw this story.
Speaker 2: I told you it tickled my fancy because it kind
Speaker 2: of has everything. And I say everything, I mean it
Speaker 2: has like a little of everything. And you know how
Speaker 2: I love stories that I have a little every sure, right, Well,
Speaker 2: this one it isn't some you know, sprawling account of
Speaker 2: mid century America. It isn't a deep dive into the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies or nineteen eighties and like either a weird
Speaker 2: religious culture or some drug thing. No, okay, this isn't
Speaker 2: a hinge of history story about the sixties. Nor is
Speaker 2: it a turn of the last century where we look
Speaker 2: back at the way we once were and how we
Speaker 2: are still the same. No, Elizabeth, No, miss Dunton. This
Speaker 2: time this is pure twenty first century lunacy. It's happening
Speaker 2: now pretty much. Oh wow, Yeah, exactly what it says
Speaker 2: on the tin. It's a war over trees, Yes, the
Speaker 2: Great Sheffield Tree War.
Speaker 3: You know the city of Sheffield, not intimately, I'm aware
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in South Yorkshire, named after the River Sheaf,
Speaker 2: which is the city is built around. So what's Sheffield like, well, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never been there. I don't know, but.
Speaker 3: From what I've read, beautiful city, never been.
Speaker 2: There, very lush with trees, very green. Prior to the story,
Speaker 2: all I knew about Sheffield is it's home to my
Speaker 2: favorite English football club, Sheffield Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Did you do Google Earth like.
Speaker 2: Like you do and just take like a tour of
Speaker 2: all the streets and just drive.
Speaker 3: Around and like a Google you do your due diligence, my.
Speaker 2: Due diligence of a Google street tour of the city. No,
Speaker 2: because you'll find out why. Okay, yeah, but I did.
Speaker 2: I did go look into something I was interested in,
Speaker 2: which was Sheffield Wednesday. Yeah. You know the blue and
Speaker 2: striped iconic kit You know them, like the Argentina of England.
Speaker 2: They used to be Premier League, so you probably would
Speaker 2: have known them, like you know, back in like the nineties,
Speaker 2: but they've since been relegated. The second teer Championship League
Speaker 2: been there for like I don't know forever. In a
Speaker 2: day anyway, doing research for this one, I found out
Speaker 2: that my favorite football club started as an offshoot of
Speaker 2: a cricket club known as the Wednesday Cricket Club.
Speaker 3: Why Wednesday because they played on Wednesdays?
Speaker 2: Well yes, but why Wednesday? The club was found at
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty.
Speaker 3: Because that's the day that you do Bible study.
Speaker 2: No good guests though, but this cricket club, right, it
Speaker 2: started by six cats, six dudes, right, not actual cats.
Speaker 2: I know how your imagination goes. And so they only
Speaker 2: had to work half days on Wednesdays. Wednesday half day
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty work style huh wow. Right, So they'd meet
Speaker 2: up and they'd cricket it up, and thus the Wednesday
Speaker 2: name now eighteen sixty seven, having now turned pro as cricketers.
Speaker 2: Really good club apparently, the Wednesday Cricket Club started the
Speaker 2: Wednesday Football Club. Why did they do this? Because they
Speaker 2: wanted to stay in shape for cricket over the winter months. Okay, right,
Speaker 2: so yeah, the Owls become a club boom. Nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: nine they become the Wednesday Football Club aka Sheffield Wednesday
Speaker 2: Football Club. The rest is history, joyous Sheffield Wednesday history.
Speaker 2: But that's not why I'm here today. Because soccer matches,
Speaker 2: that's typically what we think of. We thought about, Oh,
Speaker 2: this is where we're gonna find people mixing it up
Speaker 2: with the police and private security. Actually, no, no, this
Speaker 2: wasn't Hooligan's in this story putting security guards on blast, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: This was tree loving seniors. Yes, So let's get to
Speaker 2: these trees.
Speaker 3: The Sheffield Dangerous game.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're wild, wild, these humans, especially when they get
Speaker 2: old and cagy. Now, Sheffield is apparently mad with the
Speaker 2: green I mean, just stupid, but trees. Like from what
Speaker 2: I found, sixty one percent of Sheffield is considered a
Speaker 2: green space.
Speaker 3: Oh that's cool, that's wild.
Speaker 2: I thought those were great. They have like two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty parks and gardens they know, Okay. I found
Speaker 2: also a count four point five million trees. That's how
Speaker 2: many trees.
Speaker 3: They have in one city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the human population for comparison, five hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand people. Wow, it's a lot of trees per person. Trees, right,
Speaker 2: So the afore mentioned four point five million trees, those
Speaker 2: weren't enough for the locals. They're like Hey, we want more,
Speaker 2: or at least we want those four point five. Do
Speaker 2: not cut me down. And thus they went to war.
Speaker 2: Some would have said Sheffield had too many trees. Coincidentally,
Speaker 2: those are the same people with the authority to decide
Speaker 2: how many of Sheffield's trees should be and would be
Speaker 2: chopped down. Now, you see, the trees were being blamed
Speaker 2: for all the potholes in Sheffield. The streets were just
Speaker 2: littered with them. Apparently they started calling the town Pothole
Speaker 2: City and they're like, no, we prefer Steel City. Oh no,
Speaker 2: this is terrible. Pothole City is a terrible nickname. We
Speaker 2: must do something. So something was done. Elizabeth, the city
Speaker 2: council met, and then they met, and they met, and
Speaker 2: they met some more, and they met a bunch right.
Speaker 2: This took years, but eventually studies were commissioned, reports, and
Speaker 2: then they met some more more years of planning. Finally
Speaker 2: a general plan of action is announced and it's funded.
Speaker 2: So the city council they were proud to announce a
Speaker 2: new one point two billion pound road improvement project. They
Speaker 2: called it Streets Ahead or Streets Ahead.
Speaker 3: Wait, billion billion with a B, yeah with a.
Speaker 2: B, not with an N.
Speaker 3: One city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of roads, bridges, big project. It's a
Speaker 2: multi year project. This was twenty twelve when they announced
Speaker 2: this funded project. The streets ahead, right, I mean I
Speaker 2: will stop that, I.
Speaker 3: Prompted, very Australian.
Speaker 2: Not well whatever it's supposed to be Cockney leading to Australia.
Speaker 2: Well no, whatever, Fine. The money was earmarked to upgrade
Speaker 2: the city sidewalks, Elizabeth street lights, bridges, roads, So one
Speaker 2: point two billion pounds wow. Now to repair the roads. Obviously,
Speaker 2: this plan called for the mass removal of trees that
Speaker 2: lined these roads and were causing the potholes the streets.
Speaker 2: They would split sidewalks and they caused the potholes by
Speaker 2: lifting up the road, or so the city council believed.
Speaker 2: They never expected their infrastructure improvement project would actually become
Speaker 2: the start of a year's long war. No one anticipated that, right,
Speaker 2: But as far as the city council saw it is
Speaker 2: all simple. Old trees would be cut down, new trees
Speaker 2: would be planted. Boom boom boom. What's the big problem?
Speaker 2: But Elizabeth saplings, baby trees. They are not the same
Speaker 2: as full grown trees.
Speaker 3: That's true, right, They're smaller versions.
Speaker 2: Just looking at them, you can tell. But in a
Speaker 2: larger sense full grown trees. We're talking like forty fifty
Speaker 2: foot tall trees. Right. Oh wow, yeah, these are like
Speaker 2: some real big daddy.
Speaker 3: Say, not your typical urban tree.
Speaker 2: No, these are like British old school like one hundred
Speaker 2: year old trees. Right. And now these trees would be
Speaker 2: home to numerous species like you know, squirrels, birds, bugs, whatnot.
Speaker 2: Full grown tree obviously it offers shade to the whole environment.
Speaker 2: There's heat reduction because of that's not a big problem
Speaker 2: in England, but still holsho. But it helps with rainfall
Speaker 2: run off and controlling them.
Speaker 3: I thought they I thought they cut down all the
Speaker 3: big trees to build the ships when England ruled the seas.
Speaker 2: These are only one hundred year old trees, so they
Speaker 2: were replanted.
Speaker 3: These are the grandchildren of those struges when England ruled
Speaker 3: the seas.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, actually we're gonna get into that when England
Speaker 2: was you know, rule Britannia.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So the these trees, I mean like basically they look good,
Speaker 2: they feel good. Everybody loves trees, right. The trees are
Speaker 2: undeniably dope, and they said they can also be one
Speaker 2: hundred years old, so it's to tie to the past.
Speaker 2: These people are like, oh, this is our connection to
Speaker 2: when we had empire and what what you know? So
Speaker 2: the bureaucrats they didn't quite understand this because they were
Speaker 2: trying to like quantify the value of a tree, right,
Speaker 2: And it's really hard to satisfy a bureaucrat with things
Speaker 2: like it just feels good. So they're like, well, we
Speaker 2: need numbers. So it's to them the problem was we
Speaker 2: need we need to remove the trees and replace them
Speaker 2: upgrade great. Right, So the project of mass tree removal,
Speaker 2: the streets Ahead project, it gets managed by this group
Speaker 2: called the Highways Team. Right. They're put in charge of
Speaker 2: this project. As names go, rather unimaginative, the Highways Team. Right,
Speaker 2: it's also kind of vaguely bureaucratic. I don't really like.
Speaker 3: It's kind of threatening to like a highwayman.
Speaker 2: The Highways Team has decided all your trees must die. Anyway.
Speaker 2: It kind of sounds like something from Coffka book maybeah
Speaker 2: Ray Bradberry. I don't know exactly. The Highways Team these
Speaker 2: trees were a resource to be managed. That's how they
Speaker 2: viewed it, right. So they're like, Okay, what are we
Speaker 2: gonna do, how we're going to solve this problem? And
Speaker 2: how bottom line thinkers that they are mass destruction seem
Speaker 2: like and I quote the easiest and cheapest option, right,
Speaker 2: But this is not what the experts and their own
Speaker 2: report had told them. Because the City of Council Sheffield,
Speaker 2: they had commissioned to report on the tree population for
Speaker 2: these four point five million trees, they determined thirty six
Speaker 2: thousand of these street trees, the ones that actually would
Speaker 2: you know, be problems for the street or lined the streets,
Speaker 2: they were the ones that they focused on. Thirty six
Speaker 2: thousand of the four point five million. Highway teams like, okay,
Speaker 2: here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna replace them. Now,
Speaker 2: we need to replace a percentage and they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: how many a large proportion And so the reports gave
Speaker 2: an actual hardcore number of this thirty six thousand trees,
Speaker 2: they said three percent. You should probably replace about three percent.
Speaker 2: That's how many are dead, dying or diseased. Okay, the
Speaker 2: rest can be uh, you know, managed, but these need
Speaker 2: to be immediately felled. That's what the Brits would say,
Speaker 2: we would say chopped down. But anyway, the trees had
Speaker 2: to go. So three percent, that's about one thousand and eighty.
Speaker 3: Trees out of four point five million, out of.
Speaker 2: Thirty six thousand of the street trees, of the street trees.
Speaker 2: So we're down from thirty six thousand trees the.
Speaker 3: Street trees living on the streets.
Speaker 2: We got yea, yeah, these tupac trees, we had one
Speaker 2: thousand and eighty of them got to go. That's what
Speaker 2: the report says. Okay, now, because you know, anyways, as
Speaker 2: this comes down to the problem, it was, as I
Speaker 2: said originally up top, there was a misunderstanding about a term,
Speaker 2: a phrase, one phrase. It was properly understood, this whole
Speaker 2: war to come could have been avoided. So what was
Speaker 2: this choice phrase? Mature trees aka trees of a certain age.
Speaker 2: Now you see, Elizabeth. In the original report, the experts
Speaker 2: they'd use the term mature trees and over mature trees.
Speaker 2: You're a gardener, You got a green thumb. You know
Speaker 2: what that means. It means they're of fruit bearing or
Speaker 2: flowering age. They got child bearing. Now, seventy four percent
Speaker 2: of the street trees were termed mature or over mature. Yeah, exactly. Now,
Speaker 2: the city councilors of Sheffield. They misunderstood this. They read
Speaker 2: this as aged or as like old biddies, and they
Speaker 2: they wanted some some younger, sexier trees. So they're like,
Speaker 2: how do we get some saplings on these streets?
Speaker 3: Chris, So as.
Speaker 2: These mature trees were the problem, the city council settled
Speaker 2: on a plan. That's I told you. They called for
Speaker 2: a large proportion of the mature trees to be cut
Speaker 2: down replaced with younger trees for the city's sake. Nowpoort
Speaker 2: called three percent. City council decided on seventy four percent.
Speaker 3: Oh big difference.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, why, as I said, they wanted younger, sexier
Speaker 2: trees because these trees of a certain age were just
Speaker 2: not what they wanted on the streets of Sheffield. They
Speaker 2: debate this for six years. In the end, none of
Speaker 2: this matters because the reports experts all it gets ignored.
Speaker 2: The Highway's team goes out there and decides to beautify
Speaker 2: the streets. Buzz buzz, let's get the choppers going. Now
Speaker 2: they'd ignored the most obvious math of trees, Elizabeth. People
Speaker 2: don't care, oh what a tree is in years, they
Speaker 2: just love trees and mature trees they love the most.
Speaker 2: Everyone loves them, haven't they read the giving tree? But
Speaker 2: a mature tree joined the behold it for animals humans alike.
Speaker 2: We all love it. And this is England. If anybody's
Speaker 2: gonna love some old stuff, you would think it would
Speaker 2: be English people. I mean, am I wrong about this? Okay?
Speaker 2: So like whatever. So the Sheffield City Council they ignore
Speaker 2: all of that, and they just said they tell the
Speaker 2: Highways team go out there, give us some younger, sexier trees,
Speaker 2: and we need them now. So when the people of
Speaker 2: the city find out about this plant, what did they do, Elizabeth?
Speaker 2: They revolted. This was the start of the Great Tree
Speaker 2: War of Sheffield. Yeah, okay, so I let's simmer down,
Speaker 2: take all a break, and then we'll dive into this
Speaker 2: great tree war. Excellent, all right, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Where were we of trees?
Speaker 2: That's right, the Great Tree War of Sheffield.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay.
Speaker 2: At this point it's twenty fourteen, word starts to spread
Speaker 2: in Sheffield. Residents start talking about the whole scale slaughter
Speaker 2: of their street trees.
Speaker 3: Now I have a quick question, when they were going
Speaker 3: to replace these with the saplings? Were they going to
Speaker 3: replace it with the same kind of tree or were
Speaker 3: they trying to find more street appropriate trees.
Speaker 2: Not California, same trees, just younger ones. Wow, it's give
Speaker 2: me sexy your younger trees.
Speaker 3: Usually it's like when they have to take out the
Speaker 3: ones in the street, it's because they planted ones that
Speaker 3: have more shallow roots. That's up sidewalks to.
Speaker 2: Climate. Yeah, nope, same trees, just younger. Okay, so slaughter
Speaker 2: I use that term. It may sound dramatic, right, I
Speaker 2: like dramatic, but I want you to be prepared for
Speaker 2: one's about to come. So why did she feel go
Speaker 2: to war or street trees? Now, I don't know about you,
Speaker 2: but i'd expect people they told you in the UK
Speaker 2: to love trees. Like they have laws that protect your
Speaker 2: right to just wander wherever you go totally. You know
Speaker 2: about this, the Rights of Way Act.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can like cut across someone's field if that's
Speaker 3: the only way to get from like one open space
Speaker 3: to another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the only place is you cannot do this or
Speaker 2: some crop lands, construction sites, active construction sites, off courses
Speaker 2: once again, active race tracks once again, active railways, and quarries.
Speaker 2: So basically anywhere you might get hurt by things that
Speaker 2: are moving. Other than that you can walk up you
Speaker 2: have at it. So I thought that was wild. So
Speaker 2: obviously I thought these people would love trees. City council
Speaker 2: they did not think that. And they're from there, Elizabeth anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so mass tree slaughter that they get it started, right,
Speaker 2: people start to fight back. So one early dynamic in
Speaker 2: this fight is the city councilor as I said, they
Speaker 2: assumed their opponents were, you know, Sheffield people that they
Speaker 2: could manage. They thought they knew these people, and that's
Speaker 2: one problem. They also thought they knew who they were,
Speaker 2: so they assumed that their opponents were bored, wealthy white
Speaker 2: people who were complaining about nothing, right, because apparently Sheffield
Speaker 2: has a really stark economic divide from what I was reading,
Speaker 2: the south west side it both some of the greatest
Speaker 2: wealth in the UK, like some of the twenty percent
Speaker 2: of the wealth is there, right, it's insane. Conversely, the
Speaker 2: Northeast is an embarrassment to the Crown apparently, like some
Speaker 2: of the most economically disadvantaged people in the whole aisle.
Speaker 2: So from one end to the other, there's this bus
Speaker 2: line that you can take and the life expectancy on
Speaker 2: this bus line improvesed by ten years. Wow, just across town.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, Well that's not so different than right here
Speaker 3: in Oakland.
Speaker 2: Totally exactly. We would recognize these dynamics.
Speaker 3: And we had a tree battle not too long ago
Speaker 3: where at this school that you know, there was a
Speaker 3: guy cutting down a tree who was obviously there from
Speaker 3: like the you know, school district maintenance people, and the
Speaker 3: neighbors were just freaking out like how dare you And
Speaker 3: then they had to have an arborist come out and
Speaker 3: break up the protest, who was like, the tree is
Speaker 3: dead on the inside and it's going to fall on children.
Speaker 2: It's a danger to the kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen to the arborous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now they'll get You'll see. There's a debate about
Speaker 2: that because arborus also can be bought off anyway. Anybody's true,
Speaker 2: everyone has a price. So basically, this Sheffield that we're
Speaker 2: describing the southwest side is like the Beverly Hills of England,
Speaker 2: if you will. It's like a land of old, rich
Speaker 2: people who spend their time enjoying all the green spaces
Speaker 2: they have, and they will fight for their equally old
Speaker 2: ass trees. So but no one expected them to fight back.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. The Highways team, they're convinced they
Speaker 2: just need to go in there chop down a large
Speaker 2: proportion of the mature tree. As a Sheffield The Experts
Speaker 2: Commission reports suggest once again, as I said, only a
Speaker 2: small percentage streets ahead decides to heck with it, we're
Speaker 2: going forward. So trouble's brewing. Right off the bat. Seventeen
Speaker 2: thousand trees would be removed and cut down. That was
Speaker 2: a plan. Seventeen thousand of the thirty six thousand. Now,
Speaker 2: if you do the math, that's forty eight point six percent.
Speaker 2: Seventeen thousand, five hundred of thirty six thousand is forty
Speaker 2: eight point six percent, almost half of the tree they
Speaker 2: plan on cutting down. Original number seventy four percent gets
Speaker 2: down to about fifty percent. They're like, oh that's reasonable, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: not reasonable enough. So this is also when dogma and
Speaker 2: a bunker mentality entered the chat the Highways team. They
Speaker 2: suggest that they need to fast track the tree removals
Speaker 2: before anyone gets an idea and they can get a
Speaker 2: resistance organized. So they plan to cut down five thousand,
Speaker 2: five hundred trees right off the bat. Just get out
Speaker 2: there and get the choppers go. And now the plan
Speaker 2: there's a estimate they'll take five years overall. In the
Speaker 2: city council, they're please just punge to hear them getting
Speaker 2: right into it. So they're like, yeah, get going, guys,
Speaker 2: and the highway teams and already the resistance is organizing,
Speaker 2: though faster than anyone.
Speaker 3: Expects, and there's a one to one replacement on these trees. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in twenty fifteen, the people of Sheffield they
Speaker 2: take to the long tradition of what we call direct action.
Speaker 2: Much like a tree. It started with just a small seed,
Speaker 2: but one loaded with potential. Elizabeth, because it started a
Speaker 2: place called neither Edge or nether Edge, like nether Lands
Speaker 2: or you're neither regions, you're nether Yeah, Like I had
Speaker 2: to guess that's the town, like little village name. I
Speaker 2: guess inside there's like villages inside of villages because like
Speaker 2: you know, they're in South Yorkshire. And then inside of
Speaker 2: Sheffield is this place called nether Edge I assume is
Speaker 2: a neighborhood. Yeah, but it may have been a village
Speaker 2: that just got consumed. I don't know. Yeah, Anyway, I
Speaker 2: love these British like town and village names. I was
Speaker 2: looking around that you've lived there. Do you have any
Speaker 2: favorites from your time abroad? Like, for example, the ones
Speaker 2: I liked there was Devil's Lap Full in Northumberland.
Speaker 3: Oh, Devil's Lap a town name, Yeah, I like. I
Speaker 3: like the Gorbels and Glass the Goblet. Neighborhood name you always.
Speaker 2: Hear about, like Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare's from. But
Speaker 2: then I found fudge Pack upon Humber.
Speaker 3: Stop it fudge pack.
Speaker 2: Fudge pack upon like fudge pack all one word upon Humber.
Speaker 2: There's also Hornet. Does that name like Horny Old Road
Speaker 2: in Malvern Wells? Or the Blind Fiddler and Cornwall these
Speaker 2: are town names apparently. My last one is flesh Shank, Northumberland.
Speaker 2: I'm from flesh Shank.
Speaker 3: I still go wow, I'm still processing.
Speaker 2: So let them all around in your anyway. Back to
Speaker 2: the Great Tree War of Sheffield. A dozen locals they
Speaker 2: band together up and they start trying to save the trees.
Speaker 2: They the people unite. Elizabeth and these people they know
Speaker 2: these trees. I mean, I mean, I don't mean personally,
Speaker 2: but they for some it's it's possessive, it's personal. They
Speaker 2: were there for these trees. They're tree defenders. Now this
Speaker 2: group of doesn't. They're elders, mind you, elders with money
Speaker 2: and time. They go out and confront the tree surgeon
Speaker 2: hire to remove the trees of a certain age. Now
Speaker 2: when their demands that the chainsaws fall silent or ignore,
Speaker 2: the elders took it to the next level. We got time,
Speaker 2: we got money. So they put first their bodies in harms. Way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they went down and they stood under the tree so
Speaker 2: that no work could be done. They'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: you'll hit us with falling wood. Right, So I thought
Speaker 2: that you would like this because like Mario Savia immediately
Speaker 2: thought of him, like and him on the steps of
Speaker 2: Sprow hall Uc Berkeley there at sixty four, leading like
Speaker 2: a sit in protest. Yeah, you know the speech, can
Speaker 2: I do it?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Please? All right? And that brings me to the second
Speaker 2: mode of civil disobedience. There is a time when the
Speaker 2: operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so
Speaker 2: sick at heart that you can't take part, You can't
Speaker 2: even passively take part. And you've got to put your
Speaker 2: bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers,
Speaker 2: upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop,
Speaker 2: and you've got to indicate to the people who run it,
Speaker 2: to people who own it, that unless you're free, the
Speaker 2: machine will be prevented from working at all.
Speaker 3: Love beautiful, right.
Speaker 2: So these old bricks start pulling full Mario Savia on
Speaker 2: these tree surgeons, and they're laying their bodies down on
Speaker 2: their bron I didn't see any footage of them channing themselves,
Speaker 2: but they did everything they could. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 2: they did do like that cuffing action you know where.
Speaker 3: You put the right They sat under there while they
Speaker 3: were cutting and they said, hell, help somebody.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm down here. Please No. So this human spirit
Speaker 2: of defiance he gets expressed a direct action, right, these
Speaker 2: rich elders of south west Sheffield called upon to save
Speaker 2: the mature trees, putting their bodies upon the gears, the wheels, right,
Speaker 2: the tree surgeons who are just there, they're just there
Speaker 2: to do their jobs. They're like, well, this is not
Speaker 2: what I signed up for, right, Like God, no, you
Speaker 2: feel right now, all right? But they were so real, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: They were so real and they were so ready to fight.
Speaker 2: So but not on just the like we're gonna put
Speaker 2: down our bodies. They also put their money on the line.
Speaker 2: They went out and commissioned to their own report. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: the local tree defender campaigns. They hire this team of experts.
Speaker 2: They drop an independent report to convince the city council
Speaker 2: in their own language of paperwork and reports. Right, they
Speaker 2: know how this stuff works. They're rich, so they're like, like,
Speaker 2: look the independent report. It points out the storm drainage
Speaker 2: benefits of trees and air quality improvements and the and
Speaker 2: these are like hard to measure intangibles, but they tried
Speaker 2: to convey them as economic value of the trees. Right,
Speaker 2: These rich folks they speak in city councils, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: yes they have rather than like you know, a tax
Speaker 2: to be cut or better yet like some you know,
Speaker 2: tax free way to improve the society. They look with
Speaker 2: these trees are an economic boon, right, city of council.
Speaker 2: They listen and then they're like, no, they just blow
Speaker 2: them off, right, So back to action, you don't wally
Speaker 2: computer says no. So the city council wouldn't listen to
Speaker 2: paperwork reports, and they did listen to protests and fiery
Speaker 2: shouting voices that came next in public places, and it
Speaker 2: all started amiably, right. They're old Brits, as I said, right,
Speaker 2: Originally they were quite friendly with the tree surgeons that
Speaker 2: they would find. They would of course lay down on
Speaker 2: the ground, but they would also like out there and
Speaker 2: offer them a spot of tea. You know. It was
Speaker 2: all very cordial, open and communicative. And then they only
Speaker 2: take on the democratic engagement path, right because they started
Speaker 2: they tried to do things according to the mechanisms of
Speaker 2: their culture. They tried to use the channels of communication
Speaker 2: they should. They wrote letters to the City Council, they
Speaker 2: filed freedom of information X. But the City Council was
Speaker 2: bogged down by so many letters and so many freedom
Speaker 2: of information X. And also they had the whole problem
Speaker 2: with the years of austerity. They no longer had the
Speaker 2: staff to deal with all these requests. So it becomes
Speaker 2: a paperwork war and they get ground down. Right. So
Speaker 2: now next action teams formed action teams Elizabeth men and women.
Speaker 2: They put words to down, they put their pens down,
Speaker 2: and they picked up their arms and defended the trees.
Speaker 2: Entered Dave Dilner, he formed the Sheffield Tree Action Group
Speaker 2: aka stag Kil there he's one of those old British
Speaker 2: cats who fought in the war, pick whatever war you want.
Speaker 2: Being a military man, he still treated yeah, exactly, treated
Speaker 2: everything like part of the war effort. Right. So Dave Dilaner,
Speaker 2: he lives in that well to do southwest, but he
Speaker 2: lives near the heavy equipment depot that the arborous and
Speaker 2: tree surgeons are launching out of each morning. So he
Speaker 2: goes down there every morning and he wakes up and
Speaker 2: he steps on a step ladder and with his binoculars,
Speaker 2: his field goggles, he peers in and he watches the
Speaker 2: tree surgeons leaving. Then he gets on his action group chat,
Speaker 2: his WhatsApp group chat, and he starts giving out from
Speaker 2: his surveillance outpost updates. Right, Yes, Chip and barrio wagon
Speaker 2: heading leaving depot now heading southwest. Right, and somebody else
Speaker 2: will get on the later. We're on a Dave, And
Speaker 2: then they would all go and they would they report
Speaker 2: where they had sightings until they could triangulate where the
Speaker 2: tree surgeons would stop to work. Then they would all
Speaker 2: descend there. So he would start the like sightings and
Speaker 2: the rest would say, oh, yeah, here it is.
Speaker 3: If he's just like watching him leave the depot, why
Speaker 3: doesn't he hop in a car and drive behind them.
Speaker 2: He's watching all of them. There's a kings going out,
Speaker 2: this one's going that way, this this way, this one's
Speaker 2: you know, they got two. They've got a wood chipper
Speaker 2: and a you know, cherry picker truck.
Speaker 3: Or whatever it's. You know, I have flawed that. But
Speaker 3: it's also like he took the easy job.
Speaker 2: You gotta have a spotter instead. Tell me he's like
Speaker 2: basically a field officer. What are you gonna do? All right,
Speaker 2: So the action group, as they said, they leap into action.
Speaker 2: They start confronting tree surgeons standing under the trees are
Speaker 2: supposed to be cut down. The arborous would then have
Speaker 2: to pack up for the day, and those are the
Speaker 2: days called, or they'd have to demand that police show
Speaker 2: up and remove the protesters. It becomes like a whole deal, right,
Speaker 2: So this war had not yet become violent. This was
Speaker 2: still early in the autumn of twenty sixteen, but the
Speaker 2: signs of violence to come they were already there, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: They were in there. If you knew what to look for.
Speaker 2: The tree surgeon certainly felt it, of course they did.
Speaker 2: They were there on the front lines. They didn't want
Speaker 2: to be, but they were there on the front line.
Speaker 2: So this company, I should tell them, they're called amy
Speaker 2: ame E y Okay. They'd been contracted by the streets
Speaker 2: Ahead program. The streets Ahead they worked for the Highways
Speaker 2: team in the City Council, right, So they asked their
Speaker 2: bosses if they consider some repairs that would minimize the
Speaker 2: number of trees that they needed to remove. The tree
Speaker 2: surgeons were saying, Hey, here's the thought. What if we
Speaker 2: don't do what we do for a living and instead
Speaker 2: you paid us to I don't know, do what the
Speaker 2: people want that would fix things right, And so the
Speaker 2: tree surgeons they're asking not to do their own jobs.
Speaker 2: And the fat of course doesn't fly with the city council.
Speaker 2: They're like, we paid you to cut down trees, cut
Speaker 2: down trees. Streets Ahead and the Highways team they felt
Speaker 2: that the protesters were out of touch and not representative
Speaker 2: of quote, the real residents of Sheffield. So they were
Speaker 2: just a small, loud minority and they should ignore them
Speaker 2: and they should get back to cutting down trees.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So there's one senior official from the Highways team. He
Speaker 2: will come out in the story numerous times. His name
Speaker 2: is Paul Billington. Here was a real piece of work,
Speaker 2: this Billington. He spearheaded what would become the bunker mentality
Speaker 2: that would take hold. He had that whole classic us
Speaker 2: against them. So wait, what was his name? Do you say?
Speaker 2: Buzz Killington? Buzz Killington? Producer Dave Great to call Buzz Killington,
Speaker 2: my man, Buzz Killington. He decides we need to have
Speaker 2: an early morning raid, something to break the morale the
Speaker 2: Tree Defenders also apparently Buzz Killington's. He wanted them to
Speaker 2: have the police assist them, to really let them know
Speaker 2: they had the state beyond their side. So an in
Speaker 2: house lawyer for the Streets Ahead project he gets word
Speaker 2: of this proposed so this raid that's designed to break
Speaker 2: the hearts and the will of the Tree Defenders, and
Speaker 2: he's like, well, what's my advice? Well, personally, I don't
Speaker 2: believe what is being proposed could in any way be
Speaker 2: considered reasonable. Right, So that was him, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: just him. A communications director also in house had a
Speaker 2: similar reaction when he heard about this planned morning raid
Speaker 2: to break the hearts and minds. He said, my professional
Speaker 2: view is that this is crackers.
Speaker 3: Oh he's a technical term, but rather.
Speaker 2: Than just tell you about all this, Lilizids, I'd like
Speaker 2: you to close your eyes as a picture. It's four
Speaker 2: thirty am on November seventeenth, twenty sixteen. You are standing
Speaker 2: outside of a supermarket near Rustling's Road. You are a housecat,
Speaker 2: a British tabbyer. You're one who's escaped the boredom of
Speaker 2: domestic life for some of the danger of Sheffield streets
Speaker 2: in the small hours of the morning. But you found
Speaker 2: no mice, no early birds, no small mammals to hunt,
Speaker 2: so you've wandered over to the supermarket. You're currently in
Speaker 2: an alley that runs beyond the store, checking the milk bottles,
Speaker 2: hoping to find some milk that's just passed its expiry date.
Speaker 2: You tip over one bottle, no milk spills out. That's
Speaker 2: when you hear it sound of heavy equipment. You cat
Speaker 2: prants over to see what all the noise is about.
Speaker 2: You climb up a chain lake fence and hop onto
Speaker 2: the stone rooftop of the store. As you draw near
Speaker 2: to the edge, you spy a cordon of cups. They're
Speaker 2: shutting down both ends of a quiet, leafy, well treed street.
Speaker 2: The cops are setting up a safety zone for tree
Speaker 2: surgeons from amy. This is a well coordinated early morning ray.
Speaker 2: The target eight mature trees. You walk along the length
Speaker 2: of the roof to get a better view. From the corner,
Speaker 2: you can see the police pounding on front doors. When
Speaker 2: the doors swing open, the bobbies and form the residence.
Speaker 2: They must move their cars. It's five am now at
Speaker 2: this point. At the same time, there's a chorus of
Speaker 2: chainsaws starting to sing delight. You hate all the noise
Speaker 2: that the soap there is. The tree surgeons are going
Speaker 2: at it with a martial energy. They strike early, they
Speaker 2: strike hard. They come in with cherry picker trucks, heavy sauce.
Speaker 2: The terrible buzzing and tearing of tree flesh. It friends
Speaker 2: the quiet of the early morning. If you residents are
Speaker 2: bumbling around on the sidewalk beneath you, here and there,
Speaker 2: a cars starts to life and then drives off as
Speaker 2: the police have struck them where to go. You scratch
Speaker 2: at the gravel of the rooftop bricks, Your tail flicks
Speaker 2: at the receiving darkness. This morning is taking hold. You
Speaker 2: hear a new commotion. A young man and his two comrades,
Speaker 2: two women in their seventies charge the police guard in
Speaker 2: safety zone. The bobbies push back against them as the
Speaker 2: tree defenders try to position themselves beneath the tree surgeons.
Speaker 2: You jump across a high space above the action and
Speaker 2: land on a tree limb above the tree slated for
Speaker 2: the chop. You prance along the rough barked limb and
Speaker 2: walk up to the tree surgeon, armed with his heavy
Speaker 2: industrial chainsaw. Standing in the cherry picker box twenty feet
Speaker 2: above the fray. You stare into the eyes of the
Speaker 2: tree surgeon. He stares back at you. You are disgusting
Speaker 2: with what he's doing, but for your own reasons, that's
Speaker 2: a kay. He looks back at you. The gilt crows
Speaker 2: in his eyes. Beneath you, the chopped up chunks of
Speaker 2: seven mature trees. The tree leaves rustle from a small breeze.
Speaker 2: Beneath you can hear the shouting of the tree defenders
Speaker 2: and the cops fighting back. They're going at it somehow,
Speaker 2: the noise all the way slightly as you lock eyes
Speaker 2: with the tree surgeon. Then you see it. The single
Speaker 2: tear runs down his cheek. Handcuffs get slapped onto the
Speaker 2: tree defender's wrist. Cops toss them in the back of
Speaker 2: a police lordy and off they go to be booked
Speaker 2: at the closest jail. You run down the trunk of
Speaker 2: the tree and set up to find some breakfast or
Speaker 2: maybe some danger. You cat prance through the carnage, the
Speaker 2: police tape and the fallen bodies of the trees. Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: can you imagine that early morning scene?
Speaker 3: Oh my heartbreaking, terrible.
Speaker 2: But this morning raid it failed spectacularly because it led
Speaker 2: to a rush of news media images. Imagine old people
Speaker 2: lying down on the ground. Oh yeah, to protect these trees,
Speaker 2: next to the brutality of the saw tooth and the
Speaker 2: cold metal of the blade. Right, big savage chunks of
Speaker 2: tree sawdust piled like puled blood. It looked bad in
Speaker 2: the morning papers. But if you can believe it, this
Speaker 2: has been the idea all along. This is what they wanted.
Speaker 3: Well, if you have to do something in that sneaky way,
Speaker 3: if I'm going to do it at five in the morning,
Speaker 3: then before everyone's awake, you know you're doing something wrong totally. Plus,
Speaker 3: I would imagine that five am is inside of quiet. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't start sawing at five in the morning.
Speaker 2: Here, it's eight am. We couldn't turn on power tools.
Speaker 3: Before a right exactly.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, they ignored all of that, and they said,
Speaker 2: we have a bigger impulse to answer to now, if
Speaker 2: you can believe it. As I said, this had been
Speaker 2: their idea. They wanted these graphic images, but the message
Speaker 2: they sent was too strong. It was too graphic. Right.
Speaker 2: A memo would surface later on which confirmed the city
Speaker 2: Council and the Highways Team's cynical view on how to
Speaker 2: best respond to their protesters and I quote removing the
Speaker 2: trees on Rustling's Road remove a symbol of the tree
Speaker 2: campaign instead their morning rate. It became a symbol for
Speaker 2: the tree exactly. Raid was as I said, it was
Speaker 2: never about the health of the trees or even about
Speaker 2: the solving the ostensible problem. Remember this all started with
Speaker 2: fixing the unsafe streets right right now. The police assisted
Speaker 2: raid purely an emotional message composed in the symbolic language
Speaker 2: of a fell tree, chopped up section left, lying in
Speaker 2: the streets ready for the wood shopper, right, an old
Speaker 2: lady on the ground next to it in an agony face. Right.
Speaker 2: This image was meant to break the spirits of the
Speaker 2: tree defenders. Instead galvanizes people country the UK is like,
Speaker 2: what is going on in Sheffield? Right, So they'd moved
Speaker 2: beyond the borders of southwest Sheffield. Now suddenly it was
Speaker 2: no longer rich people trying to save their quiet, leafy
Speaker 2: shaded streets. Now it was the people fighting for the
Speaker 2: green future of Britain. Yeah, yeah, Elizabeth entered the Flying Squad.
Speaker 2: So we'll take a little break because I just wanted
Speaker 2: to tease you with your flying and it's not the
Speaker 2: one you think it is, all right, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Oka before we went to b Yes, flying squad, Yes.
Speaker 2: Your guys, your girls, the squad, But it's not that
Speaker 2: Flying Squad. This was a group of protesters who called
Speaker 2: their new action group the Flying Squad. They took it
Speaker 2: back from the police. Why because they knew a good name.
Speaker 2: When they heard it. They're like, you guys aren't using
Speaker 2: it right, We'll take that. So the Flying Squad was
Speaker 2: about thirty people deep and they were ready to fly
Speaker 2: to danger, thus the name. They were spotters, fast responders.
Speaker 2: They chased tree surgeons to the job sites and then
Speaker 2: they stood beneath the trees like everybody else to stop
Speaker 2: the work. But they were unafraid to confront tree surgeons
Speaker 2: or the police. Soon enough, these tree surgeons from Amy, right,
Speaker 2: they feel they have to protect themselves from all these
Speaker 2: bad as. They called them chipper chasers. So some of
Speaker 2: these these tree surgeons would compare it the streets were
Speaker 2: turning into the wild West. They did not feel safe
Speaker 2: in these streets. They're just now they've got these newly
Speaker 2: drafted soldiers in the fight because it's gone nationals. So
Speaker 2: now people are flooding in from other cities and towns,
Speaker 2: and the fight becomes this group, this fighting force I
Speaker 2: few will become so effective that in June twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: in just one month, the tree shoppers, they were scheduled
Speaker 2: to cut down four hundred and seventy two trees. You
Speaker 2: know how many times they had to stop? Three hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty nine times. Flying Squad was on it. One
Speaker 2: tree surgeon from Amy, he said, of the protesters, it's
Speaker 2: incredibly frustrating. I wanted to do the job I was
Speaker 2: paid to do, not to be the face of a
Speaker 2: controversial policy. I had the colleagues who didn't agree with
Speaker 2: what the council was doing, who were almost believed if
Speaker 2: the protesters turned up for me. I just felt caught
Speaker 2: in the middle and started to dread getting up in
Speaker 2: the morning. I was eventually signed off for stress. He
Speaker 2: had to leave his job. So and we still haven't
Speaker 2: gotten to the worst of the war. So yeah, summer
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, it gets hot. Sheffield City Council receives a
Speaker 2: final report from the commissioned independent tree Panel, the one the.
Speaker 3: Rich real first pay, Oh, okay, what does it suggest
Speaker 3: don't cut down trees?
Speaker 2: Now you know it? Now the City Council they had
Speaker 2: posed this question always as a debate of do you
Speaker 2: want trees or smooth roads? Well, the Action Group STAG
Speaker 2: and they had always said, that's a false debate. We
Speaker 2: can have both. Well, the tree panel, the independent panel,
Speaker 2: they said, that's exactly correct. You can totally have smooth
Speaker 2: roads and trees. So they said, like, you know, I
Speaker 2: understand you want to do the mass removal of trees,
Speaker 2: but that's not necessary really the absolute only way to
Speaker 2: do this. So the City Council's decision to continue chopping
Speaker 2: down trees because they decided, you know what, that's a
Speaker 2: great report and no we're not doing that.
Speaker 3: So and again, were they going to replace these with
Speaker 3: saplings or were they just.
Speaker 2: Gonna they're taking trees out, pulling them out of the earth,
Speaker 2: putting in saplings. Okay, and you're really small like.
Speaker 3: So then they were supposed to fix the roads at
Speaker 3: the same time, and.
Speaker 2: They thought that by doing that, the root structure would
Speaker 2: no longer keep growing and lifting the roads, so then
Speaker 2: they can get a handle of the road row exactly.
Speaker 2: But it turns out it was a little more complicated
Speaker 2: because at this point, basically the city council says, we
Speaker 2: don't care about all this, like, oh, we shouldn't cut
Speaker 2: down trees. We're cutting down trees, So anybody says don't
Speaker 2: cut down trees, they're wrong. Basically, at this point, they'd
Speaker 2: also forsaken the moral high ground because they're just going
Speaker 2: with policy. They're not listening to anybody. So this guarantees
Speaker 2: that violence will now be the next response because they're
Speaker 2: not listening anymore. They're ignoring experts, they're ignoring the process,
Speaker 2: they won't talk to anyone. The people are desperate, The
Speaker 2: people are willing to put their own bodies in danger.
Speaker 2: What's next, They're gonna put your body in danger. So
Speaker 2: this is when the authorities opt to pursue a policy
Speaker 2: that normally is reserved for gang members in southern California,
Speaker 2: they sought an injunction against the protesters, making it illegal
Speaker 2: for them to gather and oppose the tree fellings in
Speaker 2: the mass removal. The new injunctions raimed at specifically sixteen
Speaker 2: of the lead protesters. They were all given letters that
Speaker 2: told them that they would face prison time, they'd be
Speaker 2: financially liable for delays, court costs. It's estimated to run
Speaker 2: into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, as obviously was
Speaker 2: meant to be a scare tactic. Interestingly, the tree surgeons
Speaker 2: from Amy, who would be essentially protected by this injunction,
Speaker 2: they opposed it. They're like, don't do this, this is dumb. Instead,
Speaker 2: they offered to carry the costs themselves of finding alternative
Speaker 2: solutions to fix the streets without removing trees. They're now
Speaker 2: willing to become street fixers. The Highways team they hear
Speaker 2: about this plan to concede to the protesters, and they
Speaker 2: take a hard line stance. So enter the sunken cost fallacy.
Speaker 2: Now it's the user to them bunker mentality and the
Speaker 2: sunken cost fallacy teaming up the executive buzz Killington or
Speaker 2: the Billington He writes an email that's speaks directly to
Speaker 2: this when he says, and I quote, given we spent
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty thousand pounds to get this far,
Speaker 2: we don't really have a choice. Oh yeah, okay, we
Speaker 2: spent that much. Gotta go through with.
Speaker 3: It, even though these guys are saying they'll fit the
Speaker 3: bill for this exactly, so it isn't.
Speaker 2: Really about the money, since they've nixed Amy's offer to
Speaker 2: save the city council money by paying for their own costs.
Speaker 2: But this point, Billington and the others from the highway team,
Speaker 2: they're loaded for Bear Elizabeth. They're going up for a hunt.
Speaker 2: So they want the war. They want Amy and the
Speaker 2: Tree Surgeons to understand what side they are on. Billington
Speaker 2: rights to Amy and his Tree Surgeons on November sixth,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. You are losing the battle. The council is
Speaker 2: very frustrated at the current policy of turn up and
Speaker 2: pack up. So what do they do. They were so
Speaker 2: incensive they start not paying Amy. They withheld two point
Speaker 2: five million pounds of the promised contract. They're like the
Speaker 2: over five month period, they're just not paying them. They're like,
Speaker 2: unless you start doing stuff, we're not gonna pay you.
Speaker 2: And they keep complaining and saying like it's because you're
Speaker 2: not you turn up and pack up. Yeah, but they
Speaker 2: can't do anything, so they're now putting the pressure on
Speaker 2: them their own like associates. Yeah yeah, anyway, seeing which
Speaker 2: way the wind blow. That same November, Amy hired private
Speaker 2: security to protect their tree surgeons from the anger and
Speaker 2: the ire of the protesters, and they they are given
Speaker 2: the right to manhandle the protesters because in accords with
Speaker 2: the injunction, this works, you have to get out of
Speaker 2: the way of the tree removal. So at this point
Speaker 2: the Great Tree War becomes an endurance fight who could
Speaker 2: outlast the other. Amy and his tree surgeons also begin
Speaker 2: to track and document all the protesters. So now the
Speaker 2: protesters start donning masks, disguises, they adopt out rageous accents.
Speaker 2: They're speaking in Glasswegian accents for no reason. It's just amazing, right.
Speaker 2: So this is also when the bunnies, the geckos, and
Speaker 2: the squirrels enter the picture. Well, you may be wondering,
Speaker 2: did I just have like a snow white moment? What
Speaker 2: do you mean? The bunny, the geckos, so that the
Speaker 2: protesters they self sorted into three animal forms bunnies, geckos,
Speaker 2: and squirrels. Elizabeth, see the bunnies, they they're bounders, so
Speaker 2: they are responsible for hopping and bounding over the garden
Speaker 2: walls and all the erected metal barriers, and then they
Speaker 2: would help to keep the protesters away from the safe
Speaker 2: zones beneath the trees is to be cut down. So
Speaker 2: they top over these barriers and then go hey and
Speaker 2: they hop a hug up against the trees. That's the bunnies.
Speaker 2: The geckos, they would thrust themselves against walls, you know,
Speaker 2: like how they stick to a wall, and they would
Speaker 2: make it to the barrier couldn't be closed and other
Speaker 2: people could prush through or whatever. That's the goes. Then
Speaker 2: we have the squirrels, as you can might imagine, they
Speaker 2: would bravely climb the trees and perch in the branches,
Speaker 2: making it impossible to cut the tree down. They were
Speaker 2: the bravest of the freedom fighters in the green tree. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So their success has been set up the stage for
Speaker 2: the violence to come, because now we're getting actual engagement
Speaker 2: and tactics and strategies and groups and you got commandos.
Speaker 2: So this leads to the Battle of Meares Brook Park
Speaker 2: Road January fifteen, twenty eighteen. The city Council has been
Speaker 2: putting pressure on Amy to stand tall right, to do
Speaker 2: the right thing, and to do this, they've authorized the
Speaker 2: use of reasonable force, so the private security are now
Speaker 2: basically unofficially deputized by the city council to rough up
Speaker 2: the protesters. This means they can grab the bunnies and
Speaker 2: toss them out of the safe zones. They can they
Speaker 2: can pull geckos off the wall. They can grab squirrels
Speaker 2: out of the tree, which is not gonna go good right.
Speaker 2: This is also they don't have to worry about legal consequence.
Speaker 2: They're like, we got you, you just rough them up.
Speaker 2: This all comes to a head in the Battle of Mirrors,
Speaker 2: Brook Park Road. The crowd that day big, angry, loud, raucous.
Speaker 2: They were energized by recent successes. The private security equally
Speaker 2: energize conflicts guaranteed. One bunny, an older married woman in
Speaker 2: her sixties, hopped over a barricade entered the safe zone.
Speaker 2: She's grabbed by private security. In response, she flops on
Speaker 2: the ground right. Her husband sees this, but he only
Speaker 2: sees his wife on the ground. He misses that she
Speaker 2: throw us up on the ground, and he just sees
Speaker 2: the menacing private security or like you know, standing over
Speaker 2: her like a husband. He charges the barricade, knocks it down,
Speaker 2: and then twenty other protesters like basically poured like like
Speaker 2: you know, sheep through a gate with him. They all
Speaker 2: rush in there. Now the elder husband gets to his
Speaker 2: wife's side. He helps her up to her feet, but
Speaker 2: they have to pretend not to know each other, because
Speaker 2: if they know each other and their husband and wife
Speaker 2: will be identified and then the injunction will put them
Speaker 2: in jail. So they got on the go. Are you
Speaker 2: all right, whoever you are? So they're having this like
Speaker 2: fake exactly. It's a really sweet anyway. News media is
Speaker 2: there on hand. They're snapping photos of this confrontation. They're
Speaker 2: seeing all this. The photos are amazing, the elders on
Speaker 2: the ground, the menacing boots of private security above them,
Speaker 2: the UK, the whole country, the United Kingdom. Rather, they
Speaker 2: are outraged as this story becomes national news. Now it's
Speaker 2: just green Britain and they're beating up the elders. This
Speaker 2: is terrible. Sheffield City Council, the Highways team, they have
Speaker 2: to lick their wounds and regroup for the next front
Speaker 2: in the ongoing tree war. Right, so the tree surgeons
Speaker 2: at Amy, they announced that they plan to pause the
Speaker 2: tree removals. They say, Okay, we're gonna just pause and like,
Speaker 2: let's think about this for a month. The Highways team
Speaker 2: they go, no, we're not doing that. I'm thinking about anything.
Speaker 2: So the executive of Old Buzz Killington, he sends an
Speaker 2: email to the in house council, a lawyer for the
Speaker 2: Streets Ahead program, going like what are we gonna do
Speaker 2: about this subject line? Please print and then delete.
Speaker 3: Oh to a lawyer.
Speaker 2: He sent to a lawyer.
Speaker 3: You know, like the lawyer gets it and just you.
Speaker 2: Can't do this to me. So in email Killington, No
Speaker 2: Buzz Killington, he recommended they try a new approach. He
Speaker 2: recommended that they ring the trees, as in ring barking.
Speaker 2: You know, this is where you basically take out a
Speaker 2: big gouge in the tree all the way around and
Speaker 2: interrupts the flow of the nutrients up and down the
Speaker 2: bark or inside the bark basically, so the tree just dies.
Speaker 2: It's basically it's like cutting its throat. So he puts
Speaker 2: in his email quote the tree is killed and dies
Speaker 2: over a number of months, it would move all trees
Speaker 2: into the dying category. It means that stag can no
Speaker 2: longer claim that they were defending healthy trees. The in
Speaker 2: House Council Elizabeth ruled this out as an extreme taxic. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like we can't start killing no anyway. So we're in February.
Speaker 2: Now we have claims of sabotage on the part of
Speaker 2: the protesters. Allegedly an elderly couple they offered some of
Speaker 2: the tree surgeons some hot tea, and the tea was
Speaker 2: loaded with laxatives, so the tree surgeons would have to
Speaker 2: rushing to the porta potty that couldn't work. Now the
Speaker 2: elderly couple says this is not true.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this just can't handle their teeth.
Speaker 2: They're just crappy on their own. I don't know. They're
Speaker 2: blaming us. Now the case of the crappy tea becomes
Speaker 2: another national news story. So now they're just looking silly,
Speaker 2: they're looking mean. They're not looking good in any of
Speaker 2: these news stories. At the same time, violence is becoming
Speaker 2: more common, so they're looking brutish and laughable security guard
Speaker 2: has his wrist broken. Age protesters are being sent to
Speaker 2: the hospital for medical treatment. By March twenty eighteen, Shiftfield's
Speaker 2: head of communication writes another email, put simply, there is
Speaker 2: no good picture of older residents being arrested. There is
Speaker 2: no good way to photograph a tree lying in the street.
Speaker 2: He's like, we are losing the great war. We are
Speaker 2: losing the public, we are losing the information war.
Speaker 3: The optics they're terrible.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the optics are gone. They lost those. So
Speaker 2: the tree surgeons they informed the city Council they will
Speaker 2: no longer be able to quote keep calm and carry on.
Speaker 2: They're same for the South Yorkshire Police. They're like, look,
Speaker 2: we're bailing on your war. It's draining our resources. This
Speaker 2: is ridiculous. The Forestry Commission of the Nation opens an
Speaker 2: investigation determined if the tree removals even legal or not. So.
Speaker 2: Now this is the end of March. The tree surgeons
Speaker 2: at Amy they announced they would pause all tree removals.
Speaker 2: At this point, five thousand, six hundred trees have been
Speaker 2: chopped down. That was fifteen percent of the total. That's
Speaker 2: five times more than the three percent that was recommended anyway,
Speaker 2: the Great Tree War is now over. Time to win
Speaker 2: the peace, Elizabeth. In May there were local elections. The
Speaker 2: City Council suffered stunning losses. Oh new leadership put new
Speaker 2: people in charge of the Streets Ahead program. They open
Speaker 2: up peace talks with the Tree defenders. Their first meeting
Speaker 2: takes place in September. Months later, the peace talks require
Speaker 2: a mediator because things are still so hot. The mediator
Speaker 2: is the Bishop of Sheffield. Stop it, yeah, Son. More
Speaker 2: months passes did peace talks go on and on. By
Speaker 2: December twenty eighteen, the two groups released a joint statement.
Speaker 2: Going forward, the city Council would work with residents to
Speaker 2: create a reasonable solution for the remaining trees. The next year,
Speaker 2: a new team of experts they convene. They select twelve
Speaker 2: trees at random, and they inspect them. And the team
Speaker 2: finds that the streets could be repaired without removing any
Speaker 2: of the trees. You See, they'd always assume that the
Speaker 2: trees were the problem and it was the roots, but
Speaker 2: no one had actually tested that theory. Oh, when they
Speaker 2: did check it, when someone actually did look, the problem
Speaker 2: was the streets themselves, because prior repairs had always just
Speaker 2: poured more asphalt on top of a broken asphalt, and
Speaker 2: then more asphalts. Some of the areas they checked were
Speaker 2: a foot thick the road surface.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the issue.
Speaker 2: So after inspecting the twelve trees, they found that many
Speaker 2: times not only did the trees not need to be
Speaker 2: cut down, but the repairs could be performed the same
Speaker 2: day as the inspection. Oh, the years of bitter conflict, violence,
Speaker 2: threats of prison time could have all been avoided if
Speaker 2: the city council had considered the actual task in hand,
Speaker 2: instead of falling into their our side, your side, our side,
Speaker 2: and then weird language problems like mature trees. I don't
Speaker 2: know about it, some younger trees. So Elizabeth, what's a
Speaker 2: ridiculous takeaway here?
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. You know, I'm thinking about it, and
Speaker 3: it's like I understand obviously, you know, like I love
Speaker 3: plants and trees.
Speaker 2: And they occasionally do need to be taken out.
Speaker 3: They do, And I think that's sometimes you get, you know,
Speaker 3: a little bit too enamored of the notion of saving
Speaker 3: everything and it can't be saved. You know, some things
Speaker 3: grow better after being cut back severely.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: The whole crape myrtle, crape murder thing. But in terms
Speaker 3: of if you're removing these trees, you know, I'm feeling
Speaker 3: like you don't want them to take out mature trees
Speaker 3: that are in their prime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're fruiting fire, so.
Speaker 3: You have to be okay with you know, they don't
Speaker 3: live forever, sure, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: lose sight of that, and particularly if they're going to
Speaker 3: replace them. You know, that's a huge thing. They're not
Speaker 3: just paving everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they think think of the effect of losing
Speaker 2: all that the leafy, shady stret You can take all
Speaker 2: the trees down on a street, not just one or
Speaker 2: two and you're replacing those, but all eight on one
Speaker 2: side of the all those houses outside of the street,
Speaker 2: they have a much different experience impact and they can't
Speaker 2: just pick up their helme and move. So the trees
Speaker 2: become part of their environment and they saw them as
Speaker 2: their trees.
Speaker 3: And you do need it for you know, pollution abatement
Speaker 3: and just you know, just chealthy air quality and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you.
Speaker 2: Can see both sides. But I can do it all
Speaker 2: what it look at you, Well, the deal, Elizabeth, is
Speaker 2: this for me? I thought it was just basic because
Speaker 2: I pointed out ridiculous that it all came down to
Speaker 2: the word mature trees. And then yeah, the whole our side,
Speaker 2: my side, like instead of getting down And I always
Speaker 2: point this out whenever I'm trying to have an argument
Speaker 2: with somebody, is what are we actually fighting about? And
Speaker 2: what how do we get to a win? Like how
Speaker 2: do we want there to be? Like what is the result?
Speaker 2: And then if we can get to that, we can
Speaker 2: figure out what the obstacle is. And sometimes it's not
Speaker 2: so much about my side your side, but what do
Speaker 2: we both have to do to get there? And then
Speaker 2: you don't think of it as compromised. As I've told you.
Speaker 2: I try to stand shoulder to shoulder somebody and we
Speaker 2: both look at the problem as opposed to across the
Speaker 2: table where it seems like only one side of the
Speaker 2: table can win. That's all they had to do is
Speaker 2: just look at the problem standing shoulder to shoulder, and
Speaker 2: boom done. They would have seen like, oh, it's the roads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when we live in a time of us
Speaker 3: in them.
Speaker 2: And exactly speaks to our times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just pre COVID.
Speaker 2: That's the only big difference Anyway, there you go. That's
Speaker 2: what I got for you. I'm telling you shed light,
Speaker 2: good shob. You can find us online Ridiculous Crime, Twitter, Instagram,
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Speaker 2: Dear elizad Zaren is so cool. Now. Anyway, there you go.
Speaker 2: That's all we got, catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 2: is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett's produced and
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Speaker 3: M hmm.
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