It would seem that the good councillors of Cambridge City care more about trees than children.
The council want to ban nursery children (aged 2-4) from playing under a 30 year old cedar, to safeguard the tree from damage.
Cambridge City Council prepared a report into the health of the tree at the Under Fives Roundabout Pre-School in Cambridge. The report concluded that the tree will suffer if the ground is "poached and compacted" by "constant activity" which could stop water reaching the roots.
The report says:
"Ideally, the children would not be able to play beneath the tree."
How heavy can a bunch of 2-4 year olds really be?
Here's a radical thought, if the tree really does end up being damaged (highly unlikely I think), why not just plant a new one somewhere else?
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I knew we should never have ventured out of our caves all those millennia ago, trees are so fragile, I myself killed a huge oak tree yesterday by jumping on one of its roots. If only our ancestors had known we'd become a civilisation of tree killers... won't someone please think of the trees.
ReplyDeleteActually, if the choice is between a tree and a bunch of overweight, snotty, chav kiddie-winkles, I'd hug the tree any day.
ReplyDeleteTrees are nice and polite (they only very occasionally fall upon anyone) and they eat carbon dioxide and shit oxygen.
Kids are almost universally not terribly polite, they (these days, anyway) grow into spotty little hoodies and require personal social workers, counsellors and a team of litigious sub-adults' rights workers to ensure the Universe's complete and utter acquiescence in their domination of the adult world.
The deification of children is almost complete.
The demonisation of those who do not deify kids is almost complete.
The universe is not a nursery.
Adults - even those distasteful ones without kids (eek! - how awful! their lives must be so empty! who will pay their pensions and wipe their OAP bottoms? Yadda yadda yadda! Yawn!) - have rights and expectations too.
Sorry but to be honest I'm all for the planting of trees, preferably the planting of trees on top of children with some sort of ceremony involving sunset, drums and flaming torches.
Horrible of me, I know.
I shall immediately excise myself from society and await the hanging, drawing and - if anyone can still do the geometry these days - the quartering.
Given that most tree roots go many feet underground, I doubt that a few young kids would do any real damage playing under the tree.....Ohhhh Hang on a minute.....If all the two and three year olds are as obese as nanny tells us they are, mainly due to not being allowed to run around under trees, then perhaps there is something in this crazy report:-)) How much does the average two year old weigh now due to selfish parents?...Thirty stone? Half a ton?
ReplyDeleteThe world has gone crazy.....I wonder if I did any damage bonking under the large oak in Hermit Road Park in Canning Town, East London back in 1968? Mmmmmm I better get back down there and have a look!!
If the tree is thirty years old there have most likely been children playing under/near it from when it was a fragile sapling. Furthermore said playing will have already compacted the soil under the tree as much as it can be. This decision has no doubt been taken by some parasite in a suit trying to justify his exceptionally well-paid (and gold-plated pensioned) non-job.
ReplyDeleteAnyone reading this blog live in Cambridge? Stick 'em with an FOI request to find out who and why. That should keep some minion busy while costing money that would otherwise be spent on jollies.
Yes, here in Cambridge we are blessed with three full time tree officers http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/planning/conservation/tree-preservation/
ReplyDeleteIts a wonder it wasn't for the children's health and safety reasons, goodness knows what can fall out of a tree.
Where is Dutch Elm Disease when you really need it?
ReplyDeleteGeoff said ...
ReplyDelete... goodness knows what can fall out of a tree. ...
Er - would you believe the Human Race?
I like to think of it not so much as our ape ancestors falling out of the oaks as the oaks sneezing hard to get rid of parasites.
On the basis that the location of the tree may mean that it has become used to children playing around it (and that it has rights and feelings too you know), has anyone asked the tree whether it wants to have its little chums removed from its presence?
ReplyDeleteOther than that I'm with the Porrit-alike person who wrote the report and prefers trees to children, for pretty similar reasons to those expressed by SHMO.
One of the main benefits of trees over children is that, come the post-modern world of energy lack in the next decade, one can burn trees for heating and light but as yet burning children is frowned upon and, I suspect, not very efficient.