Latest news with #SycamoreGap
Metro
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Metro
Should the voting age be lowered or raised and what about a top limit?
Do you agree with our readers? Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments. Regarding Labour's announcement that the voting age will be lowered from 18 to 16 for the next general election (Metro, Fri). The young are more invested in the future of this country than voters in their 70s or 80s because they are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of political decisions made in the here and now. A great many of them are far more attuned to the challenges facing our nation and our planet. Age doesn't necessarily bring wisdom. Those who were stirred up by rabble-rousers on social media and went on to riot in the streets last year – burning libraries and looting shops – were by and large in their 20s, 30s and 40s. More pertinent, surely, would be to consider placing an upper age limit on voting, given that many in their twilight years will no longer have full command of their mental faculties and may tend to vote for more selfish reasons. It is said that voters tend to become more right-wing as they grow older and, as was amply illustrated by Brexit, this is often because they haven't thought through the implications of any political changes, since they are unlikely to have to contend with them. Encouraging people to participate in politics from an earlier age can only be a good thing. A great many of those who complain about politicians today don't even bother to vote, feeling they can't make a difference or that the outcome will have little effect upon them. Apathy is the enemy of social cohesion – an engaged population is good for the health of the nation. Julian Self, Wolverton I was absolutely sickened when I heard Sir Keir Starmer is allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote! Before last year's general election, he promised that if Labour won, he would grant the vote to EU nationals with settled status, who – unlike youth – contribute (or have contributed) to the economy of this country through their skills and taxes. I have lived in this country for more than 40 years and have a sound knowledge of the political, economic, security and defence issues it is facing. Is that the case with 16-year-olds? Thanks, Starmer, for breaking your promise and continuing to treat more than three million people as second-class citizens. This is a very strange and unfair concept of democracy! Marie-Claire Orton, Newcastle Upon Tyne, A Frustrated EU National Lowering the voting age to 16 is just another clutching-at-straws idea by a poor government that knows it will be voted out. The age should be raised to 21. There are so many things you are not allowed to do until you are even 18, such as leave education, so at least have a few years in the adult world before being allowed to make a decision about who runs the country – because at 16 your choices will be misguided. RCG, Bishop's Stortford Regarding the pair jailed for felling the Sycamore Gap tree (MetroTalk, Thu), they should be released as soon as it grows back to its former size. Our new neighbour has bulldozed all their plants and trees to make way for concrete extensions, outbuildings and a patio – all legal. No one speaks up for these well-established plants and trees. Mity, London I'd like to join Terry McCranor (MetroTalk, Fri) in raising a glass in toasting Rob Buckhaven's column on 'Why it's cool to chill red wine'. The British hospitality trade needs all the help it can get and this article should be flagged up on your website for months. That would allow diners and pub-goers to point to it when commenting or challenging restaurateurs and landlords about the temperature of red wine. More Trending Most staff have no idea about wine, or the best serving temperature, and pour red wine from bottles on shelves behind the bar. Perhaps a future column might include four cut-out business card-size summaries of it, so readers can pass them on to the food and drink emporiums they visit. Supermarkets and leading wine merchants must help, too, by insisting winemakers include relevant advice about red wine temperature on the back label. Warm red wine is horrible and unlikely to result in a repeat order from discerning customers. Lester May, Camden Town MORE: Don't expect water bills to stop rising after we overhaul sector, minister warns MORE: Who's next for Oleksandr Usyk? Joseph Parker could get his shot but a third fight with Tyson Fury cannot be ruled out MORE: Charli XCX and new husband George Daniel celebrate wedding with wild afterparty
BBC News
a day ago
- Health
- BBC News
Sycamore Gap tree saplings gifted to 49 projects of hope
Two men have been jailed for felling the Sycamore Gap tree. By the time they are released, 49 saplings grown from seeds taken from the tree they sought to destroy will have been planted around the country. Given the sense of grief felt by many when the landmark tree was felled, Cath Darling's work fits neatly with the National Trust's aim that each of those saplings should carry a "message of hope".She holds outdoor sessions in parks and gardens, using nature to help bereaved children and adults. "One of the women I had helped told me about the Trees of Hope project and said I should apply," she says."I did, and I was just so happy to be told we were getting one." Cath runs Elemental Occupational Therapy which was chosen from hundreds of applications to receive one of the 49 saplings, each one representing a foot of the tree's original height. To decide where it should be planted, she has set up a working group made up of people who have attended her sessions."It has to be in North Tyneside where I run my sessions, and we have been discussing with the council about it being in the Rising Sun Country Park," she says. "But I feel very strongly this sapling doesn't belong to me, it belongs to everyone I've supported and they'll make that final decision." Just a few miles south, another project is also planning for the arrival of its sapling.A new nature reserve, Tina's Haven, on the east Durham coast has been named after Tina Robson of Sunderland, who died of a drug overdose in 2020 aged is hoped it will be a place used by organisations in County Durham and Teesside which help people recovering from addiction and than 20,000 trees have already been planted at the National Trust-owned site. Tina's mum Dr Sue Robson describes the reserve as something "powerful and hopeful" and says the tree will definitely be on the "Horden side", but the exact place is yet to be "fully decided". "We're talking to the National Trust about that, and we'll need some signage too so that people know this isn't just any tree."Out of Tina's past that was rooted in pain, something new and beautiful will rise." The sapling which will grow closest to the Sycamore Gap will be planted at Henshaw Church of England Primary, a small rural school near Bardon Mill which has the tree as its symbol, emblazoned on the uniform of every child. Executive head teacher Mike Glenton says many of the children live on farms near it and the illegal felling was "keenly felt"."They know it mattered, they understand the grief the community here felt at its loss." When the school heard it was to get one of the 49, saplings all the children were consulted about where it should be planted and the choice was "pretty unanimous"."We have a forest area and the children thought that would be ideal. "When it first goes in we'll put some protection round it, but once it grows the children will be able to hug it as much as they want." That the saplings exist at all is the result of an operation which began within hours of the tree being - young twigs with buds and the vital raw material for grafting genetic copies of the tree - were collected and posted to the National Trust Plant Conservation five bags of twigs and seeds arrived at the centre's secret location in Devon the next day. The man tasked with turning them into trees was Chris Trimmer who used a process called grafting to create an exact genetic copy of the original plant. "It wasn't the right time of the year to do it but thankfully it worked," he says. Chris says the 49 trees "and a few spares" are now "between four and six-foot high" and "looking really good.""The plan is to get them out this autumn, but we're in a heatwave at the moment and we're not sending the trees out until I'm sure they'll be okay," he says."We're used to dealing with really special plants here but this has been really interesting for me personally."My first date with my wife was to go and see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, which includes a scene at Sycamore Gap, so I had a particularly special reason to make sure this tree survived." Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, both from Cumbria, were sentenced to four years and three months in prison on Tuesday for the illegal felling of the court Andrew Gurney, defending Carruthers, said many people had asked why he did it, to which the reply was: "Unfortunately it was no more than drunken stupidity."But the judge dismissed that and suggested the motive was likely "sheer bravado" and "thrill-seeking".Whatever the reason, people have ensured that from one act of shocking destruction there will be 49 symbols of hope. Follow BBC North East on X and Facebook and BBC Cumbria on X and Facebook and both on Nextdoor and Instagram.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Sycamore Gap prosecutor shares his story of the trial
The trial of the two men who felled the Sycamore Gap tree garnered global attention. What was it like for the prosecutor at the heart of the case? It felt like a murder trial. Day after day we heard of phones and cars being tracked, gloating messages swapped by the culprits in the aftermath and emotional statements about the devastation they had in this case, the weapon was a chainsaw and the victim was a tree. Richard Wright KC has worked on more than 100 murder cases in his 27 years as a an exclusive interview with the BBC, the prosecutor says the interest in trial of Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers was on a scale he had never encountered before."It was the public expectation," he says, "the pressure of getting the right result.""The evidence was overwhelming so, in cases like that, if you don't get a conviction, something's gone badly wrong." The jury retired on a Thursday, spending four and a half hours out in discussions before being sent home for the day, eventually returning with guilty verdicts the following morning."I was climbing the walls," Mr Wright says of the wait."You start thinking 'Oh my God, could I have done it differently, what if I've got it wrong?'"He didn't - the jury agreed the evidence was overwhelming. During his opening speech, the video of the tree being cut down was shown for the first time. When the two-and-a-half minute long clip, filmed on Graham's phone, finished you could have heard a pin drop in Newcastle Crown Court's courtroom one."Some people might say it was 'just a tree', but the senseless nature of it was quite emotional," Mr Wright recalls. "It did have a greater power when it was presented in court than I thought it would. "Everybody was stunned in to silence. "I felt the same." The video wasn't the only piece of evidence that helped convict Graham, 39, and Carruthers, 32, who had travelled from their homes in Cumbria to fell the tree on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland in the early hours of 28 September news of the tree's felling rapidly spread, Graham and Carruthers were sending each other screenshots of news reports and outraged social media responses to what they had done."I couldn't believe they had recorded the video in the first place," Mr Wright says. "Equally, I thought their conversations the next day were significant, which frankly only the people who'd cut down the tree could be having." They described it as their "operation", talked about how good the cut had been and were getting palpable excitement from the fury."It was one of those cases where you had your absolute dream tick list of every single thing you'd want to prove a criminal offence," Mr Wright says."Admissions after the fact, evidence of them actually committing the crime, cell site and other circumstantial evidence. "The police did an excellent job." During the trial, Mr Wright described the pair as "the odd couple", best friends before falling out spectacularly as the public revulsion at their actions became clear to them."They were certainly unconventional," Mr Wright says."I thought the relationship between them was very strange, they'd had an intense friendship and now they were absolutely daggers drawn."In court, there were also heated exchanges between Mr Wright and Graham. During cross examination, the defendant raised his voice to the prosecutor and said "I've had enough of you calling me a liar. You're trying to wind us up." Was that what Mr Wright was trying to do? "I thought to myself he was trying to make the jury think I was bullying him and being unfair," Mr Wright responds, adding: "I've had worse." The question of "why" has been the big one for this case, what was the motive for what Mr Wright described to jurors as a "moronic mission".After being convicted, Carruthers went from denying any involvement to admitting being a part of it and attributing it to "drunken stupidity".Jailing them for four years and three months each, Mrs Justice Lambert gave that claim short had done too good a job for it to have been done while drunk, the judge said, adding "sheer bravado" and "thrill-seeking" were driving factors. Mr Wright has another theory, relating to the pair taking away the wedge of tree they had cut out and Carruthers having a newborn baby."I really do think the motive was to get some sort of trophy to celebrate the birth of Carruthers' child," the prosecutor says."I think it was probably something as pathetic as that." Does he think the wedge, which was photographed later that night in the boot of Graham's Range Rover, will ever be found?"I doubt it," Mr Wright says. "I think they would have got rid of it."Since the sentencing, the barrister has already been on two murder cases and spent time sitting as a judge, but he is very aware his name is still attached to the Sycamore Gap case."It's certainly a case I will never forget," Mr Wright says. "As a barrister you like to be anonymous. You go and you do your job, you don't really want to be in the public eye so I was quite pleased when it was over."As he moves on to his next cases, the men he prosecuted have been beginning their prison did he think of the sentence? "As far as I could tell, 50% of the public think it was too long and 50% think it was too short," Mr Wright says. "So that tells me it's about right." Follow BBC North East on X and Facebook and BBC Cumbria on X and Facebook and both on Nextdoor and Instagram.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on the cultural life of trees: we must protect our natural heritage
If the mindless felling of the Sycamore Gap tree has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as 'just a tree', as one of the perpetrators, Adam Carruthers, told the jury. 'It was almost as if someone had been murdered,' he said of the ensuing public outcry. For many it was. Animism runs deeply through our relationship with arboreal life. From Macbeth's prophetic Birnam Wood to the towering Ents in The Lord of the Rings, trees have long been personified in literature. And, from Constable's bucolic Suffolk to David Hockney's Yorkshire wold, they have helped shape Britain's artistic landscape. This cultural heritage is being celebrated by the Woodland Trust UK Tree of the Year 2025. The Sycamore Gap tree won in 2016. The shortlist, announced this week, brings together William Wordsworth and the Beatles, Virginia Woolf and Radiohead, all united by the trees they have helped put on the UK's cultural map. The Tree of Peace and Unity in County Antrim, where the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998, also makes the list of 10 culturally remarkable trees. British history is written in its trees: the ancient Ankerwycke Yew at Runnymede, where Henry VIII is rumoured to have courted Anne Boleyn; the Royal Oak in Shropshire, which hid the future Charles II; and the Tolpuddle Martyrs Tree in Dorset. Like the rings in their trunks, over centuries trees become the keeper of stories. They also, of course, provide paper on which to read them. This is ingeniously encapsulated in The Future Library by the Scottish conceptual artist Katie Paterson. Starting with Margaret Atwood in 2014, each year a manuscript by a different novelist is buried in Oslo's Nordmarka forest. In 2114, 100 books will be published out of the 1,000 specially planted pine trees. In fairytales and crime fiction, forests signal danger, but they are also places of sanctuary and renewal, hence the ancient Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku or forest bathing. Peter Rabbit finds safety in a burrow at the bottom of a tree. They also promise adventure and character-building, as in Robin Hood and the ethos behind Scandinavian forest schools. We learn to anthropomorphise arboreal beings from an early age: Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree and JK Rowling's Whomping Willow are characters in their own right. Trees have very human qualities: they can learn from past traumas, such as droughts, and they make good 'parents', allowing their seedlings just the right amount of sugar through their roots. But they cannot protect them from global heating and disease. New research has revealed that saplings in British woodlands have been dying at an alarming rate since 2000. As much as 70% of ancient woods in the UK have been lost or damaged in the last 100 years. After the destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree, and the 500-year old oak in Enfield near a Toby Carvery restaurant this year, the government has set out much-needed plans to give legal protection to older and culturally important trees in England. Our ancient woodlands are irreplaceable. We must protect them as they protect us. As Woodland Trust patron Judi Dench put it, our oldest trees 'are as much part of our heritage as any literature'. They should be cherished and celebrated. In the words of WH Auden: 'A culture is no better than its woods.'
BBC News
4 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
BBC News quiz of the week: Why is Kew Garden's Palm House closing?
This week saw the UK government announce plans to let 16 and 17-year-olds vote, the men who cut down the famous Sycamore Gap tree sent to prison, and Donald Trump wake a BBC reporter up for a surprise how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?Quiz collated by Ben Fell. Fancy testing your memory? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.
