I would have suggested getting a Tree Preservation Order, except that they are granted at the discretion of the council planning department, which clearly already wants the trees removed!

So i guess the only realistic option is making it seem like an election issue, and worry the politicians into protecting the trees. Not very sexy, or 'radical', but a potential tactic.

Other options could be doing a tree sit, perhaps. And of course, some people have spiked trees, by hammering metal or ceramic spikes into the tree, to discourage people from cutting the tree. Although the tree spiking can often backfire, and make the environmentalists seem careless, and endangering the people cutting the tree down.

An issue like this is a good one to bring a community together, and a really good thing to come out of such an event, win or lose, is the community solidarity. A permanent residents group could grow out of this struggle too, and could keep that solidarity and cooperation going - im sure there are many other issues that bother people in that area.

Good luck though! Keep us posted on what you plan to do to protect the tree, im sure quite a few folk would be up for helping.

I wonder what people from Bilston would think of the tree sit idea? Not much i suspect... 

With respect, I'd like to see mackno up that tree sit on a friday night, soaked, grimly holding on to his tree house much to the amusment of passing drunks. I'd gladly bring him a mug of steaming bovril (or vegan alternative)

Bawbag

Despite what you may think, bawbag, there is no need to be a complete dick all of the time.

[Insert inevitable 'just having a laugh' comment here].

So what reasons are the council giving for the replacement of the trees? It's not clear from the report.

"Experts have found some decay in the trees, and say they could only last a few more years."
from the Scotsman

And from a council publication the Grassmarket newsletter:

"There were two surveys of the trees in the Grassmarket in 2005 – one by the Council and the
other on behalf of Grassmarket residents. Both reports found problems with:
• the health of some trees: for example poplar trees are now generally not considered good
   trees for urban environments
• the safety of some trees: currently, the poplars must be closely monitored as their limbs are
   prone to snap off in windy weather
• the age of the trees: the poplars in particular are reaching the autumn of their lives and replacing
   them is inevitable."

But reading in between the lines, I think they need the trees out of the way to redevelop the grassmarket in the way that they want. They want to make it a market/festival area, and prioritise pedestrians etc.. I dont really know enough about it to judge the worth of the development, but it does briefly mention the plans in the Grassmarket newsletter.

The Grassmarket Area Traders Association like the development, because it will potentially bring more income from increased tourists and festival-goers. And the council say they are designing the area to help reduce anti-social behaviour by installing CCTV (i didnt see any other measures in the proposal). It is a bit of a munter-fest on a fri and sat night.

 hey anonymous!

wind your neck in, mackno is a big boy and can look after himself - online anyway

having said that i sort of don't give a shit about this issue: trying to prettify something so fundamentally ugly? a couple of plastic trees and suddenly it's all ok - we're not alienated from 'nature' any more? aye right!

water run off issue - bullshit 

carbon sink issue - something better than nothing maybe true, but essentially bullshit

mackno! when are you going to show us your true colours and run for councillor????

hey this site is great, i'm really enjoying this!

xx

bawbag

Hahahaha Makhno for president

Spiking can kill or at least seriously wound trees so would actually be doing the job for the cutter-downers

I agree with your comment bawbag.  Why bother with a couple of trees it makes no difference on the fact that cities are totally unsustainable and the result of mass deforestation and lead to species extinction and eco-collapse (im not being melodramatic here these two things are currently happening).  If we are crying about the aesthetics of our prison walls then we are truly pacified and colonised.

Nice. Misanthropic much?

• If cities inevitably lead to extinction, what's your optimal population density / size of a settlement?
• What implications does that have for human population levels?
• How do you suggest we "achieve" your optimum population level?
• What should happen to the world's majority urban population?
• When did humans lose their ability to solve problems by working co-operatively?
• What difference does it make that we're "alienated from nature?"
• How do you define "nature", if not as something created / shaped by the actions of all living species?
• Are humans somehow outside "nature"? If yes: why? If no, what makes our actions "un-natural"?
• What positive contribution does your nihilistic primitivism make to the world?

It is BLATENTLY the case that the worlds urban populations have been forced by capitalistic, patriarchal, industrial forces to the cities, can we at least agree on that? 

Whats going to happen to the population if we just continue? By most accounts - we're fucked. Or have i missed something. 

What diff alientated from nature? Why don't you see for yourself: go into a wild space and just live there for a month or two. Now come back and see how you feel about the urban mess then. You might feel glad you can ram a hamburger into your gob but the stillness, the space, the richness of birdsong.... Some have described our plight as one of mass psychosis. I'm glad you raised this as it is a huge point that some (eg President McNobcheese with fries)  seem to perpetually miss. This is the real incalculable loss of our way of life. The lack of a harmonious relationship with place, land, animals, seasons, water. As an example you can ask an urban kid where eg a bit of meat comes from they might tell you mcdonalds etc. 

As for the shite you spouted about man shaping nature and being part of nature! What a fucking mess we make! Look at the McNuclear industry. In fact look at any industry. Do you really want to call what the chinese have done to the yangsee river shaping nature? I think the idea of a natural 'system' is that it self regulates and is mutually supportive. Man tends to steam in and bloot the whole thing, sell it, usually half way round the world. Elephants are known to reshape savannah land, change the course of rivers etc but they don't sell shit for personal agrandisment do they, or at least not to my knowledge. Stop trying to hide behind some dialectic. Man as a species is out of control. Even the 'good guys' are apt to defend his exploits. We need to recognise pronto that just relentlessly going 'forward' towards eco rape is and slavery is a fucking daily disaster. 

As for some strategy for achieving this end of reclaiming our relationship with 'nature'? Why a gradual process of rewilding, land distro, decomissioning of industries (except computers!) (only joking) and rapid assassination of key figures within world farming (only kidding). I mean of course none of this is bound to happen strangled as we are by the heinous military industrial partiarchy...

And look fuck off with your nihilistic tag. It's nihilistic to keep going the way we are: Here is something truly nihilistic - 'Don't worry mr indian farmer, just take these terminator seeds and go drink some pesticide, your family can pay your bills later!' Wise up Indymedia people and look out for the new Anti Farming Alliance Zine 'Farmers Fuck Off!' at Nae Borders bookstores soon (maybe) (probably not actually)

"It is BLATENTLY the case that the worlds urban populations have been forced by capitalistic, patriarchal, industrial forces to the cities,"

When do you date the start of capitalism to? It's often pinned on Dutch merchants in the 1600s, long after the formation of cities.

"Whats going to happen to the population if we just continue?"

Continue what? Living in cities altogether, or living an unsustainable lifestyle. The 2 things are not the same.

"go into a wild space and just live there for a month or two"

That's never been my way of life. I don't think isolated individuals in a "wild space" has ever been the human way of life either. It's a romantic myth. We are, and always have been, social beings. We live in groups. That is our "nature". I could equally argue that you're alienated from society.

"man shaping nature and being part of nature! What a fucking mess we make!"

We're beavers with dynamite. You might not like the shapes we make but you either view human beings and their actions as separate from nature (therefore un-natural) or you accept that we are human animals who exist in our environment. Part of who we are is tool use and shaping our environment. This isn't dialectics, it's a fact of who we are as human animals. The apes who swapped trees for grassland, and long arms for big brains. It's our unique evolutionary feature. Now we need to use that genius to stop ourselves from massive environment-prompted die-off.

That's all aside from how we shape the environment and what we shape it to, which is where the current system, run on capitalist principles, is such a disaster. But that's down to social relations and the existence of power-over people not something inherent to language, technology, cities, or human beings.

The key isn't "reclaiming our relationship with nature". (We are part of the natural world whether you like what we do or not.) It's learning to live within planetary means. This requires getting rid of production for profit, which requires getting rid of the capitalist class that lives off of that profit.

If you locate the problem as being something that is inherent to who we are as a species, then the only solution you can propose is an end to us as a species. That's why you get called nihilistic.

People were forced off land eons before dutch merchants were a force to be bargained with. I guess I would call the start of capitalism when the burghers began the wholesale accumulation of 'resources' from wild areas in europe. I think it coincided with the decline of Church and Pope. I'm no expert in this 'garbage bin' we call history... It is a nice question

Go onto a wild space, not particularly on your own, just go, see what happens when you return. I am not saying we aren't social beings or that we have zero impacrt either. It's a fact that humans inc hunter gatherers are destructive. The differnece between that lifeway and our own is the degree of separation from the living breathing biosphere. We have no accountability to it. We don't give a fuck about it. That's why we can rationalise a sneaky wee trip to McDonalds and just hope our pals don't find out, or go and see the latest Jamesie Bond flick up. I don't see why remaining wild space and experiencing it in some way is a romantic myth. I think a lot of fetishisation of it exists as it does for indigenous cultures but I have more time for that than for the idealisation of our own fucked up selfish abortion of a disgrace of a mess of a non culture that forces us into jobs we hate etc etc etc etc etc. 

"We're beavers with dynamite." So everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds is it? Fag packet (to use a current cliche) philosophy. That idea has rightly had the piss taken right out of it over the years by many. 'Genius' as you put it has got us nowhere in particular as far as I can see, except a fucking population explosion and mass eco system collapse and a load of miserable slavery imposed. But why do people identify so much with technology? All the amazing shitey inventions (penecillin, the car, the pill, the computer etc) they just revolutionise our enslavement. 'Take this pill son and go back to war / work!' 'But sarge / boss I haven't had a day off for like... ever because of the 'iron cage', man this sucks!' Back in the day peasants just ran off back into the forest where they could live autonomously when people fucked them around. They had to be wooed back by the lords by giving them shitty little bits of land to grow crops on. But still they would fuck off. We don't have that luxury. Our forest refuge has been fucked. No wonder they like burning it in Amazonia. They can't wait to get rid of the only remaining wild people on this earth so that people like me can simply point in their direction and go "Go on then, disprove that!" It's a good thing it pishes down with rain there all day long or they would all be brown bread long ago. The logging roads get washed away perenially and the fires go out under torrential rain. Mwahhahahahaha! 

Reclaiming some sort of relation with nature may not be the key to halting the eco meltdown but it is good for the head. It is a source of great sadness for me that so many chumps miss out on the immediacy of the wild in exchange for the artificiality of our dead and deadening culture. We replicate it by partaking of it in exclusion. When we lose touch with its antithesis something in us is deadened. 

 'learning to live within planetary means' We know how to do this already the trouble is people are just not prepared to live like monks and dingy all the 'comforts' of modern living. As for killing off the parasitic capitalistic class? This is a great idea! I would join you in two seconds flat. Unfortunately the fuckers have got all the guns etc etc.

But don't presume to put words in my mouth mon ami: "the only solution you can propose is an end to us as a species". The solution I propose (half baked though it may be) is to simply dingy loads of industry straight away, keep a wee bit for a while but then get rid of that too, meanwhile gie every cunt a wee bit of land to work and start rewilding the rest. And who do we use for all the dirty work nobody else can be arsed doing? The capitalists with whip and gun for motivation! Beautiful eh? Gie the cunts a guid tanking. And the end point? We're all running around in animal skins as happy as larry. Not a single death. Hey I'd even vote for McNobcheeseandfries if he ran on that ticket... If he wasn't to busy trying to pull his head out of his ass that is! Ba boom!

Bawbag

Read some Bookchin or something. Ecology of Freedom. All technologies exist in a social context that colours the uses that they will be put to, or whether they are created at all. Not a controversial idea.

"'We're beavers with dynamite.' So everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds is it?"

Clearly not. But you can use dynamite (or any other tools) for construction or for destruction.

If you're going to play "technology:bad", then you have to say where the line should be drawn and crucially for someone claiming to be anti-authoritarian, say who gets to draw that line. Poetic phrases like "revolutionise our enslavement" don't seem to mean much to me.

As for your "rewilding" strategy: it sounds like Pol Pot. Seriously. He envisaged 0 deaths as well. Put the educated class to work in the fields. Got rid of technology, like spectacles.

On second thoughts, read The Killing Fields before Bookchin.

From what i've read of bookchin he is a twat, not impressed

alfred nobel remember had a guilty conscience because he realised what a fucking corporate ass sucking twat he was but still wanted to be remebered

as for who gets to draw the line wasn't it you that said 'production for need'. We seem to have reached an impasse. Who gets to make the decisions indeed. Actually the poetic thing you are perspicacious: it was from a poem i wrote called 'anarchist disgrace'. 

Nobel invented dynamite, a stabilised form of TNT after his brother was killed in an accident involving the stuff. Simplifying motivations down to "corporate ass sucking twat" doesn't get us anywhere.

"Production for need" isn't directly related to the type of technology used, is it? One is quantity, the other is means. If you condemn technology per se, then you deny that we have a choice between the development and use of technologies. This isn't something unique to Bookchin. Perhaps everyone who holds that view is a "twat" as well.

No answer to the Pol Pot comparison, I see.

a chimp using a stick is technology, of course i am not condemning that kind of banter

are you suggesting that the reason for the development of most technologies is something other than either to wage war in some greater way or to make £. do you really think technology is neutral? i fucking don't

i think i do condemn dynamite pretty safely and contentious as it might sound, from the safety of my office, i wish xander nobcheese had blown himself up several times over, the cunt (gasp!) how do you use dynamite creatively by the way? have you been watching 'fight club?'

as for the Pol Pot comparison: while i advocate land redistro, moving away from the obsession with urbanisation, technolgy (if that was what he really wanted to do?) i simply must draw the line at mass graves, starving huge numbers of people, working in partnership with the chinese maniac 'communist' govt etc etc etc etc etc etc etc 

"how do you use dynamite creatively by the way?"

Bridges, tunnels. Beats hell out of manual labour. Or is it alienating us from nature to be able to get places easily?

"do you really think technology is neutral"

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Any given technology is not neutral, as it is a product of social factors. Technologies developed in capitalist social relations are skewed towards the uses preferred by that society: war and profit. The useful technologies are still possible, but relatively under-developed because they don't fit the profit-driven, authoritarian model.

So there are more- and less-useful technologies, but the urge to develop technology, tinker with tools, use our uniquely massive brains: that is inherent to humans.

Technology is tricky, a battleground of liberatory and authoritarian tendencies. That's not the same as primitivists' mystical belief in the evilness of technology per se. That strange invisible dividing line between "good" technology like pointy sticks or catapults and "bad" technology like (apparently) penicillin. Who decides where the line is? To read primitivist propaganda: not democratically, as all possible mass societies are apparently evil.

"i simply must draw the line at mass graves, starving huge numbers of people"

Yet you want to get rid of agriculture and force people to survive only on the food they themselves can grow. Seems like a recipe for genocide to me, and the Cambodian experience with that kind of policy sets a pretty strong precedent.

I would consider mining (or tunneling) to be pretty fucking alienating. All you have to do is look at the state of half the people in fife to see what it can do to in the long term. Unless you're a mole etc its probably good to stay above ground most of the time. And anyway 'getting places easily' is part of the convenience culture that is fucking up the planet for 'all our relations'. 

I'm gald we sort of seem to agree on the technology driver thing but our 'massive brains' (egocentric, narcissistic?) don't seem to be in gear when it comes to restraint or 'the science of government'. I didn't really understand your comment about democratic. 

I don't think any primitivist wants to see agriculture abandoned overnight, that would be crazy. And i am totally sick of hearing this line about the die off. By all accounts there is going to be a die off anyway if we just carry on like we are. Vent your spleen in that direction. No, a move away from our maniacal current system is what is required. Aw cunt kens that. Simply rehashing it with a similar system of built in domination, land restriction, eco rape is not an alternative to me. Business as usual is not an alternative to me. So what is? I am open to reasonable discussion and new ideas but simply the workers taking over the asylum is just monotonous repetition. I mean community grass roots organising great but what is the end point? 

mwah x

Getting a little sidetracked, aren't we?  It's lovely how just about every discussion I've read has turned into mudslinging match!

It's a shame the trees have been replaced, yes, especially since thay could've lasted a bit longer, but I guess that at this point they're not coming back, so hopefully the new ones will develop a bit of character as they get older. 

the trees huv aw  been saved by an infamous local anarchist, and will be recycled intae furniture, efter thuv hud time tae dry oot ...think global act local