Felling of ancient oak tree in Enfield sparks Metropolitan Police probe
The leader of Enfield Council, Ergin Erbil, said they were treating the matter as criminal damage and had reported it to the police.He added: "We have now placed a legal protection (Tree Preservation Order) on the tree and are looking at ways to help it grow back."We will work closely with the police as they continue their investigation into this matter."Jon Stokes, director of trees, science and research at the Tree Council, said the felling of such a "magnificent" tree was shocking.He added: "Ancient oaks can live up to 1,000 years old and are as precious as our stately homes and castles."Our nation's green heritage should be valued and protected and we will do everything we can to achieve this."
The Woodland Trust's head of campaigning Adam Cormack said the tree's loss was "devastating".He said: "We don't know yet who did this or why and would urge anyone with information to come forward and report it to the police."This depressing sight is a reminder to all of us that not every ancient tree is in a safe place."It is very unusual to see the felling of an oak tree of this size and age. Legally protected status for heritage trees like the Whitewebbs Oak is long overdue."The trust's Living Legends petition, which aims to secure such status for heritage trees, and which attracted more than 100,000 signatures, was handed in to Downing Street in November.
Trial due to start
The issue of tree preservation was highlighted after the destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree in September 2023.There was outrage when the tree, which stood in a dip next to Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, was chopped down.Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, both from Cumbria, have been charged with causing criminal damage put at more than £600,000.They will appear before a jury at a trial starting on 28 April at Newcastle Crown Court.
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Sky News
09-07-2025
- Sky News
Dirty work: The fly-tippers turning trash into cash
Holding up a wad of cash, Cristian smiles as he counts out £50 notes while a friend beams and waves a finger at the camera. In other videos posted on TikTok, Cristian (not his real name) and his group appear to shovel debris into what looks like an abandoned warehouse, dance by the side of a road and fly-tip on a country lane. While in person they present themselves as an ordinary collection of handymen, we suspect these men are part of a group who dump waste onto unlicensed sites. We know some of them operate as private refuse collectors, and understand at least some of the rubbish they were paid to legally dispose of ended up being fly-tipped en-masse in the countryside. This is after we found tonnes of waste left to rot in a farmer's field and a Woodland Trust site. 7:39 We tracked down Cristian and his group one morning as they climbed into vans and pick-up trucks to start their day. His name and number had been given to us by a client whose waste we found at an illegal dump site. I told him I was a Sky News journalist and that we believe the waste he had been paid to remove was dumped illegally in the countryside. "We don't do rubbish removals," he replied. I asked him if he had ever made money from fly-tipping. "I don't do rubbish in the woods," he said. When asked how he makes money, he replied "fencing". The 'new narcotics' Waste crime is a booming problem, which the former head of the Environment Agency called the 'new narcotics' for the way it allows organised criminal gangs to make huge amounts of money. It costs the UK an estimated £1bn a year - yet the crime is poorly policed, little understood, and the legal punishments are often weak. Last year, local authorities in England dealt with 1.15 million fly-tipping incidents; a 6% rise on the previous year. But just 63,000 fixed penalty notices were issued - a 5% drop on the previous 12 months - while the average court fine was worth just £530. That's despite the ability of fly-tippers to make millions of pounds in profit. Often they operate as legal waste operators - from a one-man band on Facebook or Gumtree, to a significant outfit posing as a legitimate company. They're paid to collect waste, but instead of taking it to a tip or landfill, and paying the requisite costs and taxes, they just dump it and pocket the profit. "If you put it in a field, it's free," explains Dr Anna Willetts, an environmental criminal defence lawyer. "If you take it to a Household Waste Recycling Centre or to a landfill site run by waste operators - then there's what's called a gate fee, which then has to be paid per tonne, effectively, of waste that you're depositing." Teddy bear, wedding photos and a coffin To uncover the perpetrators of this crime, Sky News spent eight weeks visiting fly-tip sites around Hertfordshire. With the permission of landowners, we focused on three locations roughly three miles apart near St Albans. The smallest had just three van loads in it - the largest around 40. Each time, the gates had been broken into overnight, and a slew of vehicles had driven across the grass. This left behind mounds of rotting waste from builders and households, as well as asbestos and clinical materials. We found everything from a child's teddy bear, to wedding photos and a coffin. Two of the sites are owned by the Woodland Trust and the largest site belongs to a farmer. Despite being the victims of this crime, it's the landowner's responsibility to pay to remove fly-tipping. In this case, the combined cost will come to tens of thousands of pounds. On site, we began to go through the dozens of piles and it didn't take long before we found a series of names and addresses. These were on documents and items as varied as Amazon boxes, wedding plans, dentist appointments and welfare applications. These individuals likely paid someone money to remove the items, expecting the waste to be dealt with properly. 'They're the bags…oh man' Charlie (not his real name) gave a huge sigh as he went through the rubbish. We called him after finding work relating to a job of his in one of the piles. In the middle of a field where locals walk their dogs, he instantly recognised the huge white and blue rubble sacks which he'd paid to have cleared. He said he felt "disappointed" and "cheated". He paid £300 to an individual we're calling Andrei to remove them a few weeks earlier. A skip would have cost the same amount of money, he says, but he trusted Andrei - who even had an official waste carrier's licence issued by the Environment Agency. Based on what Charlie paid Andrei, we calculate that each individual pile of rubbish - a van load - was probably worth around £500 to the group. They should have taken it to a tip, where they would have been charged a gate fee per tonnage and paid landfill tax. Instead, by dumping it in a field - they pocket a huge profit. We roughly calculate that just one site of 40 loads could have been worth as much as £20,000 to them in takings. In contrast, the landowner has been quoted nearly £50,000 to remove it properly. Later, another client whose items we found dumped nearby gave us a different name and number - Cristian. It didn't take long for us to realise that Andrei and Cristian were working together. How we tracked down the fly-tippers Adam Parker OSINT editor @adamparkr Sky News' Data and Forensics unit took the names given to us and soon found a group of London-based waste carriers who seem to be working together. We found the first clue in a pile of dumped building waste in a Hertfordshire field: a document with a phone number. We followed the paper trail and were given a number by a builder. Running it through open-source tools revealed a name and face. Then came another load and another number. A different name, but we had suspicions it was the same network. On Facebook, the two were friends. Their photos online were recognised by the people who hired them. On TikTok, the fly-tippers shared videos flashing cash, collecting waste and travelling in their vans. Footage showed them driving down the same remote lane as two of the fly-tips we found. They also shared a video of them playing with a coffin; we later found the exact same one dumped in a field. Using their own videos and photos shared online, we were able to track them to an address in north London - a residential parking area frequently shown in the background of their posts. A couple of large buildings nearby helped us confirm the location. Penalties 'not a deterrent' for fly-tippers Cristian denied having anything to do with the illegal fly-tipping when we confronted him, insisting that he has nothing to do with rubbish removal. The other men who featured in these videos all refused to comment. But we found enough evidence to raise significant doubt on those claims, and have passed our findings over to the authorities. Dr Willetts is frustrated by how quickly we gathered our evidence compared to the authorities. She said: "It's difficult often for regulators to catch them, and then when they are caught, penalties are - the way they're meted out, if you like, if they're not done the right way - are low, and it's not a deterrent for them." On the rare occasion fly-tippers are caught, the fines are often so small I've been told the criminals chalk it up as a "business expense". St Albans City and District Council director Chris Traill said: "Fly-tipping is a criminal offence, punishable by heavy fines and even imprisonment, and the rubbish involved can be a health hazard, harm the environment and cost a considerable sum to clear up. "When we have the necessary evidence, we will not hesitate to prosecute or fine offenders." A Department for Environment spokesperson said waste criminals have "gone unpunished for too long", adding that in April the government launched a crackdown on "cowboy waste operators". Additional reporting by Niamh Lynch and camera operator Martin Smith
Daily Mirror
03-06-2025
- Daily Mirror
Creeping effects of death cap mushrooms as murder trial continues
Erin Patterson is accused of deliberately adding the deadly fungi to a meal served to her estranged husband's family Death cap mushrooms have been thrust into the spotlight as an ongoing murder trial in Australia hones in on a toxic Beef Wellington created by Erin Patterson. While the prosecution claims she included the mushrooms deliberately, Ms Patterson denies this with her team claiming it was a 'terrible accident' according to the BBC. She served the toxic beef wellington at her home in July 2023, with the death of her former in-laws Don and Gail Patterson as well as Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson following days after the lunch. Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson was hospitalised but survived. You only need to eat a small amount of the deadly mushroom for it to be fatal. Those who have tried it and survived say it has a pleasant taste. After eating the mushroom, it can sometimes take up to 12 hours for symptoms to start. At the beginning, this may include nausea, vomiting and low blood pressure. Around 24 hours after eating the mushroom, the symptoms can completely disappear according to the BC CDC. You may feel fine for days but the real symptoms are still lying in wait. The toxins in the mushroom prevent cells from carrying out essential functions, and the toxin isn't destroyed by cooking or drying. It mainly targets the liver, slowly making it stop functioning and die after a period of time. Up to seven days after eating death caps, you'll begin to experience the symptoms of kidney and liver damage. Around this time encephalopathy can also develop, which impacts brain function and can cause permanent damage. If left untreated, death can occur soon after this point. Death cap mushrooms can sometimes be found in city environments and it's fairly common in most parts of the UK, Ireland and Europe according to the Woodland Trust. The mushrooms produce circles of fruiting bodies known as fairy rings which have been incorporated into folklore over the centuries. There are few effective treatments for death cap poisoning. It can range from pumping the stomach to activated charcoal and severe cases may even require a liver transplant. Silibinin can be used to treat the poisoning but usually needs to be given before initial symptoms start to be effective. In 2023, a medical imaging dye was found to block the toxin's effects but it is yet to be tested in humans. Known scientifically as Amanita phalloides, the death cap is responsible for about 90% of mushroom-related deaths across the world. It can easily be mistaken for a variety of edible mushrooms. It can grow up to 15cm wide and 15cm tall with a white cap and an off-white stem. The gills underneath the cap start off as pure white and turn into creams and pinks as the fungus ages. Its cap is dome-shaped when it's young and flattens out as it matures, turning darker in the middle too. It's virtually odourless when young and can smell sickly sweet or even rancid when old. The base of the mushroom is swollen, making it look like it's sitting in a little bag. One incredibly similar mushroom is the false death cap, which is edible according to the Woodland Trust and smells strongly of raw potatoes. However, because of its striking similarities to the real death cap it's best to avoid this mushroom too.
ITV News
17-05-2025
- ITV News
Second man arrested in connection with fires at properties linked to Starmer
A second man has been arrested in connection with arson attacks on properties linked to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Counter-terror officers arrested a 26-year-old man at Luton Airport on Saturday, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life, according to a statement from the Metropolitan arrest follows fires at Starmer's home in Kentish Town, as well as another property and a car linked to the Prime Minister earlier this month. Roman Lavrynovych, a 21-year-old Ukrainian man, has already been charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life in connection with the fires. Lavrynovych, of Sydenham, south-east London, denied arson in a police interview. He appeared in court on Friday and was remanded in custody until a further hearing at the Old Bailey scheduled for June 6.
