The Save Alexandra Park Trees group has sent out this press release:

Residents of Whalley Range horrified as Manchester City Council arrive today with chainsaws to fell up to 400 trees as part of the Alexandra Park Development.

Residents have been writing and challenging the Council since the extent of felling became known in December 2012.  Residents met with the Council in late December to raise their concerns and draw attention to a petition of now over 2000 signatures objecting to the felling.  Despite this MCC appear to be intent on progressing with the plans.

Residents are gathering in the park today to challenge the council and plead for a delay in fellings until a better solution can be found.

For further information:

Resident contact in the Park: Ian 07757639668

Website http://savealexandraparkstrees.wordpress.com/ with link to petition (over 2000 signatures) and videos

Fellings from yesterday:
http://savealexandraparkstrees.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/cherrytree-avenue-felled-21-jan-2013/

or see videos on
http://www.youtube.com/user/Environment4all?feature=watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hRrzTd8lSU  part 1 film of locals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo-r5sIh6h4  part 2 film of locals

MCFly says: Both MCFly co-editors use Alexandra Park regularly. It’s a beautiful space. It’s a Good Thing that money has been found to do renovations. What’s not so good is that there are strings attached. Because these strings mean trees have to come down, the Council seems not only uninterested in dialogue/explaining itself, but actively resistant to the notion of transparency, consultation and citizen engagement (above and beyond its normal levels!).

This is what you get with bureaucracies, especially in Britain, one of the most secretive countries in the world. Sometimes, when there are competing political factions, then the factions leak selectively against each other, and important information gets out. In Manchester – not so much. Eighty-six of the 96 councillors are Labour. Next year that will, barring a miracle (and the Germans have outlawed miracles), go up to 96. As in, 100%. The technical term is “one-party state”…

But even one-party states have politics; they are just harder to see. The protestors who are currently so (understandably) upset at what is being done in Alexandra Park will, we hope, stay involved in the important job of trying to prise open the Council, long after the trees they care about are gone.

It is only bottom-up relentless and growing pressure that can force change upon the complacent and often contemptuous political culture of this city. That pressure will involve lobbying of individual councillors, attendance at Scrutiny Committees, full Council and Executive, Freedom of Information Act requests, public meetings, letters to the “news”papers, petitions and a host of other tactics. Not all of these actions are easy, not all of them successful, not all of them result in raised status within the activist sub-culture. But they will all have to be done.