Sentenced

Foreign visitors to this blog who inhabit far flung places like Australia, Ireland, Canada, Tristan da Cunha, Sweden, Germany and Trumplandia (formerly the USA) may be interested to learn what has happened to the two ignorant oiks who in 2023 cut down that iconic sycamore tree near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. They were sentenced today - several weeks after they were found guilty of a crime that pricked the conscience of  the British nation.

Daniel Graham (39) and Adam Carruthers (32) were both sentenced to four years and three months in jail. The judge - Mrs Justice Lambert - found them "equally culpable".

This was my original blogpost from back in October 2023 - just after I had heard the news about the cruel felling of the famous sycamore. And here I was in May of this year writing about the trial.

It seems to me that justice has been done in this case. Even though Graham and Carruthers may not serve all their allotted time behind bars, a significant chunk of their freedom has now been taken away. I doubt that they have the wherewithal to ponder upon their offensive crime with true regret - such is their ignorance.

Natural beauty is something to cherish and respect be it a mountain top, a rainbow, a swathe of heather on a moorside, a frog leaping into a pond, swallows winging in the summer air or a lone sycamore tree standing proud in the rolling Northumberland landscape.

Of course there are far worse people than Graham and Carruthers. They didn't kill anybody. They didn't fly an aeroplane into a skyscraper. They didn't detonate a rucksack bomb on a tube train. They didn't abuse a child or rob a bank. But they offended the society of which they are meant to be a part, finding inexplicable pleasure in destroying something that was so beautiful and defenceless and loved by thousands of their fellow citizens.