When I moved into this house there was a beautiful silver birch growing in the grass verge to the front of the house,. One day my next door neighbour pointed out that its branches were scraping the roof tiles of our two houses, meaning that tiles might get knocked off in high winds. He asked me to sign a joint letter to the council, asking them to trim the branches. Some time later I returned home one day to find that the council had simply cut the beautiful tree down. I was furious but, to make matters worse, I was verbally abused by several passers-by whom, I found out, had been told by the workmen that they were cutting the tree down because I'd complained about it!
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