Negligence vs clear criminal intent.

You mean the tree cut down in or next to the Tottenham Hotspur training ground, or proposed development (I forget).

Also, the tree cut down by the restaurant chain, that's part owned by... one of the owners of Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Also the same club that couldn't redevelop their stadium until the scrap yard opposite vacated, which they refused to do. Then it 'mysteriously' burnt down.

Also, also, I don't subscribe to conspiracy, and I think these are just unfortunate random occurences. Million to one events happen 9 times out of 10.

Outrage is an emotion. The Sycamore Gap Tree was very famous, symbolic and a landmark, and thus its felling triggered a big emotional response even if arguably the felling of a 500 year old oak by that Toby Carvery restaurant is in a way "worse", indeed.

And Sycamore is an invasive non-native species that gets actively removed from ancient forest as a weed.

The outrage over the Sycamore gap felling, while somewhat justified, is mostly an outlet of expression for a latent feeling of nationalism that the ruling and middle classes of Britain feel they aren't allowed to acknowledge, even to themselves. There's no world where it's logically consistent that the felling of a 150-year-old tree is a national outrage, but the dissolution of the indigenous ethnic groups of Britain, almost within a single generation, with their 2000 years of history on the island, is not worth even commenting on (or is even something to celebrate).

For an even clearer example, see the case of the red squirrel.