As shop owner Trish Glover told the Sun, in a quote that sounds suspiciously too good to be true: "This health and safety lark has gone far enough."
There is much coverage in today's papers about the curious, cone-shaped artificial Christmas tree erected in Poole town centre. Variously compared to a traffic cone and something from outer space, the £14,000 behemoth was put up in place of the usual real fir tree on – cue media harrumphing – health and safety grounds.
To be fair to Poole's town centre management board, the group comprising businesses and the local council that made the decision, they never actually claimed that real trees are unsafe, just that they need to be secured with guy ropes and thus placed behind hoardings.
The artificial one, apparently weighed down with two tonnes of ballast, is more open to the public. "We have seen children hug it because they love it," claimed Richard Randle-Jones, the town centre manager, slightly dubiously.
Perhaps fortunately, no one has yet used the story to try to prove the more or less entirely fictional "war against Christmas". There are, instead, two main objections.
The first is hard to argue against, particularly when the tree is seen in daylight – it's ugly. The fact it contains hidden speakers that play carols is merely alarming. As newsagent Shatih Patal told the Mirror succinctly: "It's a load of crap."
The other is the modern British obsession with whining about "elf 'n' safety", an issue highlighted particularly by the Sun and Telegraph.
Now I'm not doubting that local authority jobsworthness is thriving, and can result in some bizarre decisions. But who would be the first to demand a cull of council managers should a real town centre Christmas tree collapse and so much as bruise a toddler's big toe? Yes, the same newspapers.
