The British town of Poole has designed its own Christmas tree using 2009 health and safety guidelines.
There is no trunk to blow over, no needles to scratch the skin, no branches to break off, no decorations to fall off and no religous symbols to offend. Basically, it has a metal frame with artificial grass.
Richard Randall-Jones, the town center manager had this explanation for the tree.
“People think you can just go into the woods, chop down a tree and put it up in the high street but if it blows over and kills someone then somebody is liable. We are a coastal town and so we have strict health-and-safety guidelines around making the Christmas tree safe due to the high winds we suffer. We have to have guy ropes and hoardings to stop it from falling over and hitting somebody. The public didn’t like all the ropes and hoardings so we came up with the cone tree.
Merry Christmas.
