Tree climbing is a normal activity for active kids to do and helps them to learn about managing risk.. It is more likely that the Council’s concern is about civil liability in the event that a climber were to fall from the tree. If this is the case they have already received advice on what can be done to discourage climbing without needing to fell the tree.
http://www.hse.gov.uk/my...179-axe-village-tree.htm

A sad reflection on society today.

Over regulated / controlled by poorly trained, risk averse h&s geeks and insurance companies.

I didn't do it out of necessity, I did it for fun :-)



Probably yours for not following the instructions, though I assume they have monitoring systems in place so after a reasonable amount of time they notice and tell you to clip on.



Who cares? It doesn't matter as far as me and my friend were concerned. The last thing that would happen should that have occurred would be a discussion of responsibility. Plus they would have taken me with them had they fallen (I was below), so maybe I would sue them for injuring me!!!!

^^ is the pertinent point though, these activities should be conducted without the fear of "who’s to blame" etc. I wouldn't do the same with people I didn't know well though, as I know the extent people will go in apportioning blame these days.

My Dad used to tell me about his carefree childhood in the 1920/1930s Depression. Said it wasn’t unusual to lose a classmate through appendicitis; remembers houses being destroyed by explosions when gas came to West Auckland; and indicated that if I wanted to know about road traffic accidents go back to those days when cars were rare and children just ran out in front of them. No doubt the lack of the Health and Safety at Work Act gave them much happier times than the oppressive dictatorial miserable regimes of today.

On the other hand I understand there are about 60 odd million people on this island. While looking at a ‘conkers bonkers’ article a while back, I found out that there are about 25,000 schools with around about 10 million pupils. On any given day I would assume a variety of daft decisions are being made for even dafter reasons – spending £billions on ‘aircraft carriers’ that will have no aircraft on them, for example. This should allow ample opportunity for millionaire newspaper editors to vent their spleen on ‘elf an’ safety’ gone mad stories.

I also understand that the Boy/Girl/Person Scout organisation – lots of outside activity - is oversubscribed. At a State level the removal of funding means that many schools have reduced their sports activities, thus delivering another irony associated with the Olympic legacy – is it only a year ago?

Although this is not my specialist area, here in County Durham many young ones appear to forgo the pleasures of climbing trees – particularly in the rain - for the much derided computer, Facebook, Social Networking, iPad, meeting friends, texting and remaining close to the town’s eating and drinking facilities. The local swimming pool always seems well frequented and despite the oppressive suffocating regime of today, lots of young ones up here seem to play, laugh, cry, get excited, run about, cause mayhem etc and completely ignore the fact they should be thoroughly miserable and depressed because they do not have their protective cotton wool suit on. And their parents just seem to let it happen!

Cheers.

Nigel