Oh for goodness sake. The tree is fine! It just needs a little love, you're right! Give me £100 and I'll buy some beautiful things to spruce it up. It needs silver bulbs! Little twinkling lights! Red ribbon bows! Candy canes!

Hang on, the people of Peterlee are complaining about something being a bit crap?

No. They're right. That tree is crap.
But it should be noted that our annual Tree Quest is the stuff of legend, involving visiting dozens of lots and occasionally lasting for days. Serious business.

I want that replica tree. Someone buy me a present.

Oh, poor little tree. It does just need to be adopted by someone nice.

The town centre is quite a bit uglier than the poor tree.

A bit of background on my comment: In the 1950s and 1960s the British government decided to build a series of "new towns" to house the increasingly urban population instead of expanding existing cities. Most of these are inevitably charmless and unpleasant, and Peterlee is amongst the worst - it was basically built to house unemployed miners when the local pits closed, and remains very poor and rundown. Thus the tree is surely no worse than anything else in the town.

I'm just completely distracted that everyone sounds like Elizabeth Hurley. I love Elizabeth Hurley.

"I think they should take it down and put it in the skip."
(say in best Elizabeth Hurley voice)

While I think this is generally good advice for most holiday traditions and people that insist on them, that tree is too beautiful to take down. I mean, come on!, you've already killed the damn thing, have a bit of spirit, what more do they want?! How could a person be so offended by such a thing?! It's beyond me.

/and this from an rabid anti-christmasite

You know, the tree is definitely not your usual mall Christmas Tree, but I think they should embrace it. It's "scruffy but proud" (the slogan of a town I used to live near) and it's a chance for the merchant to talk about the True Spirit of Christmas. Why waste another tree? Why waste public funds? They should make a fun thing out of it, print up T-shirts.

Besides, it's really not that bad. I actually go looking for a tree something like that every year. I really like sparse trees with wide-apart branches - they show off ornaments better. Maybe it's a rebellion against the perfect-cone full trees I grew up with, but I appreciate seeing a tree that looks a bit natural instead of hyper-processed.

Also, how "Sit Up Britain!" was that story? I was almost waiting for the tree to fall on the reporter at the end. It's good to know local news isn't very good across the pond, either. Although in the US the story would have been one-fourth as long and made up of odd sentence fragments ("the tree, sitting in the plaza. Residents, unhappy. The mall's response? "We're as disappointed as anyone.")