Time was when natural selection would’ve weeded out the people who through a simple genetic quirk weren’t meant for a long life on this planet. Now, thanks to signs like this one, these people have a fighting chance. Had this sign not existed then it would have almost certainly led to a lively demise for the kind of poor misguided soul who sees a sharp looking plant and is overwhelmed by an urge to consume it. Instead of this person thrashing about on the floor, slowly turning blue as they were destined to, they’ll have dodged a bullet here and be released into the wider world to find some new and equally improbable way to die, possibly taking some innocent people with them.

Think about it, there has to have been some kind of precedent set for this sign to exist in the first place. Someone must’ve eaten a pot plant somewhere, got ill and then tried to sue for negligence. That means that there are probably other people, perhaps at this very moment, wandering around airports and other public spaces eating purely decorative plants. None of those plants would have been put there for humans to satisfy a primal urge to forage and although prices in departure lounges are a merciless rip off I don’t think that fully explains the need for this sign at Gatwick. Instead I think a dangerous underclass of simpleton has been unwittingly created, through a culture of diminished personal responsibility, that would otherwise have been naturally thinned through incidents like licking live rails, attempting to befriend chaotic pieces of heavy machinery or by enthusiastically chugging Cillit Bang.

It can only get worse. If we carry on like this we’ll soon have signs on alternating lamp posts reminding people to breathe in and breathe out.

It’s elf n’ safety gawn mad I tell ya!

Spotted by Georgia Kuhn

* The phrase “Health and Safety gone mad” used with the kind permission of the Daily Mail