Why Your Government Loves you: Keeping Bonfire Night Benign!
This week was Bonfire Night, November 5th, a 'celebration' of a failed act of terrorism against the crown which is now remembered by councils banning bonfires, fireworks with about as much fizzle as John Major's wardrobe and the chance to, effectively, burn money.
It never used to be this way. I can remember as child Bonfire Night was always one of the major events of the year, perhaps second only to Christmas. Where I lived, groups of kids would spend weeks before the date collecting "Bonnie Wood" and storing it in a variety of disused garages and other 'secret' hidey-holes. There was a palpable sense of anticipation every year, fuelled by the singing of "Remember, Remember" in school and the scary adverts warning you not to pick up sparklers at the wrong end, or otherwise play with fireworks.
When the night arrived, I was always amazed to discover it wasn't a school holiday. Even so, you'd rush home from school, get outside to help 'build the Bonnie'. You'd build it high and tall, stuff paper into the nooks and crannies to get the flames going and then shortly after tea, someone would light it. There'd be several of these bonfires in a very short area, lighting the night sky and the morning after would smell like Vietnam after the American's had left.
Fireworks too were very different in those days, yet even in the 70s and 80s, they were tame to the proper olden style fireworks. I can remember being told of a firework that you lit, left on the floor and which would then randomly explode towards people, chasing them around gardens. They were banned long before we got interested in the 5th November, but even in the 80s, you could still find rockets that actually made a satisfying "bang" when they exploded, mortar's that would make the windows reverberate and boxes of fireworks where you would always have one or two unexpectedly loud bangs amongst the hour or so it took to set them off.
Nowadays, Bonfire Night has been sanitised to the point of boredom. We bought a box of fireworks for Monday night and I set them off. The recommended "safe" distance to view them was "at least five metres".
Well, we were a good five metres away and I can honestly say that waking Christmas morning to find Santa had left you nothing apart from Rudolph doing a dump in your pillowcase would be less of an anticlimax. I'd light the firework, retire. It would burn for about 3.1 seconds, then fizzle out. Best of all they had names like "Fiery Anthrax Death" and "Whooshing Doom!", when perhaps "Boring waste of 3 seconds of your life" would be more appropriate.
The rockets whooshed into the sky and seemingly farted themselves into a shower of feeble sparks. The Roman Candles ejected their contents with less conviction than a vicar at a sperm bank and the "150 Barrage Blitz" should technically have been called "Watching someone welding is more exciting". Lastly, the final £30 firework that promised 15 exciting mortars and a show stopping climax, did so with the same dramatic noise and impact as a baby sparrow emerging from its egg.
Indeed, the greatest cheer of the night came when a rocket I set off somehow veered off on take off and banged into next doors window, before bouncing down into the garden and exploding. This was only ten metres from us and as you can imagine, was utterly terrifying. I mean had we been just 9.9 metres closer to that firework when it came down, someone could have been woken up by it.
Is all this safety necessary, in 2005 (the last year I can find info for), during the four week period around the 5th November 990 people were injured by fireworks, nobody died. Since then firework legislation has got markedly tougher to the point now where shops are only allowed to sell fireworks from an appointed date and setting off fireworks in the streets is now an offence.
In that same 28-day period, around 196 people would have died on the roads in the UK and that figure is lower than it has been for many years.
And here's food for thought, during the cold snap at the end of 2010 into 2011, when Britain was covered by snow and ravaged by freezing temperatures, the average numbers of deaths, particularly of the elderly, rose by 17% in the UK and 20% in Scotland in the first week of cold weather. Over 10,000 people died during this period, many because they weren't warm enough or didn't have the money to turn on the heating.
Makes you feel so much safer doesn't it, knowing these fireworks are as benign as our leaders abilities to protect the citizen's who elect them.
Indeed, considering this, it does make you wonder if we should be vilifying Guy Fawkes for attempted treason, or celebrating the fact that he had the right idea all along.
It never used to be this way. I can remember as child Bonfire Night was always one of the major events of the year, perhaps second only to Christmas. Where I lived, groups of kids would spend weeks before the date collecting "Bonnie Wood" and storing it in a variety of disused garages and other 'secret' hidey-holes. There was a palpable sense of anticipation every year, fuelled by the singing of "Remember, Remember" in school and the scary adverts warning you not to pick up sparklers at the wrong end, or otherwise play with fireworks.
When the night arrived, I was always amazed to discover it wasn't a school holiday. Even so, you'd rush home from school, get outside to help 'build the Bonnie'. You'd build it high and tall, stuff paper into the nooks and crannies to get the flames going and then shortly after tea, someone would light it. There'd be several of these bonfires in a very short area, lighting the night sky and the morning after would smell like Vietnam after the American's had left.
Fireworks too were very different in those days, yet even in the 70s and 80s, they were tame to the proper olden style fireworks. I can remember being told of a firework that you lit, left on the floor and which would then randomly explode towards people, chasing them around gardens. They were banned long before we got interested in the 5th November, but even in the 80s, you could still find rockets that actually made a satisfying "bang" when they exploded, mortar's that would make the windows reverberate and boxes of fireworks where you would always have one or two unexpectedly loud bangs amongst the hour or so it took to set them off.
Nowadays, Bonfire Night has been sanitised to the point of boredom. We bought a box of fireworks for Monday night and I set them off. The recommended "safe" distance to view them was "at least five metres".
Well, we were a good five metres away and I can honestly say that waking Christmas morning to find Santa had left you nothing apart from Rudolph doing a dump in your pillowcase would be less of an anticlimax. I'd light the firework, retire. It would burn for about 3.1 seconds, then fizzle out. Best of all they had names like "Fiery Anthrax Death" and "Whooshing Doom!", when perhaps "Boring waste of 3 seconds of your life" would be more appropriate.
The rockets whooshed into the sky and seemingly farted themselves into a shower of feeble sparks. The Roman Candles ejected their contents with less conviction than a vicar at a sperm bank and the "150 Barrage Blitz" should technically have been called "Watching someone welding is more exciting". Lastly, the final £30 firework that promised 15 exciting mortars and a show stopping climax, did so with the same dramatic noise and impact as a baby sparrow emerging from its egg.
Indeed, the greatest cheer of the night came when a rocket I set off somehow veered off on take off and banged into next doors window, before bouncing down into the garden and exploding. This was only ten metres from us and as you can imagine, was utterly terrifying. I mean had we been just 9.9 metres closer to that firework when it came down, someone could have been woken up by it.
Is all this safety necessary, in 2005 (the last year I can find info for), during the four week period around the 5th November 990 people were injured by fireworks, nobody died. Since then firework legislation has got markedly tougher to the point now where shops are only allowed to sell fireworks from an appointed date and setting off fireworks in the streets is now an offence.
In that same 28-day period, around 196 people would have died on the roads in the UK and that figure is lower than it has been for many years.
And here's food for thought, during the cold snap at the end of 2010 into 2011, when Britain was covered by snow and ravaged by freezing temperatures, the average numbers of deaths, particularly of the elderly, rose by 17% in the UK and 20% in Scotland in the first week of cold weather. Over 10,000 people died during this period, many because they weren't warm enough or didn't have the money to turn on the heating.
Makes you feel so much safer doesn't it, knowing these fireworks are as benign as our leaders abilities to protect the citizen's who elect them.
Indeed, considering this, it does make you wonder if we should be vilifying Guy Fawkes for attempted treason, or celebrating the fact that he had the right idea all along.
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