After reading a nice little potted history...

http://briandray.blogspot.com/

and going through the trauma Friday night of the first of "several" Guy Fawke" nights, the ol' nerves are just a little on edge.

There was a report in the Herald during the last week about the sales of fireworks and what are the most popular - it does get quite depressing. It is probably 20 years since I last saw a "double happy", the red banger that came in strings of 20 or 30 and made a reasonable bang for your money. They were banned because stupid people would tie a string of them to a dog for example and set light to them, or worse. There was talk at the time about banning all fireworks because of the number of fires that they cause.

So where are we now in these enlightened days of the 21st century?

Instead of the old double happy we now have our evenings punctuated with bangers that sound like a nuclear explosion; roman candles that explode with a series of six or more very loud bangs over a 30 or 40 second period; and reports from someone at work that kids were found in his street with a small box of detonators.

That is not the worst of it.

In the Herald report, one of the local importers was quoted as having a customer come in and spend $3,500 (about USD1900) in purchasing a carton of just one kind of firework; a "massive volcano" or somesuch. The reporter must have expressed some mild surprise because in the next quote the merchant said that the same customer was back in the following day for more.

And at that point I have to ask myself "Just what manner of society do we have?" It is not just the sad fact of an annual festival and the amount of money literally "going up in smoke".

Take for example the tv ads that appear from time to time for a popular make of car. Wife goes out, buys clothes etc, comes home "Honey, I saved hundreds of dollars today". Husband comes home, proud owner of a new car "Honey, I saved thousands of dollars". Oh, there is a version which has the roles reversed except that hubby buys handyman tools instead of clothes.

As another example the tv ad for a credit card. "Save more by using this credit card". How much do you have to spend in order to recover the fees and charges? How much does the company make from interest on unpaid cards?

On a similar vein the finance company that will lend you money "when you are unable to get a loan from anywhere".

Again it is sad that those who get bitten by all of these sharks are the ones who can least afford it. Out of a factory staff of 16 where I work, there are 3 and perhaps a fourth in this boat,