Scott's Random Thought For The Day (British Fireworks)



Earlier today London Mayor Ken Livingstone announced that the city is going to put on a New Year’s Eve firework display of such size and beauty that it will rival the famous ones in Sydney and Los Angeles, with one difference. If the mayor has his way, no one will actually be there to watch it.

“If 2 million people turn up, there will be a problem... It will be a visual image to broadcast around the world,” explained Livingstone.

In other words, London wants to look like a fun place, but doesn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of people actually having fun. The idiocy of this is obvious. Watching fireworks on TV is approximately 1/1000 as fun as watching them live. If people aren’t going to be there to "ooh" and "aah," why waste the money? Is an image that will be sandwiched in between some Chinese people banging a gong and Dick Clark interviewing Britney Spears really worth taunting your own citizenry with fireworks you don’t want them to experience? Why pretend to have a celebration if no one is there to celebrate?

This is not a strictly British phenomenon, of course. I’m amused every time I go to a Logan's Roadhouse restaurant, which is essentially the same as a Hops or Bennigans or any of those other chain restaurants that have farming implements and nostalgic crap stuck to the walls, except at Logan's Roadhouse the walls are painted with life size images of people playing pool and dancing to juke boxes. Not that there is pool or juke boxes in the actual restaurant mind you. It’s like the walls are portals to an alternate dimension where Logan's Roadhouse is actually fun, and you’re stuck on this side of the looking glass, eating overpriced food and wishing they’d turn off that damn country station that plays Billy Ray Cyrus every 15 minutes.

Still, the scale of the British fireworks display is staggering, at least for something they don’t want anybody to go see. Maybe the good mayor should start encouraging London restaurants to start serving customers plastic replicas of food. Then you could get some great TV images of people sitting down to eat great looking food, and be guaranteed that they won’t stay around long enough to be inconvenient to the city. But then considering my experiences in London restaurants, there’s a good chance those customers wouldn’t notice the difference.

Posted: Tue - December 9, 2003 at      

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