New Year fireworks

[Shelly32]

I know this is a little after the event but I can't get this off my mind. Did the tax payer cover the cost of the London New Year firework display and if we did..how on earth can the government justify this when more and more children slip into what they call poverty every single day, when jobs are being lost left, right and centre and people are dying because the NHS can't cope due to cuts...Should I just accept that this is the way things are?

because the moral of people is important

Do you mean the morale? I think it makes more sense if we focused on the morals of people..our government to be precise!!

Considering we are hosting the Olympics, we have had a royal wedding and it is the Queens aniversary this year, the show had to be good. The UK should be able to rival any other country and it did.

If it had of been scaled down do you honestly think the money saved would have gone to the welfare budget?

Birdsgottafly no...that would've been naive of me to assume that..it just kind of rubs it in the faces of those who are suffering the cutbacks..

Would you prefer that nothing is done to celebrate anything, ever? Do you want absolute misery with nothing to dilute it? TBH if this is still troubling you more than a week after the event you either have no worries of your own or you need to stand for office and get something done about it!

I might go with your second option..

However, I can still be concerned about wider issues while having issues of my own...can't I?

I thought they did scale it down. Im sure I read somewhere, probably on here, that it was two minutes shorter than the previous year. Although that doesnt necessarily mean cheaper.

I think a lot of it was paid for out of the London budget though, congestion charges probably.

I think they have little pots where they save for different things....probably much like us normal folk do.

you know, like a pot for the gas, pot for food, pot for petrol, pot for rent/mortgage, one for the ... and a teeny pot for fun and luxuries.

only the government will have one for teachers, one for the army, one for the NHS, one for the benefits.... and one for fun stuff like fireworks on NYE.

:o

IUTMKR I think I can live with that. Thank you :)

Who did actually pay for them?

London council tax payers? The general tax payer? Or private sponsors?

I know the post makes me sound like a killjoy...I'm not, honest!!

The Italian ethos of 'Fare la bella figure' (to make a good impression) springs to mind here. What message would we be giving out to the rest of the world, tourists, potential investors etc if we had nothing but darkness and silence on NYE? I do see what you're saying but it's no good giving everything up because times is 'ard!

According to the BBC, the whole event (including planning, stewards etc, but not police costs) was £1.9million, of which £276,000 was the fireworks themselves. It didn't say who paid, or if the bigger figure included costs of any free/extended transport.

Wow PermaLice

SiamoNellaMerda I guess it cost less than it cost the taxpayer to ship the Pope over to the UK though!!

If we apply the test to every single public event that 'could we spend this money on eradicating poverty?' then we would end up with a very miserable, joyless society and just as big a poverty problem as we had previously. London is a massive city controlled by an elected Mayor. As a world-class tourist city, for London to thrive the Mayor (not the Westminster government) needs to spend money not just on keeping the buses running and the streets clean but also cultural events to draw in the visitors. The New Year fireworks have become an annual fixture that many travel to see. And if you look at the question of civic morale... even during the darkest days of the Blitz, London carried on entertaining the population via theatres and other events.

The voice of reason once again Cogito.

Using the same logic then perhaps we shouldn't allow poor people to have Sky and ban them from HMV. I mean after all, if they have money to waste on such luxuries then we could have used that money to pay for another family who cannot?