London Fireworks

Vanilla · 2 Jan 2010 at 18:42

SoSolid said:
Rubbish. The fireworks do nothing than to serve as a giant act of willy waving to other countries.

Yes, because every TV in every UK house was tuned into the fireworks display in Berlin, or Paris, or wherever.

No one cares about the fireworks in another country.

Amp34 · 2 Jan 2010 at 18:42

SoSolid said:
Rubbish. The fireworks do nothing than to serve as a giant act of willy waving to other countries.

That as well, but if the 200K+ people were all tourists they need to pay for travel to and around london, accomodation for a lot of them, food, random other bits and most will have probably made a day of it as well. Adds up to a lot of money, far more than the city spent on fireworks.

How old are you btw, you sound like a grumpy 60 year old. Lighten up a bit, you know, have a bit of fun.

Vanilla · 2 Jan 2010 at 18:46

Amp34 said:
That as well, but if the 200K+ people were all tourists they need to pay for travel to and around london, accomodation for a lot of them, food, random other bits and most will have probably made a day of it as well. Adds up to a lot of money, far more than the city spent on fireworks.

How old are you btw, you sound like a grumpy 60 year old. Lighten up a bit, you know, have a bit of fun.

Yup - Any tourists in any major city go and see the fireworks in the city center. I did it around the world and it has come to be expected from any decent country on NYE.

It's big for locals and tourists alike.

El Gringo · 2 Jan 2010 at 19:27

As whatserface on the teevee said, all rooms from there to somewhere stupid had been booked for NY, it was impossible to get a room this side of Bosnia. Sounds like money to me.

One might not approve of it, that's their opinion, but declaring it's a waste of money does smack as ill informed and quite grumpy. If you disagree, feel free to back your arguments up with facts, I'm certainly interested.

Nikumba · 2 Jan 2010 at 20:21

Me and my sister and parents went down to London purely to see the fireworks and stay over a few nights and visit places around London.

I thought the fireworks was paid by London rather than the taxpayer?

But I thought the show was amazing, we stood in front of the fountain thing in front of Buck palace and got a pretty good view from there, then when we got back watched it on TV to see if we missed anything, we didn't really.

Kimbie

daz · 2 Jan 2010 at 20:39

If we put on a great show, people moan that it's a waste of money. If we put on barely anything, people moan that we're rubbish compared to Sydney's fireworks etc. We can't win.

I for one think the fireworks have been fantastic in recent years - I think that we have one of the best displays in the world regularly now, which is quite something.

rypt · 2 Jan 2010 at 20:43

daz said:
I for one think the fireworks have been fantastic in recent years - I think that we have one of the best displays in the world regularly now, which is quite something.

Indeed, certainly better than the crap we got for the millennium

yermum · 2 Jan 2010 at 21:08

We went with our 2 youngest to see them and they enjoyed them tremendously. The traffic out of London, however was a complete mess and needs to be sorted for next year. It took us about an hour to travel 1 mile.

TheBillyBumbler · 2 Jan 2010 at 21:38

SoSolid said:
Rubbish. The fireworks do nothing than to serve as a giant act of willy waving to other countries.

Spoken like a true unperturbed compatriot. I couldn't agree with you any less. It's a joke, besides, after the 'oohs and 'ahhs' when looking up at festive blowout (of what is the taxpayers money (recollects the scenes from Romero's third zombie flick)) you've got the long trek home in the bitter cold, which can be rather depressing if you aren't sozzled up to your eyeballs in alcohol and/or have a lovely broad/geezer action to llook forward to...

daz · 2 Jan 2010 at 22:06

yermum said:
We went with our 2 youngest to see them and they enjoyed them tremendously. The traffic out of London, however was a complete mess and needs to be sorted for next year. It took us about an hour to travel 1 mile.

Traffic? In London we have underground railroads.

muon · 2 Jan 2010 at 22:32

daz said:
Traffic? In London we have underground railroads.

And its free from 11.45pm onwards. I'd say with the number of people out, that's a far larger cost than the fireworks themselves.

All basically paid for by the GLA

http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=24578