Licence them.
Anyone who wants to buy fireworks has to get a licence, £10 from the post office or wherever.

To get your licence, you have to prove you’re over 18 and the licence is sent out to your home address within a couple of days. The licence should have their photo on it and must be produced at the shop when buying the fireworks.

That little bit of red tape and the built in delay should put off most lazy scrotes from even bothering to apply.

Anyone caught messing about with fireworks with a licence gets banned forever.
Anyone caught messing about with fireworks without a licence get a BFO fine and is banned forever too.


[Edited by Mufasa - 11/5/2003 2:28:15 PM]

So watch the nearest display from your isolation bubble, through the window of your mansion...

;) :p :D

FB, we enforce it as well as we can. Of course it's not a perfect solution and determined people will still get them, but it should massively reduce the instances of kids as young as 8yo letting them off until 3am every night for 6 weeks, chucking them into cars, etc.

[Edited by TurboKitty - 11/5/2003 3:12:40 PM]

Reading some of the replies here it astounds me that some of you cannot get your head around the issue here. When will it hit you? When they ban something that ends up having a negative effect on you?

The responses so far have been fairly distrubuted but it seems as though there is a slight majority in favour of just banning the item in question and doing nothing about the root cause.

This goes some way towards explaining why we are heading towards a classic nanny society where the good people are bound ever more tightly by legislation and the bad people continue to do just what they like.

Scary.

[Edited by ajm - 11/5/2003 3:25:06 PM]

civictyper, Sith....

at last.... a couple more rational people!

Welcome to the thread! :D

[Edited by ajm - 11/5/2003 5:13:27 PM]

LOL :D

For the record I am one of those DIY numpties :D

[Edited by civictyper - 11/5/2003 7:45:57 PM]

I fear I need to bring the old 'family' thing into this (groan).

IMHO the reason most other countries don't have problems like us (or at least at the same scale) is because they hold a higher value on the family unit. Ok some kids are just plain evil but the majority are looking for the attention that they just don't get at home. Sounds a bit far fetched but hey, lets just sweep it all under a big carpet and ban everything ;)

[Edited by civictyper - 11/6/2003 10:05:51 AM]

With firework season there has been a renewed flood of "ban this, ban that" going on.

If everything that was potentially dangerous in the wrong hands were banned what would we be left with?

Surely it must be easier to force the poeple responsible to behave?

Think about it:-

They recklessly use fireworks and cause misery, we do nothing about it - they win.

They recklessly use fireworks and we ban fireworks. Now we can't enjoy private family displays as we have for decades - they win

They recklessly use fireworks, we bang them up and force them to work to repair the misery they have caused. Ditto for their parents where negligence is shown. - WE WIN!

Time to stop banning things, time to force the scum to behave. Then perhaps we can get back to the stage where people can take responsibility for their own behaviour and enjoy the freedom that comes with that.

Uh huh, and who pays for the extra resources needed to catch them, convict them, contain them, feed and care for them during containment, and all the other associated costs?

GREAT IDEA! How much many hours work do they get for killing sum1?

but ajm's got a point: we can't ban everything that is potentially dangerous. petrol is highly flamable and potentially explosive - let's ban that shall we? a kitchen knife could be used to stab someone - make everyone use plastic knives and forks...

there has to be a point where you accept a degree of risk, or the risk that something may be misused.

may as well give them propper grenades, and a few sub-machine gus while were at it, fireworks are not jsut potentially dangerous, were talking about explosives here.

dont forget rubber bands...

"you'll have someone eye out with that!!"

then you'll get the postman dropping all your mail in a puddle.... is that what you want Lance? coz that's what'll 'appen!!

BB:)

loads of things are explosive. wtf is a molotov cocktail made out of? do they collect a load of fireworks and painstaking remove all the explosive powder and repackage it in a milk bottle before chucking it at the spg van? no - they just go and get a jerry can full of unleaded. what about lpg cylinders - ever seen one of them go off? what about car batteries - suphuric acid in there.

ban the lot of 'em?

Wouldnt it be illegal to carry a kitchen knife round the streets? But u could have a huge rocket under your arm and that would be ok?

Fireworks are explosive devices as has been said already, how can you advocate these being sold legally in corner shops?

As I've said on another thread, I think fireworks should be restricted to organised displays run by licensed people.

I'm not saying they should be banned, just that they should not be accessible, or at least, easily accesible, to just anyone. Especially children.

Why is it that if something goes bang it is perceived to be more of a dangerous weapon? Sure fireworks CAN be dangerous, as can anything in the wrong hands.

If fireworks were banned do you seriously think that the sort of people who are causing the grief with fireworks would just shrug their shoulders and join the boy scouts?

TK: To pay for it we need to prioritise spending. i.e. The government needs to stop blowing money on **** like the dome. In terms of resources then police should be pulled in from speed camera duty and regrouped into "anti scum" units. If the *******s are worknig to pay back their debt that will also contribute.

Boro: As you well know, murder cannot be truly paid for. I am not proposing any change to the way murder or manslaughter is treated, I am just saying that the people responsible should be punished. Banning something is just a cop out.

Thing is unless you spend a sh1t load on them for your garden display. lets face it, they look completely fecking naff anyway. Wooo-bang, wooo-bang [hang on its lit but its not doing any....] woo-bang ahhhhh, fzzzzzz, fzzzzz, wooo-bang - thats it folks, lets go back inside...

Boring as feck if you ask me

it's already illegal to let off fireworks in a public place. like i said, lots of things are explosive that are not illegal. what is the rationale behind banning them? cos some **** tried one to a dog's tail? ****s who want to be cruel to animals can find other ways to do it.

S96 - agree that the home display is usually pants, but when i was a kid i loved it. we were skint and my mum thought it was a waste of money but i used to insist that she use a month or so of my pocket money to buy a little box of fireworks. it was something i really looked forward to. anything invloving setting things on fire was a good thing to me. so future generations of pyromaniacs will not be able to do this? :(

The difference is that there is no practical reason to have fireworks except for human entertainment.

The same cannot be said about petrol, kitchen knives, and rubber bands.....

THATS what makes a difference here.

Would you really be that devastated if fireworks were banned? If so, you really ought to get a life.....

D

Ive posted this in the "other" firework thread but im going to post it here too, as its relative.

Interesting FACTS...

Bonfire Night 2001

1362 people were treated in hospital after an accident involving a firework

685 of these were children under 16 (just over 50%)

Firework injuries went up by over 40% between 2000-2001

Where do most firework accidents occur?:-

40% family/private party
30% on the streets
10% organised displays
20% split over "others"

Rockets cause more accidents than any other firework

Click HERE for the full picture.

diablo - i wouldn't be devastated, no, but i think it's an important point. wtf should we ban everything that is remotely dangerous? why are people allowed to smoke - that has no practical use, neither does alcohol. why not ban motor sport - that is only for the purposes of entertainment. why don't we all stay at home with the letterbox sealed up. it's too fookin dangerous outside...

Why?

Because unless you breath that smoke and die the fags kill no one but yourself.

Ditto alcohol, unless you beat up your wife/child/husband.

No one has ever died in motorsport who didn't choose to be there, either as a spectator or as a participant.

Its not quite the same thing.

When was the last time someone used a fag to light a bottle of vodka and chucked that at you???

When was the last time u heard of an innocent puppy/OAP/anyone for that matter being killed by someone with a cigarette?

Erm... its called choice, ppl who do motorsport know the risks and its THEIR choice.

what about all the innocent people who die as a result of drink driving?

what about all the kids who die in *non drink related* car accidents?

what about passive smoking?

what about air pollution giving people asthma?

what about all the kids getting obese from watching telly and eating macdonalds?

I accept that fireworks are inherently pointless but what about my civil liberty? that isn't pointless.

This is banned.

Sad, but accidents will always happen. The best we can do is reduce the risks as much as we sensibly can. Like regulating firework displays.

Which is why smoking is increasingly being banned in public places.

Which the governements of the world are trying to regulate, (thanks for your help with that America).

Their fault and their parent's fault. Nobody is doing it to them.

what about all the innocent people who die as a result of drink driving? We should BAN drink driving, oh hang on a minute, we already did that

what about all the kids who die in *non drink related* car accidents?They're called accidents

what about passive smoking? We should ban smoking in public places, oh hang on were doing that too

what about air pollution giving people asthma? Not relative

what about all the kids getting obese from watching telly and eating macdonalds? Also not relative

LOL TK, same hymn sheet?

I'm with TK on this one :)

*shock, horror :p*

D

what about all the innocent people who die as a result of drink driving? We should BAN drink driving, oh hang on a minute, we already did that

taken in context, Diablo said 'Ditto alcohol, unless you beat up your wife/child/husband'

what about all the kids who die in *non drink related* car accidents?They're called accidents

even if someone steals your car and kills someone with it?

So using your argument that if someone illegally uses something as a form of entertainment and kills or maims someone, then we should bann that form of entertainment entirely?