Can We Not Just Enjoy Fireworks in Peace?

Dear Leader Khan ensures New Year's Eve fireworks are once again full of political propaganda messaging

The New Year’s Eve fireworks in London are always spectacular and yesterday evening’s display was no exception.

But with every successive year, they have been increasingly politicised. Can we not just enjoy a simple (well very extravagant) fireworks display without being bombarded with political messages or having the latest thing shoved down our throats? Let’s just celebrate another lap around the sun without being told what we should or shouldn’t be thinking that evening.

Of course, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, had to start the evening with his name in lights. Thank you Dear Leader for your wonderful gift!

On a side note, after this the BBC warns us that there will be flashing images. At a fireworks display? Whoever would have thought!?

Back to the display and within a few minutes of Big Ben producing its last bong to signal the arrival of midnight, the political messaging began.

It started with King Charles III telling us that “our society is woven from diverse threads, comprising stories of remarkable courage and sacrifice, determination and strength. Though drawn from different parts of the world, they collectively enrich the fabric of our collective life”.

Next we had someone wishing the National Health Service (NHS) a happy 75th birthday. “Thank you so much for all that you do”, the narrator said. Firstly, stop personifying this service that we all pay for and secondly, we are in our fourth year of massive excess deaths, clearly whatever they are doing, needs some adjusting.

“We have to keep showing how we love our NHS so it will continue to be with us through it all”, the narrator continued. I can’t stand “our NHS”, a term started during the pandemic, making it very difficult to criticise what a bad job it was doing. “You can’t possibly mean OUR NHS? OUR NHS has saved millions of lives you evil human being”.

It then moved on to celebrate 10 years since same sex marriage was made legal in England and Wales. Naturally, at this point the fireworks became rainbow coloured.

Following this the fireworks changed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush. In 1948 British colonies were given the right to settle in the UK and nearly half a million people moved here from the Caribbean. Those who came were known as the “Windrush generation” because they arrived on the ship HMT Empire Windrush. In 2018 a scandal emerged because hundreds of these immigrants were told they did not have the right to stay in the UK and were threatened with deportation.

Finally, we had the obligatory nod to Climate Change. Let’s not fall out of sync with nature we were told, as drones formed dandelion’s petals that blew away in the wind.

Of course, individually there is nothing wrong with these messages. Of course many aspects of a diverse culture enriches our lives. Of course the NHS is a great service to have available whatever your financial circumstances. And it often does a great job, especially in emergencies. Yes love who you want to love and look after the planet. And of course, the Windrush generation was a positive addition to the UK and the scandal was terrible.

But this display was touted as delivering a message of unity when in reality, it was highlighting the minority. And when you only highlight the minority, you don’t create unity, you create disharmony and division.

As I say, the messages themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is how the political propaganda was woven into the show so that you were forced to listen to it all, consciously or sub-consciously. People defending the propaganda, by calling others bigots or homophobes for questioning it, would be the same people laughing at a similar display in China or Russia.

Sadiq Khan is chair of C40 cities which is a global network of cities that are “united in action to confront the climate crisis”. Translated, this means impoverishing citizens, controlling every aspect of their lives and restricting their movement to appease the Net Zero gods.

Khan has infamously brought in the Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) to London meaning the poor, who can’t afford EVs, have to pay exorbitant fees just to travel to work. He says he has done this to improve air pollution which he claims has caused thousands of deaths. A quick search reveals massive firework displays are extremely bad for air quality. Particles and gases are released into the air that are blown around for miles and can stay in the sky for days. Hypocrite Khan is happy to produce this kind of air pollution because it means his name is displayed in bright lights.

This all might seem like getting triggered over nothing but this North Korean level of political propaganda is completely unnecessary and very un-British. But I guess if people weren’t told what to think about for the next year, they might have to start thinking for themselves.

I’ll be watching on mute next year!

Happy New Year…looks like I’ve started how I mean to go on!