THE season of quivering pets, blaring sirens, rockets being fired at emergency workers, and kids burning themselves on sparklers has once again drawn to a close.
I can’t say I’m sorry. It’s been the same old story, despite years of promises from the Scottish Government that they are on the case.We still have a situation where fireworks are readily available and flogged to pretty much anyone, leading to floods of explosives — let’s not mince words — being readily available to idiots.
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The scenes across Scotland this year were appalling, and the shameful attempts by government and police to play down the trouble last week — insisting, based on flaky evidence, that things were better than last year — aimed to gloss over their own failures.
Continuing violence
Most laughably, John Swinney had the cheek to claim the SNP’s so-called “ground-breaking” fireworks laws passed in 2022 were “having an effect”.
If “having an effect” means 1,000 fire brigade callouts, riot cops sent to 18 incidents, imbeciles taking potshots at vehicles with rockets, attacks on fire and police teams, and a similar amount of calls to cops as last year, then Mr Swinney’s ambition for Scotland is clearly not what he claims.
As for the policing operation being a success, as top cops and ministers suggested . . . well, unfortunately for them, people in towns and cities across Scotland have eyes and ears.
Which brings me onto that 2022 fireworks legislation, something that could have made a difference, but has plainly not in any meaningful way. Why? Because something our vainglorious Scottish Government doesn’t care enough about is that it doesn’t just need to pass laws, it needs to make them work.
MSPs backed the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act in June 2022, leading to SNP ministers — with characteristic understatement — promising it would “improve the lives of people right across Scotland”.
TV footage of the moment the Bill was passed shows SNP MSPs giving themselves a huge round of applause and looking very pleased with themselves.
So, given the continuing violence, what on earth happened with the laws ministers also claimed would “ensure safety for people across Scotland”?
The answer, I’m afraid, is not a lot. Nearly two-and-a-half years on, the main strands are still not in force.
The headline measure in a press release as the Bill passed was “a fireworks licensing system, with mandatory safety training, for people wishing to purchase and use fireworks”.
That sounds like something that could make a difference. But readers may have noticed it’s nowhere to be seen.
A year ago, after yet more Bonfire Night chaos, SNP ministers said their “ambition” was to have the permits system in force for November 2024. Now, I’m all for “ambition”, but ministers haven’t shown much. The start date has now been “revised to 2026” due to “significant financial pressures” and “the need to focus resources on frontline public services including police and fire”.
These government brightsparks may do a good line in noble-sounding excuses. But isn’t it obvious that a good way to help frontline services would be to bring in that permit system they promised?
The second key measure in press releases on the legislation was “firework control zones” — with bans them between certain dates, with the threat of fines or jail for breaches.
This year, Edinburgh brought in four zones including for Niddrie, from November 1 to 10.
The result was partly that the annual festival of violence in Niddrie began on October 31, in what looked suspiciously like a great big ‘up yours’ to the new law. And when trouble did kick off, police stood back and watched.
In Glasgow, where Pollokshields is a notorious troublespot, clowns at the city council failed to do the paperwork for a control zone in time.
The third in a list of measures set out by ministers in 2022 was to restrict the sale and use of fireworks to specific days.
Currently, they can be used and sold all year round. But there is no indication of when the Scottish Government might change this. It means we’re left with thin gruel from the legislation — a ban on providing fireworks to under-18s, and attacks on emergency workers using fireworks becoming an “aggravating factor” in sentencing.
Whoop-de-do. It was already illegal to sell fireworks apart from sparklers to under-18s. The 2022 law dealt with so-called “proxy purchasing”.
And people will be unsurprised to hear it was already a crime under various laws to attack emergency workers. The other, hardly-revolutionary strand of the 2022 legislation which is now in force is a ban on pyrotechnics in stadiums. Again, it was already illegal to set off fireworks in footie grounds.
The idea, then, that these few measures have made a significant difference is absurd. Of course, all of these unactivated measures, even when in force, may not stop all of the scenes we’ve seen again this year.
But they may certainly have helped, given — crucially — they could tackle the issue of supply.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
It’s customary at times like these to dust off fireworks metaphors and refer to a damp squib. But the government hasn’t even tried to light the touchpaper on key strands of their own law.
Or you could say the amount of spark seen from ministers since they applauded themselves in 2022 isn’t enough to light a one-watt bulb, never mind a bonfire.
