Like Christmas promotions in September but much more sinister, there are still nearly three weeks to go before Bonfire Night but already the associated anti-social behaviour has started.
Like attacks on emergency workers, it is very, very hard to understand what gets into the minds of adolescent males ─ and they are almost always males ─ who think it’s smart to aim fireworks at buses, as they did in Gracemount on Tuesday evening.
Maybe it’s a misplaced sense of power and risk from literally playing with fire and what are essentially explosives. Or perhaps it’s just the thrill of launching a rocket towards a moving target like a real-life game of Call of Duty, without any heed to the potentially catastrophic consequences.
Whatever the reason, it’s obviously beyond the pale that bus drivers and their passengers have come under attack from firework-throwing gangs, their faces obscured by the obligatory balaclavas, of course, and equally unacceptable that police officers called to deal with Tuesday’s incidents should then also be targeted.
The location may change but every year it’s the same story, when fireworks become teenage gangs’ weapons of choice in the lead-up to Guy Fawkes. But it’s only part of the desire to cause mayhem with fire, like blocking the road with burning bins as happened on Tuesday, to the use of petrol bombs by about 50 youths in the Hay Avenue area of Niddrie last year.
Across Glasgow and Edinburgh on November 5 last year, eight police officers were injured and in Dundee two police vehicles were pelted with bricks.
Obviously this is fireworks-related violence at its most extreme, but across the city and elsewhere, the general use of fireworks for personal entertainment will only intensify as Bonfire Night approaches, the evening itself a barrage which lasts well into the night, terrifying family pets in the process. They certainly petrify my dog and I never know when it’s going to stop.
Two of Edinburgh’s four temporary Firework Control Zones are near animal homes, at the SSPCA centre in Balerno and Seafield’s cat and dog home, but the zones are so limited as to make little difference to the surrounding areas.
While it is right our traditions are upheld and saving a Scottish monarch from oblivion 400 years ago is certainly worth marking, but we have pussy-footed around pyrotechnic abuses for too long and the latest incident shows once again that current restrictions aren’t working.
Yes, I know it’s hard to tackle foreign websites, and of course I understand petrol bombs are not fireworks, but Bonfire-related anti-social behaviour is only an issue at this time of the year, so it’s not a deeply ingrained problem like illegal drug use.
And setting off fireworks is hardly something youths can do on the quiet like under-age drinking. Banning firework sales to under 18s has been as successful stopping them buying alcohol, because adults continue to supply them, as they did to the Niddrie gangs.
Only officially organised displays in limited hours on November 5 should be allowed, and every other unlicenced use should be illegal. How complicated need it be?
It’s too late for this year already and let’s hope no-one gets seriously hurt in the next three weeks, but it’s about time a halt was called.
