Cheltenham Fireworks

I went to a pretty good fireworks display at my old school in Cheltenham on Saturday. There wasn't really any trouble apart from a few girls who insisted on swearing too close to me and didn't like my opinions of their language.

I was safely tucked up in bed early on Sunday night, so I missed all of this:


THUGS GO ON RAMPAGE IN A NIGHT OF MADNESS


10:30 - 06 November 2006
Cheltenham erupted into chaos as 200 rioting thugs rampaged through the streets armed with thousands of fireworks last night.Yobs stormed through Hester's Way, throwing lit rockets at cars and passers-by.

Dozens of police in riot gear fought running battles with the rioting mob who tore through Princess Elizabeth Way in a six-hour orgy of violence.

The drama began at 6pm when the fire service was called to New Zealand House where a bonfire was too close to the flats.

After the blaze was put out, police turned up and seized a horde of fireworks in a shed.

After the police and fire crew left, teenagers took to the streets armed with hundreds of display fireworks.

full story: Gloucestershire Echo

Now I know the Echo is prone to overstating things, it's a sort of provincial Daily Mail (I think they own it in fact), but even so this is remarkable.

The full article, and the context of it, ie Princess Elizabeth Way, goes to back up a point about the town I've been making for years. It's a nice place,Cheltenham, built as a summer resort a couple of hundred years ago. But after the war the council estates and private estates had to be tacked onto the edge of the town, far from the tiny, clogged town centre. Familiar story, eh? No amenities, far from the town itself, and design which suggests the contempt the planners held for the people who were going to live there. It's even on the doorstep of GCHQ, so when the 2 1MT weapons fell on it (Peter Hennessy, The Secret State) in the event of war, it would have been utterly, utterly flattened, while some nice bits of the town might at least have had ruins.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm more of a water cannon bloke than a hand-wringer: but you get what you put in. And the planners put nothing at all into the design of postwar Cheltenham. Even now they're working around these cockups, except that now it suits the likes of Tesco and other huge companies to have massive stores built in the drab outskirts of the town, cutting it in half again. There are now two, distinct Cheltenhams: one is very nice and is mainly offices and flats; the other is huge, sprawling, ugly and is where people actually have to live and shop.

This isn't meant to be an explanation of Sunday's riot, only to say that I am not entirely surprised. I'd still like to have seen a water cannon shoot some of those arrogant tossers off the roofs though.