APUBLIC sales ban on all display fireworks requiring a safety distance of 25 metres is unnecessary.
It would jeopardise smaller, well-organised bonfire and firework display events run by pubs and school PTAs, residents and tenants associations, etc, as they rely on shop sales and mail order purchase of display fireworks to hold their events.
They cannot afford the large sums required to employ professional display teams, many of which charge £1,000 and upwards. And with that, it effectively cuts the number of events that people can go to, giving them few choices but to buy their own fireworks and let them off instead.
It would take a lot of argument and negotiations between government and industry bodies and firework companies, etc, to warrant a case for banning display fireworks from public sales.
The Isle of Man Consumer Affairs Board tried to get display fireworks banned from public sale in the early Nineties, but were overruled because the argument that "people don't have big enough gardens to use them safely" did not cut ice with Tynwald House of Keys. It would probably face the same fate here if such a ban was to take place in the UK.
ANTHONY PERKINS, Plantation Street, Accrington.
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