Picture credits: BBC News / IOPA Facebook
I have already expressed my reservations regarding New Year's Eve fireworks in a post entitled Panem et Pyrotechnics - namely, that they make North Koreans of us all.
This opinion was reinforced a few days ago, when that idiotic little weasel posing as the Mayor of London, Mr. Sadiq Khan, decided to light up the night sky above the Millennium Dome with a clenched fist symbol in support of Black Lives Matter.
The locked down masses prohibited from attending the event in person - because of the virus - were, thanks to a complicit state broadcaster, able to enjoy the £1.5 million spectacle (described by some as a virtue signalling political stunt) live on TV and social media.
Other highlights of the show included the turning of London's bridges blue and yellow with lasers on the eve that the Brexit transition period ended and the UK finally left the EU, and 300 drones forming the shape of a giant turtle with a map of Africa on its shell to express concern about the so-called climate crisis.
As provocative and divisive as this was, it didn't have the heartbreaking horror of events in Rome, where a New Year's Eve firework display resulted in the deaths of hundreds of birds, mostly starlings, that were roosting nearby.
Footage filmed from outside the city's main train station, showed the bodies of the birds littering the streets, as some reports insensitively described the scene, as if they were just feathered pieces of trash waiting to be swept away and their lives didn't matter.
A spokesperson for the Italian branch of the International Organisation for the Protection of Animals claimed that the poor things were essentially scared to death by the fireworks and although the RSPB claims that there is little evidence to suggest that fireworks present a grave danger to wild birds, I do not believe them and would challenge their record of protecting birds over the last 50 years when avian numbers have (in some cases dramatically) declined.
