Eeek, I wasn't being sarcastic.

I think those sort of events with forgotten sponsors are part of a much bigger picture - pride in a place, a sense of community, and a general drawing-together of efforts. And no matter how desperate the need for support for a helicopter ambulance service or a hospice, a proper sense of community precedes all. London, or Sydney, or Budapest, or Oban all need to be nice places for people to live in order for businesses and services to prosper there. I think a few fireworks on New Year's Eve are part of that process.

I've just done a couple of minutes of googling, so I don't know how accurate these numbers are, but it seems as if the order of magnitudes are that there were around one million spectators in Sydney, and that the fireworks cost about AUD600,000. I think it is a reasonable bet that those spectators would almost all have been willing to give up at least 60 cents for the pleasure of watching the display, and that the average willingness to pay would have been much much higher.* So it sounds to me as if it was actually a very good use of resources, and not a "waste of money" at all. (This is separate from the question of whether the corporate sponsors get a return on investment; I'm simply asking whether the firework display was a worthwhile use of resources, and if the numbers I saw are right -- or even off by a factor of 10 -- I think the answer is clearly yes.)

* I'm using "willingness to pay" in a technical sense here: think of it as meaning that an individual is equally happy having $x and not seeing the fireworks, on not having $x and seeing the fireworks. Other boring economic discussion available on request.

also, what pen said.

also, s/order of magnitudes/orders of magnitude :-)

also (and even though I am multiposting, can I point out that this is apparently only because everyone else is too hungover to speak) I want to make it clear that my comments are not intended as criticism of Dujon or Phil. Dujon's comment, and I think Phil's as well, were only addressing the question of corporate sponsorship of public events. I did pick up a more general sense that they were questioning whether firework displays themselves were worthwhile, but that may be my misreading, because it is certainly not explicit in their comments.

I am *not* hungover, merely hard at work writing the first of three features this week. And sneaking a look at this year's holiday diary - I get a long weekend off in two weeks' time!

[CdM] Rest assured, I love public firework displays. My take on the matter was simply from a "what am I getting for my money" point of view for the sponsors. For example, I sponsor a football team, and the benefit for me is that they drink in my pub every Sunday afternoon (as well as when they present trophies, celebrate promotion etc). I more than get my money back from that. I presume an awful lot of corporate sponsorship results in so-called freebies, like a hotel room with champagne reception etc and a fantastic view of the fireworks.

[CdM] Close, old chap. Like Phil, I enjoy the displays when I bother to watch them.
I've been pondering on my original comment and am thinking that maybe I've got things wrong. Before I comment further though a little research is required.

From: smh

"Peter Hawkins and Linton Besser
December 31, 2007

The city's $4 million New Year's Eve party on the harbour will not be hampered by bad weather this year, with mostly clear conditions forecast for the celebrations."

The same source (possibly CdM's) quotes AUD 600,000 as the cost of the fireworks. I do wonder though if that costing includes the expense involved in siting the beasts, programming and installing the computerised control system and the eventual dismantling of same.

If the quoted figure is correct (i.e. ignoring my comments) it means that the State (or city) expended 3.4 Million AUD in supporting the function. Media comments claim anywhere between 1 and 1.5 million people turned up in the city to watch the spectacle. In effect that's 1 in 3 of the whole population of Sydney. Yeah, right.

I popped onto the official NYE celebration site ( sydney ) to check out who was who. Slide down to the bottom of the page. I wonder if any of those organisations are recompensed or are simply expected to turn up and factor the event into their annual budget?

Right, I'm putting all this rubbish behind me and flying from Cootamundra to Bendigo. Tally-ho!

Well, even if you went with AUD4 million as the cost and 400,000 spectators, you would have a cost of AUD10 per person, which is less than the cost of a movie ticket. We have a lot of evidence that people were willing to spend a great deal of time getting somewhere to see the display, waiting for it to begin, and traveling home afterwards. Was it worth an additional AUD10 on top to those people? I'd still put my money on yes.

Hello and happy new year to all. Wandering around John Lewis's end-of-year "Clearance" (they're far to posh to have a sale) we notice they're offering a temporaray "special purchase" 300 quid reduction on a sofa we've been lusting after. The bastards.

One difficulty, apart from the possibility of an unexpected major purchase, is that we're also thinking of getting a cat and it's not clear the two will be entirely compatible.

[rab] Better that the cat does damage to the £300-cheaper sofa than the full-price version, shurely? Get both. You know you want to.

[rab] Are you already catty? If this is your first mog, the following anti-scratching tips may be useful: Cats are very discerning scratchers. They will start by destroying the most valuable soft furnishing in a room, then working their way through the remainder in descending order of value. You may be able to decoy them by the following options:
one: a toy 'cat pyramid' - very popular with kittens, this is a cardboard pyramid covered in carpet, usually with a hole in the side so the cats can climb into it, and often with a ball on a string or something tied to the apex. This may (not guaranteed, natch) give a young cat hours of pleasure and become their preferred scratching station.
two: a plain old scratching post. These can be quite luxurious, and may also act as a suitable distration.
three: a really nice (small) real wool rug. If this feels nicer on the little cat's paws than the sofa, then there's a good chance they'll scratch that instead. Needs to be the softest, most luxurious rug you can find, of course. These are cats we're talking about here, after all.
four: Declawing. Cruel. Please don't.
five: Claw clipping. Generally just results in the cat making larger holes when it scratches rather than pinpricks, so probably pointless. six: Luck. Some fabrics tolerate scratching without any great visible effects. Once you have got them scratching somewhere acceptable, the battle is largely won, because that spot will become scent-marked and they'll tend to use it in preference to anywhere else. Mostly – so you'll still need to keep half an eye on them. But if they become accustomed to scratching somewhere you don't want, or if they don't have an official scratching location, you have to watch them constantly and it's a war of attrition that you will slowly lose.

[Simulposted with Simons] Such is the contrary nature of felines that we know it will ignore all the IKEA furniture (of which there's lots) and scratch only the legs of the nice chair and (potentially) sofa. On the other hand, if it keeps the mice at bay I'm happy.

We think we'll have to let him/her into the living room only when we're there, have nice moggy scratching posts in the back bedroom (both of our bedrooms are at the back, but the name has stuck...) and let himher out into the garden during the day where there are real trees and bushes and things. And water-pistol aversion therapy has been quite successful I'm told.

We're not yet sure what kind of cat we'll be getting. We're currently researching the options. My preference would be for a toilet-trained kitten going spare from a loving home that we can teach social graces, rather than some rescued hell-cat with a dozen ASBOs to its name. The latter do have a talent for looking particularly cute in the adverts though...

In other news, it's just started snowing in a Hollywood at Christmas kind of way.

[Simons] Thanks for the advice btw.

Ooh, don't count on the animal making a special trip to another room just 'cos it wants to sharpen its claws; remember, they're lazy as well as contrary. A sacrificial rug or toy cat pyramid in the living room is probably still a good idea.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will become the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other contender. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and, as a result, has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that will become known as "Euro-English". The 5-year plan will be implemented as follows:

- In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konsiderable konfusion, and keyboards kan be manufactured with one less letter.
- In the second year, growing publik enthusiasm will be anticipated, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
- In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil sertainly agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and should be done away with.
- By the 4th yer, people wil be mor reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
- During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" resulting in a more sensibl riting styl.

By ze end of ze fifz yer, zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis; evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand evrivun els and ze drem of a united Urop vil finali kum tru bekos ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas!