# Happy New Year 2018



## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Wishing everyone on TC a Happy New Year.


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## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)

Happy New Year to everyone. Wish you good health, good luck and less stress in the new one!


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

It's going to be a long night. In the Netherlands the authorities (and large sections of the public) seem fine with the idea that kids can maraud around the streets for weeks on end throwing fireworks in every direction. The official law on this isn't upheld (but that's nothing new).
I've just had to go out and stop three teenagers letting off one firework after another for the last hour. I confiscated the fireworks and told them to send their parents back to collect them.

Happy 2018 everyone!


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> It's going to be a long night. In the Netherlands the authorities (and large sections of the public) seem fine with the idea that kids can maraud around the streets for weeks on end throwing fireworks in every direction. The official law on this isn't upheld (but that's nothing new).
> I've just had to go out and stop three teenagers letting off one firework after another for the last hour. I confiscated the fireworks and told them to send their parents back to collect them.
> 
> Happy 2018 everyone!


I just had to break through a barricade in the street to get my car and myself back home, and then there was ten minutes of fireworks and the sound of people having fun in the Square. Thoroughly disagreeable. I haven't had any fun since 1986 so I don't see why anyone else should.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tulse said:


> I just had to break through a barricade in the street to get my car and myself back home, and then there was ten minutes of fireworks and the sound of people having fun in the Square. Thoroughly disagreeable. I haven't had any fun since 1986 so I don't see why anyone else should.


Very funny. However try coming here and I guarantee you will change your tune rather rapidly. It's not ten minutes, it's several weeks of it night and day all the way up to 1st January and then a solid hour's worth of it when the new year arrives. Not organised, safe stuff, just fools doing all over the place.

Anyone who finds that 'fun' needs psychiatric treatment.


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> Very funny. However try coming here and I guarantee you will change your tune rather rapidly. It's not ten minutes, it's several weeks of it night and day all the way up to 1st January and then a solid hour's worth of it when the new year arrives. Not organised, safe stuff, just fools doing all over the place.
> 
> Anyone who finds that 'fun' needs psychiatric treatment.


Fair enough, yes, that would drive me mad. Crazy kids on bikes and scooters is another annoyance I remember from the Netherlands.


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## IamTim (Dec 27, 2017)

Happy New Year to all and here is hoping everyone has a great 2018


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Happy New Year, have a very healthy 2018


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> It's going to be a long night. In the Netherlands the authorities (and large sections of the public) seem fine with the idea that kids can maraud around the streets for weeks on end throwing fireworks in every direction. The official law on this isn't upheld (but that's nothing new).
> I've just had to go out and stop three teenagers letting off one firework after another for the last hour. I confiscated the fireworks and told them to send their parents back to collect them.
> 
> Happy 2018 everyone!


I feel for you. It is not so bad at the New Year here, but we get a month worth around the 4th of July and much of it illegal.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Fritz Kobus said:


> I feel for you. It is not so bad at the New Year here, but we get a month worth around the 4th of July and much of it illegal.


Like laws against fireworks stop anyone.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

It actually isn't Happy New Year until after April 15th (day the income tax returns are due). It's not even the tax rate so much as the paperwork hassle. I started paying an accountant to do my taxes several years ago and it is still a lot of effort just to get all the papers in order for him.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Best wishes for 2018 everyone!


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Happy New Year to all of ye.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

*Happy New Year 
- wishing you all good prospects 
in 2018:*










*York Minster, at the heart of God's own county. *  :tiphat:


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Lovely-looking place York. My brother was there over Christmas (at the in-laws).


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Happy New Year to all my wonderful friends here and TC.


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## Orpheus (Jul 15, 2012)

eugeneonagain said:


> Very funny. However try coming here and I guarantee you will change your tune rather rapidly. It's not ten minutes, it's several weeks of it night and day all the way up to 1st January and then a solid hour's worth of it when the new year arrives. Not organised, safe stuff, just fools doing all over the place.
> 
> Anyone who finds that 'fun' needs psychiatric treatment.


I'll second this, and more. I don't claim to know that part of the world particularly well, but I happened to be in Amsterdam for the turn of the millennium, and can only describe the streets around midnight as absolute chaos, and dangerous chaos at that. Bonfires _everywhere_, including right in the middle of the streets where crowds of pedestrians were trying to pass, set by God knows who; fireworks going off erratically in the midst of a crowded urban centre from all directions, and more being constantly thrown into the busy streets by apparent homicidal maniacs; yet more fireworks thrown ON the bonfires that were busily burning everywhere, in some cases whole boxes full, just dumped there and going off erratically into the streets as the fire got to them; emergency sirens blaring constantly, presumably on their way to yet another firework or fire-related accident.

And, to cap it all, police and emergency personel on every street corner, heavily suited up, ready to administer firm Dutch justice by doing precisely nothing that I could see to prevent any of the perpetrators of the insanity doing just as they pleased. It might as well have been one of the Old Masters' depictions of Hell, with the authorities as the facilitating (and approving) demons. I would imagine quite a few people must have been killed or maimed for life as a result of this insanity; I was probably quite lucky not to get hit by anything myself just in the process of getting to where I was staying that night. At one point I had no choice but to step right over the burning embers of a fire, blocking an entire narrow street, on which a large cardboard box of fireworks was smouldering, possibly, or possibly not, having discharged themselves yet. I decided to take the risk rather than wait around. As it turned out they were just starting, as a rapid fulisade went off just after I had passed, fortunately in the direction from which I'd just come.

Not any kind of fun that I could see, just a massive outbreak of dangerous stupidity in a major urban centre, with the authorities seemingly powerless or disinclined to do anything about it. Some local acquaintances told me that this was fairly normal behaviour at this time of year there, just a little worse than it usually was due to it being the end of the millennium; and it seems from what you are saying that nothing much has changed since. I'm certainly not marking another Dutch New Year in my diary for any time soon, precisely because I know now that this nonsense is considered appropriate "fun" to have at that time by so many idiots there, and that nothing much will be done to stop them. At least most of the national firework reserves had apparently been used up in the grand conflagration, so there weren't many left to be set off over the next few days.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_Happy New Year everybody!_


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