THE EDITORIAL
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There has been a call to bring back cracker night but unfortunately it's unlikely to happen.
Anyone over 40 has fond memories of the old family celebration that was generally held over the long weekend in June.
Youngsters would spend weeks building bonfires and every spare penny was spent on collecting an arsenal of firecrackers, sky rockets and bungers.
But with the dreaded OH&S rules now in vogue, those days will probably never be revisited.
And to be fair it would be hard to see them back.
Some of the more expensive bungers had nearly as much bang as a stick of dynamite and scores of children lost an assortment of eyes, fingers and hands over the years.
However state parliamentary secretary David Elliott is trying to overturn the 30 year old ban with a modified version of cracker night.
Mr Elliott quite rightly believes when the ban was implemented fireworks were far more dangerous than they are today.
His call has been backed by Glen Sergi of Griffith who is the operator of Griff's Fireworks.
Admittedly Mr Sergi has a vested interest in seeing the big night reinstated and he agrees firecrackers are much better designed than years gone by.
He says cars are dangerous too and at the end of the day people need to be responsible for their own actions.
And it does seem unfair that children today are missing out on so much because many aspects of normal day to day living are being deemed as dangerous.
Fireworks used carefully are great fun but certainly caution must be at a premium.
Surely a watered down version of cracker night could be revisited and not just dismissed out of hand.
All right, ban the bungers if we must, but it's about time we let the children have some fun.