Last night was Bonfire Night in the UK. For countries that don't know about other places' history (hello Americans), this annual event commemorates a failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. The main perpetrator was Guy Fawkes, a member of a provincial Catholic group that planned an explosion using 36 barrels of gunpowder to kill King James I and replace his brand of religious intolerance with their own variety.

Fawkes' plan was thwarted by a tall and handsome (or so the legend goes...) Protestant and, for his sins, Fawkes was hanged, drawn and quartered. After having lived through another 5th November "celebration", I wonder, in comparison, he got let off a bit lightly. Idiots and ridiculous amounts of fireworks seem to go together like saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur.

Giving every moron in Britain the right to buy as many small explosive devices as he (invariably) wishes each November to "celebrate" Guy Fawkes' terrorist attempt is like giving each children in America the chance to fly their own plane in order to commemorate September 11th. I wonder if, in three hundred years time, we'll be burning effigies (or not) of Muslims on bonfires instead.

Remember, remember, the eleventh of September,
Jet planes, the reasons and the lot.
I see no reason why any sort of, um, reason
Should get in the way of the .. bombing of Afghanistan, then the lying to the American public and taking away even more of their civil freedoms under the name of PATRIOTism, then gross arse-shafting of everyone with any sort of connection to the Muslim faith or the Middle East or has the same birthdate as anyone connected to either Islam or the Middle East, then the forging fake links between bin Laden and Hussein in order to invade Iraq, then the lying to other countries around the world about WMDs, then the ignoring global public opinion, then the bombing and indiscrimate killing of civilians, then the unlawful theft of Iraq's oil .. plot.