Well, colour me naïve. I thought that Lewes had a bonfire society, and that they competed with societies the rest of Sussex for who has the best effigy to burn.
No. Ignore the rest of Sussex. They were knocked out of the game yonks ago. Lewes has five bonfire societies and they compete with each other. I was told about two. One burnt an effigy of Nelson. For some reason.
But in Cliffe they burnt an effigy of Charles Clarke (the home secretary), branding someone with an ID. So that's how the scheme is going to work.
Meanwhile, up in Edenbridge they burned an effigy of Thumper, because the deputy prime minister wants the town to take 2000 more homes than the council has planned for.
He wants tens if not hundreds of thousands more homes in the south east of England. There seem to be some unanswered questions on this policy. Such as "is he planning any transport improvements?" and "new schools, hospitals, etc?". But those are insignificant compared with "where is their water supply going to come from?"
-Dom
