Bonfire night: the one time when you can legally set ablaze the people who’ve been setting fire to your dreams and happiness all year. Every offensive tweet, each time you’ve opened your phone only to see a headline about nuclear armageddon, every actor who turns out to be a disgusting creep – November 5 is your moment to let it all out. It’s 2017, and there are more hate figures than ever. And for this year’s fireworks night, bonfire societies around the country got creative with these effigies.
Harvey Weinstein
Every year, the Edenbridge Bonfire Society unveils a great big effigy of a topically loathed figure and sets the thing on fire. It’s what Guy Fawkes would have wanted.
After lighting a match on drugs cheat Lance Armstrong, disgraced ex-FIFA chief Sepp Blatter and some bloke called Donald Trump, they’ve done the same for Harvey Weinstein, the most poisonous man in Hollywood (that we currently know of).
Edenbridge’s Weinstein effigy is suitably gross. In a bathrobe, he holds an Oscar and has a clapperboard placed over his cojones. There is, of course, the chance that people will be outraged and hurt by this effigy (perfectly reasonable too, as it’s a bit close-to-the-bone). The society has stated: “There is of course nothing funny about Weinstein’s behavior. [But] it seemed only fair that he gets his comeuppance in effigy form.”
A BT Openreach truck
A village in Devon burned a BT broadband van in effigy in protest against slow rural WiFi speeds. Strong. pic.twitter.com/5L59Kk9OeW
— Pádraig Belton (@PadraigBelton) November 5, 2017
Look, it’s tough being under the constant threat of potential nuclear armageddon. It sucks reading headlines about painful Brexit negotiations every day. It’s a struggle to see Boris Johnson still keeping a job, to witness Theresa May coughing her way through leadership. But spare a thought for the residents of Templeton, Devon. The rural village has been promised superfast broadband for years by BT, but they’re so far stuck with maximum speeds of 1MB per second (about enough to stream half a second of a Stranger Things episode every minute). So what do you do when your Internet speeds are stuck in 1999? Set fire to something, obviously. More specifically: set fire to a giant BT Openreach truck and watch it go up in flames faster than these villagers can check their download speeds. Yes, there are bigger problems than not being able to pirate stream Premier League games, but Templeton is finally getting its revenge.
Donald Trump
They burnt an effigy of Trump tonight in Lewes in the UK to mark Guy Fawkes night. pic.twitter.com/DIfX2Ccar2
— Laura Graham (@Lollyrocker) November 4, 2017
Yes, it’s obvious. But a lot’s happened since last year’s bonfire night. 1) Trump’s actually become President. 2) He’s shown utter contempt towards other faiths, races and the perfectly democratic act of protesting. 3) He’s not fucked off yet. So this year’s Trump effigies are back bigger, better and more burnable than ever. This was spotted in Lewes’ annual fireworks extravaganza.
Nigel Farage
Hope you all have a cracking bonfire night!
We just burnt an effigy of @Nigel_Farage "Farage Fawkes" LOL #Brexit pic.twitter.com/bt0at4oEbE— ZeldathonUK #GameBlast2020 (@ZeldathonUK) November 5, 2017
What better way to TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK, make BRITAIN BETTER and give the big middle finger to Brexit than by burning a giant effigy of Nigel Farage? There’s a strong argument that he shouldn’t be given the time of day, that if we simply ignored his very existence he might disappear into the night. But Farage is highly responsible for putting the UK in an ungodly mess, so this cobbled together effigy does the job. Interesting choice of shirt, mind you…
Kim Jong-un
Fancy witnessing a world leader being set on fire? You can always count on Lewes’ bonfire celebrations. This year’s event, attended by an estimated 60,000-plus people, saw North Korea leader Kim Jong-un being paraded through the Sussex town, strapped to a nuclear missile (with Trump strapped to the other side). Lovely, heartwarming stuff. Let’s hope the famously prickly Kim doesn’t find out he was the subject of such fiery joy.