The Great Turn On

There are some things our town does really well.  We have a fantastic sense of community, brilliant enthusiastic musicians and a great sense of humour. Personally, I think it's our sense of fun that keeps us all going.  We are famous for our mud race, which says it all really.

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Yesterday we switched on the Christmas lights.  It was a brilliant community event.  A candlelight procession walked along the High Street led by the perfect St Mary's Choir, complete with cassocks and surpluses, singing in tight accurate four part harmony.  

The procession seemed to include every group in Maldon; Brownies, Rainbows, Guides, Scouts, Cubs, Sea Scouts etc. There were so many that there weren't enough candles or hymn sheets to go round.  Then it was the turn of our Primary school choir, who did a good job, despite being crushed and their teacher being a bit stressed.  

And the lights went on.

And that was about it.  It seemed an awful lot of fuss for one light bulb.     

I'm being silly, of course, there was more than one bulb.  But the big Christmas tree by the Church was already lit and of the 2 lights that could be seen from where the school were singing and the procession ended only one worked. Here it is.  If you look carefully you will see a star attached to a lamp post.

The evening continued to be an amazing success.  There were great performances by Maldon Youth Orchestra, St Mary's Choir, Tequila Swing and The Big Sing, led by Gemma Rattenbury from London Community Gospel Choir.  The Morris dancers clicked their sticks and rattled their bells with great skill all the way up and down the high street. There were also stalls, the hand bell ringers and Father Christmas led a carnival type procession of floats.

Public opinion seems to be that the event was a great success but the lights were terrible and so I started to wonder why.  In Maldon we have a District Council, that are responsible for Maldon, Burnham and all the surrounding villages and so they do not or can not fund lights for all those places. Maldon Town lights are funded by the Town Council.  A town or parish council gets a proportion of council tax funds (3%).  Maldon requires £336,600 to pay for the services it provides and gets £61.44 for every band D house in the area.  I don't know how many houses there are and so I don't know if they get enough to run everything they have budgeted for.  The shopkeepers were approached to fund the Christmas lights this year and told that the Council needed £30,000.  Again, I do not know if they got the money.

£30,000 seems like a lot of money for a few flickering light bulbs.  It has been difficult to make a comparison as councils seem reluctant to publish their costs for such events.  Plymouth Christmas lights cost £40,000 in 2009 and looked like this.

Stratford upon Avon's 2011 Christmas lights cost £68,000.  Their town council fund 38% of it from their council tax budget (I assume they ask traders fro the rest, or get funding from other sources)  Their lights look like this:

Towns with good Christmas lights string them across the road.  Maldon used to do this too but have been stopped from doing so by health and safety. I wonder why some councils are allowed to put lights across the road and others aren't?  It is probably the fault of insurance companies who will charge a huge, unaffordable premium for these kinds of lights.  Maybe they just have fairer insurance companies in Stratford upon Avon, although their budget appears to be twice that of Maldon.

I think the town has a choice to make.  Either, give up having a switching on ceremony and just have a magical Christmas parade, with entertainment, beer, salt mud and everything else that Maldon is good at or find the budget and the insurance company to make Maldon's Christmas lights Magical.