It's a few years since the old Christmas lights on Glasgow's George Square were retired and replaced with modern catalogue panels. Many will be glad to see the back of them, as they served their purpose for over 25 years and became a bit clichéd in the end. But they represented a spectacular piece of Christmas lighting history. They were the very first metal frame and ropelight based lights that sparked a new era in Christmas lighting. It caused such a sensation when they were first displayed that the style was widely copied and gradually refined into the modern aluminium and rope light Christmas lighting frames that are standard today. Ironically, the new lights on the square are effectively based on the original ones they replaced.
This is the story of how that happened, how I was involved for over 20 years and how money ruined everything as it usually does.
It still absolutely represents my favourite job and it gives me a great sense of pride that we kept it all going as long as we could despite the politics. Even if the significance of the display was lost on the younger generation.
Another thing worthy of note. Whenever the remembrance service was being held on the square we stopped working and parked the cherry pickers out of the way in respect of the fallen so the service could be carried out without interruption. In the beginning it was a busy service, but as time went on and the survivors of the early wars passed on, the numbers dwindled to just a few. Until the British government got involved in financially motivated wars..... Then the number of grieving families of YOUNG soldiers started appearing. And the numbers GREW year after year. I despise war. Especially money motivated war.
I've mixed thoughts about the increasing trend of using casual event crew on low wages and zero hour contracts to do outdoor electrical work. Many of them have no formal training and have picked up random snippets of knowledge (often dangerously wrong) from other inexperienced crew. Using slideshow presentations with "attendance certificates" to imply electrical competence and then using that labour to work on live electrical equipment outdoors in wet weather to tight deadlines is an accident waiting to happen.
Let me know what you think of this format of video. Do you want more in this style? Am I too ugly for TV?
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.