Bonfire Night has become Bonfire Month and it demonstrates people's total lack of consideration for anyone other than themselves.

We have a couple of pets, a dog and a cat. The dog went ballistic every time she heard a firework explosion and the cat was petrified, disappeared and hid for hours on end.

If this was just one night it would be controllable, but night after night is just plain crazy.

It all demonstrates that people have too much money burning holes in their pockets, and another example of how parents are trying to outdo each other.

It's the same rush to do better than the Jones's as we have seen in children's parties, buying the latest children's clothes and buying the largest and/or flashiest car to pose in while you take the kids to school.

I cannot begin to imagine how much money literally went up in smoke to "celebrate" the saving of Parliament. How many of us secretly would like to blow up the present lot?!

Personally, I love to watch a good firework display, and I would be the last to deny the kids a good show.

Organised firework displays are so much better than anything you can do in the back garden, so why do we persist in spending small fortunes on fireworks, and why, oh why, can't Bonfire Night mean Bonfire Night and not at least two weeks either side?

Not only is this a ridiculous waste of money, it must result in sending huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

It all smacks of thoughtless and selfishness which is rife today.

Everywhere you look it's the same. We've got neighbours who insist on having a bonfire at least four times a week regardless of whether anyone else has got washing on the line.

Surprise, they always seem to arrange it when the wind is blowing away from their own house and into other people's gardens.

Then there's the chap who insists on parking his car on the road every day and every night regardless of having a driveway.

Regular as clockwork one day a week he puts the car onto the driveway – so that the dustcart won't knock his car when it passes!

Another classic example of selfishness came from a colleague last week. His wife telephoned to say someone in a BMW had damaged the front of her parked car in the town centre in her absence. Two witnesses saw it happen.

The guilty woman driver refused to leave her details on his wife's windscreen, but did give her phone number to another woman whose car she had also struck in the parking manoeuvre.

This woman also took registration details of the BMW. When my colleague's wife rang the offender, she denied having struck the car and put the phone down.

His wife had, by this time, already told the police, who said they would be contacting the other woman to ask her to produce her motoring insurance, etc., at a police station within seven days.

The matter would then be left to the insurance companies to sort out.

Selfishness in the extreme and all of us see it every day and I believe it's getting worse.

A few years ago police would have been around to the offending motorist and she would have been in court.

Nowadays, police don't bother and the more people believe they can get away with thoughtless, selfish and unpleasant behaviour, they will chance their arm – after all, primitive man is hidden not far beneath the surface.

Police must set an example and not take the easy way out – for all our sakes.

When will you quit your car?

On the subject of our pockets, petrol and diesel prices have gone through the roof in the past month and are destined to go higher.

How much would it have to go up before you decided to leave the car at home?

An interesting exercise. I have to use a car for work and thought that perhaps the roads would be just that bit quieter with fuel at more than £1 a litre. Wrong!

Died through religious beliefs

NEWS that a 22-year-old woman died in childbirth because of her religious beliefs is sad in the extreme.

The woman refused a life-saving blood transfusion because she is a Jehovah's Witness – as a result her two children will now grow up without their mother.

It beggars belief that people in the 21st century can be such slaves to their religion that they are prepared to lay down their lives in what to the vast majority would seem to be totally senseless idealism.

Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions because they believe that God has forbidden it in the Bible. They believe that accepting a blood transfusion is a sin.

I find it very sad that there are people who believe that if there were such things as blood transfusions 2,000 years ago, Jesus, who, if we believe what the Bible tells us, was a most caring and humane person, would advocate shunning them and watch someone die as a result.

And I don't think there's an 11th commandment which says "Thou shalt not have a blood transfusion".

Yes, I know someone is going to say that some people have died because contaminated blood has been given.

But science moves on and the lives of many more people have been saved than have died. 2,000 years ago, people would have believed that a miracle had been performed had a person's life had been saved by a blood transfusion.