Evening Press Leader

Plans to stage the dramatic boat-burning climax to the Viking festival have been reduced to ashes. Organisers blame safety costs.

Jolablot, designed to bring colour and visitors to the city streets at a quiet time of year, will continue. But the loss of its fiery finale will undoubtedly cool its appeal.

York is rapidly becoming a city without major annual attractions. Guy Fawkes' home town has lost its fireworks display; now the boat-burning, first seen at the end of the 1980s, has gone too. Meanwhile the Elvington Air Show remains under threat.

This makes life harder for a tourist sector that recently bemoaned the lack of an organised event to pull people into York on Millennium Eve.

One-off events in 2000 should boost tourist trade. After that, the calendar looks a little empty. It is worth considering now whether York's abandoned spectaculars can and should rise, Phoenix-like, from the embers.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.