London's New Year's Day parade shrugs off rain

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By Robert Hackwill
London's New Year's Day parade shrugs off rain

Typical British weather didn’t dampen the spirits for London’s annual New Year’s Day parade, the city greeting 2017 in traditionally raucous style.

Musicians and entertainers from around the world, some 8,500 of them, paraded from Green Park tube station to Parliament Square.

The event is used to raise funds for charities in London and with 50,000 spectators and a total audience of half a million it is described as the biggest New Year’s street event of its kind in the world.

All of London’s 32 boroughs send teams of performers, but the parade also honours people from each who have been heroic in some way during the previous year.

“Lights, Camera, Action” was this year’s theme, so film and TV series costumes were to the fore. Pakistani artistes celebrated the 70th anniversary of their state, and the marching band of Fort Myers High School brought some Florida sunshine to The Smoke.

More than 3000 police were on duty as extra security was deployed.