‘It’s economic vandalism’: Locals slam ‘bizarre’ decision to scrap England’s oldest Christmas market as it’s too popular
by tylerthe-theatre
‘It’s economic vandalism’: Locals slam ‘bizarre’ decision to scrap England’s oldest Christmas market as it’s too popular
by tylerthe-theatre
16 comments
“It’s too popular” is one way to phrase it. Health and safety grounds over crowd management. Obviously the council considered the fallout of a potential crush to be far worse than the economic hit of cancelling it.
Been to Lincoln’s while I was living there. Always rammed like a lot of Christmas markets end up being. Historic city, very hilly city. Lincoln has had a lot of regeneration happening lately (Cornhill Quarter looks a lot better than it used to and they’re now doing the market hall and square up)
It’s amazing that they couldn’t spread it out over a wider ground or find some way of making it safer. It is always going to be popular.
I’m from Lincoln and there’s always been so much complaining about the Christmas market. They finally got what they wanted and now apparently they’re complaining about that too!
Why not just have it on for longer, so the crowds aren’t steamrolling there to make sure they dont miss it?
Have it spread out over a week.
This is the same council that cancelled the last day of it one year because it snowed!
Went to the market last year. Genuinely felt unsafe at one point while trapped in a crowd that was barely moving between one of the areas inside the castle and another just outside.
Because of that, I agree with the council that the market should not continue like this. But having a huge, very popular Christmas market over only 4 nights was always going to result in huge overcrowding.
In my opinion, the market should be smaller and run for a few weeks, entirely within the castle walls. And if they want to host bigger events then it can be expanded here and there for a weekend or two.
No point speculating about why the council didn’t take this or some other action, instead of just completing scrapping the market. But I’m glad the market won’t see a repeat of what I experienced last year.
If you think closing a Christmas market is economic vandalism… What hell was Brexit; when the whole country closed the shutters.
Economic vandalism is right, the tories have gutted public services and now they can’t cope with an event of this scale.
I remember going there years ago. It was rammed to an absurd level.
But they would never stop religious gatherings or nottinghill carnival.
I was confused when I first heard of Christmas Markets about 20 years ago.
People talked as if they were a normal part of Christmas I should be aware of, but they were brand new.
Sometimes there seems to a be push to make them seem “traditional” so any limits on them can be part of a war on christmas.
This is the UK in a nutshell isn’t it really. too bothered about ‘potential’ health and safety issues that haven’t actually happened to make any fucking money. And then making no attempt to actually resolve any potential problems, just shitcanning all of it.
The pedestrianisation of city centres at this time of year is ridiculous- Traders need access to DIXONS!
And if there were an incident where a load of people got crushed they would be deemed irresponsible/liable.
Sounds like the event has gotten too big to control. If organisers wanted to go ahead with it this year they should’ve planned ahead, come up with some safety solutions- but they apparently haven’t and just expect the council to do so. Perhaps if they had, it could’ve gone ahead. But it sounds like it’ll just be a repeat of last year as it is.
There’s no way the can ‘make it safe’ on such short notice with no planning. Come up with some solutions and perhaps it can happen next year.
Generating £15m for the “local economy” means going into businesses and not the councils coffers. There’s still costs to host the event, police it, etc
And councils just don’t have budgets for it, thanks to central government.
English councils are just pentioners ruining things for the rest
I thought they cancelled this last year? I definitely heard a while ago that they weren’t planning on doing the Christmas market again this year and more of a few events spread out over December.