{"id":14280,"date":"2025-04-12T17:13:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T17:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/14280\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T17:13:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T17:13:20","slug":"joyless-bureaucrats-are-sucking-the-fun-out-of-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/14280\/","title":{"rendered":"Joyless bureaucrats are sucking the fun out of London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the problems facing central London, busking is unlikely to be high on anyone\u2019s list. Yet, in the same week in which a man was filmed<\/a> smoking crack cocaine on the Victoria Line, it is aspiring street musicians who have found themselves targeted by the authorities. According to multiple reports, buskers in Leicester Square \u2013 the heart of London\u2019s West End \u2013 will be banned from performing from Thursday onwards. <\/p>\n

The Times reports<\/a> that national broadcaster Global Radio, which has offices next to Leicester Square, took Westminster City Council to court last month over buskers being allowed to perform in the square. Global told a judge that staff had been \u2018unable to work\u2019 because of the \u2018overwhelming\u2019 and \u2018out of tune\u2019 noise coming from street musicians with a \u2018limited repertoire\u2019. Global said staff had been required to take phone calls in cupboards. A court agreed, somewhat hyperbolically comparing the sound of street music to \u2018psychological torture\u2019. <\/p>\n

The local council\u2019s ban on Leicester Square buskers won\u2019t surprise anyone who has observed London\u2019s recent slide into joyless over-regulation. Indeed, Westminster City Council has played no small part in trying to bring the atmosphere of a dentist\u2019s waiting room to the streets of the West End. <\/p>\n

A prime example of this was its \u2018Westminster After Dark<\/a>\u2019 project, which might as well have been written by the Taliban. Published in March, it called for bars in the city\u2019s busiest entertainment district to host alcohol-free nights and to reduce the amount of noise they make. It also proposed dimming street lights in the West End to bring about \u2018sensory friendly\u2019 nights, whatever that means.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just bars and pubs that have been targeted by meddling council functionaries. In 2023, Greggs<\/a> had to threaten Westminster with a three-day court hearing just to win the right to sell coffee and sausage rolls until 2am in Leicester Square. Westminster thought this would make it a \u2018hot-spot for late-night disturbances and anti-social behaviour\u2019. Clearly councillors want you to be not just sober and bored, but hungry, too. <\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, pubs and clubs have been shutting their doors at a rate of knots<\/a> in London in recent years. Between 2001 and 2022, the number of pubs in the capital nearly halved, from 5,000 to 2,600. Around 300 have closed in the past three years alone. Clubs and bars have been similarly decimated, with an estimated 1,100 closing since 2021. <\/p>\n

Of course, local councils aren\u2019t solely to blame for the wipeout of London\u2019s hospitality scene. Taxes (Westminster already imposes a \u2018Late Night Levy<\/a>\u2019 on bars), energy costs, staff shortages and a less social, more abstemious younger generation have all played their part. But the authorities fear of noise complaints has certainly added to the puritanical atmosphere. Even George Orwell\u2019s favourite pub, the Compton Arms in Islington, was threatened with closure<\/a> in 2022 because of a handful of noise complaints.<\/p>\n

Caving to bourgeois bores in Islington is bad enough, but it beggars belief in Leicester Square. Why did Global choose to have its offices in Leicester Square if it wants to have peace and quiet? The whole appeal of Soho and the West End is noise, people, activity and fun. It\u2019s what tourists want when they visit London, and what Londoners want when they want to remind themselves that, despite the capital\u2019s deficiencies, they still live in a great city. If it\u2019s silence Global wants, it could have chosen almost any other commercial district. Or, better still, the countryside.<\/p>\n

Sadly, yet again, the whingers have got their way. Innocent buskers will face a crackdown, but don\u2019t expect anything to be done about crack-smoking Tube passengers. Crime is legalised, while harmless entertainment is stamped out.<\/p>\n

London just about remains a vital, vibrant place. But that\u2019s no thanks to the fun sponges in charge.<\/p>\n

Hugo Timms<\/strong>\u00a0is an editorial assistant at\u00a0spiked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of all the problems facing central London, busking is unlikely to be high on anyone\u2019s list. Yet, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,9878,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-14280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-night-life","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114326116990797093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}