Cancel the Love

I was really looking forward to the Love Parade in Newcastle before the wankers cancelled it.




If you were in Newcastle at present you would be entirely familiar with the meaning of disappointment. As I write this, I should be getting gradually breathless with excitement at the impending festivities of the weekend. A festival celebrating the simple feeling of being carefree (although admittedly this carefree feeling is usually chemically induced, if one is entirely honest there are few natural highs around these days; when was the last time you unashamedly enjoyed yourself without some sort of artificial stimulant?) was to have taken place on Saturday. It was conceptualised as a free festival for all, comprising of dance music being pumped out throughout the city and a massive central gathering on the Town Moor. It was to have been a free party that would stick in the memory of all who didn't attend it (as I personally intended to destroy a great many brain cells and be left only with a vague feeling of bliss whenever the event was mentioned. I think I am grouped in the majority of potential attendees when I say this...). It was to have been the Love Parade. And it has just been cancelled.

Now then, I shall leave aside for the moment that this is a set of circumstances rich in imagery for me to invoke and (being honest) plagarise. A festival of Love among Mankind is called off due to the failings of bureaucracy, perhaps genuine fear about safety, coincidence and bad timing, and the petty machinations of people who are not exactly evil or bad but possess a kind of low grade unpleasantness that it usually manifested by a petty drive to ensure that their lives will continue tomorrow in much the same way as they did today. To quote a better man, the party has been called off because of a few fevered ego's whom, when we let them have their way, are making us pay a higher psychic price than we realise. I believe they are known as the Residents of Jesmond Dene.

Thus far I am perhaps being guilty of romanticising the Love Parade that will not be, so perhaps a more objective rundown of the event is required before I venture further. Essentially, a vast number of well known DJ's were going to descend on Newcastle. They would be accompanied by around about a quarter of a million partygoers. The party was to have started on the Tyne Bridge and, by means of a convoy of floats, wound it's way around Newcastle before settling on the Town Moor for some particularly energetic dancing coupled with imbibing vast quantities of alcohol amongst other things until 11pm. At this point, the DJ's were to have relocated to the large swathe of clubs around the city and the party would have continued (admittedly not quite as free as it had been up until this point. I believe one could expect to pay approximately £50 for a ticket to a typical event) until the wee small hours of Sunday. A vast amount of clubbers, both casual and hard core, would have been left exhausted but happy. Over £14 million of revenue in total would have been generated for the City of Newcastle. People from all over Europe would have converged on my home City in order to celebrate just how marvelous they felt and did I know where they could get any more of those wonderful little blue pills?

And it has all been called off at literally the last minute. Anyone who has booked their accommodation and travel in advance has lost their money. My friends and myself feel deflated, cheated even, at the casual way that and event that many of us had been looking forward too for months has been derailed. Love has turned to annoyance and sadness. So then, as we're all well-adjusted human beings, we need to find out whom to blame!

As always with these things, it is best to first examine the role of the organisers. In this case, Radio 1 and Newcastle City council. R1 have been advertising and promoting this event for months, so should we blame them for letting us down so badly? The council, despite having had the chance to plan for this since the beginning of the year, only started to do so a few weeks ago. Why didn't they start sooner? Also, the late entry of Newcastle Utd into the Intertoto cup meant that a European football match would take place in the city on the same day. Had the council put their plans in place earlier, it would have been a relatively simple matter to make a few adjustments for a match that would bring few away fans and, in all probability, few home fans as well (especially as we hammered the opposition 4 - 0 in the away leg! Shove it up yer arse FC Lokeren!!). As it is, the police quite rightly raised concerns that with 2 major events taking place on one day and no planning having been made for either of them, they could not make the necessary arrangements to guarantee a safe day for all concerned. The council found that they could not guarantee car parking spaces (and also faced internal opposition as the net cost would be £150,000 to do so). So for the want of some car parks and less than 200 grand the city has lost the prestige of hosting the event itself, millions in income, and made itself look something of an inefficient laughing stock.

So then, the whole thing smacks of basic and simple inefficiency on the part of the good burghers of Newcastle whom it would seem could not organise a piss up in a brewery. Or a New Years Party at the Quayside. Or a Millennium Bridge. Or an Internationally renowned Garden Festival. Erm...actually, they organised all of those events and buildings (and more besides) rather well and efficiently. In fact, the problem only seems to have arisen when it comes to events or buildings aimed specifically at the 18-25 age group in the case of the Love Parade, or at what I'll reluctantly term the working and middle classes as in the case of the opposition to relocating Newcastle United to a new ground a few years ago. In both of these cases it is my belief (and I do hope that you'll excuse my raging paranoia here...) that the actions of a very small minority played a major role. In the latter case, those residents of Jesmond Dene and attendant areas were active and vocal in their opposition of a relocation that had the support of the majority of the city. In the case of the Love Parade I suspect that they had no real need to be particularly vocal as they make up certain elements of Newcastle Council itself, particularly (I am hugely ashamed and disappointed to say) the LibDem councilors.

Now their opposition was nothing particularly active. They opposed by delaying and procrastinating on any sort of action relating to organising the event until it was too late to assuage the worries of R1 and the police (although happily I am not so naive as to deny that good old fashioned incompetence played it's part). Why did they do this? So that their peace and quiet, their everyday life would not be affected by such a huge number of (horror of horrors) young people descending on their homes. Some of them even complained bitterly that the drug crazed and violent (?) partygoers would be turning up at their doorsteps and being intimidating throughout the day. Well, firstly there is a bloody great main road separating the Town Moor from Jesmond. Secondly, why don't they raise these objections during the Hoppings Fair on the Town Moor every summer? Christ, that's an event that sees one of the biggest congregations of Gypsies and Travellers in Europe so you would have thought the bigoted buggers would be constantly up in arms about that! They want Saturday to be no different to the other 364 days in their year and they are getting their way. This leaves them free to indulge in their usual routines of gardening and mild adultery whilst the rest of us experience pangs of regret at the loss of an exciting and fun party.

And where does this lead us? Well in a way it ties back to one of my favourite bugbears of apathy. The only people who can be bothered to raise their voices are just this kind of horribly selfish middle/upper middle class gimp that infest Jesmond and areas like it. As long as the likes of you and I pay no attention to the day to day running of the areas in which we live we can look forward to many more disappointments like this one. I didn't have much of an impact persuading people to vote in the election when it was just our taxes and public services on the line. I'm hoping that the far more important issue of a bloody good party being ruined will perhaps spur more people on to being active in standing up for what they want. I live, as ever, in hope.