AIBU to feel angry about Notting Hill Carnival behaviour?

[ProudBlackMomma]

Any other London folk mortified by the Notting Hill carnival? Hundreds of arrests, lewd behaviour, vulgarity and litter. It does not represent my culture. It’s an embarrassment.

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Thank you!
Someone was even harping on about carnival not representing the wonderful African people they know; and I'm thinking- there's a reason for that 🤔.

Have those saying ‘it’s just like football matches’ ever actually been to one? Anfield, for example, is a perfectly normal place to live and work when matches are on. People don’t have to board up their homes for one.

Yeah - I have a fair few British-Caribbean friends (and some family members) who are of Indo-Caribbean descent and they get annoyed at their erasure although it is in part understandable given UK demographics.

I think they mean the policing costs and trouble / arrests. I have never been to a match with 2m attendees but used to work at grounds and pubs as a student so saw the trouble post match first hand although it has improved massively. Definitely.

But policing costs as still huge and people are fairly relaxed about that.

I don’t think these comparisons are valid.

NHC has police everywhere- police that have become absolute experts in this event. They make extensive use of facial recognition technology.
They have a pretty zero tolerance approach to known trouble makers and there are areas where people are extensively searched.
zThe last few years the met has been praised for doing this in a less intrusive way (so as not to distract from the actual carnival) and a lot more proactively. There were 7000 officers at NHc

I've checked and at Glastonbury there were 837 officers deployed. Reading- TVp don’t release the numbers they deploy. Leeds festival deployed 705 officers.

so c10% of the number of officers at Semitic festivals vs NHC.
You have to think, if you have 7000 police officers proactively watching and searching people, using facial recognition technology to identify known and wanted criminals, there WILL be more arrests. that doesn’t inherently make it more criminal, more violent or worse behaved.

In the other festivals you are left alone unless some action triggers the police attending you.

I saw that comment and thought “errrr….”

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I think this really hits the nail on the head.

I wonder if they have looked at moving it to a more appropriate place?

Yes, difference is it’s in an open field, not in narrow streets, very close to homes.

So despite the fact that thousands clearly like it, it needs to be binned off because you and your mate didn't?

I know RdJ used to have high serious crime associated with it which reflected the city. No idea what it is like now.

But the big difference is Brazilians don’t have that tendency to British negativity and Carnival is simply embraced as a huge event in Brazil’s culture. Maybe their right -wing press hates it too.

Lots of the locals dont like it though, noisy and causes big tailbacks on the roads so yeah let's bin that too.

I think the carnival is a victim of its own success. Unfortunately it’s attracting opportunistic thieves and general trouble makers who are letting it down but on the whole the vast majority of people go for the fun and the atmosphere. It’s just a shame there’s scummy people who’ve jumped on its success to cause trouble.

Absolutely true.

The carnival generates £400 million for the wider economy. So no point moaning about it, it's going nowhere.

Time to move it to somewhere like Brockwell Park. Put up fences and charge everyone 50 quid to come in.

I've been a few times. I'm a teetotal who can't dance for shit but I still had a great time.

I think my experience cancels out yours...

Bet you're fun at parties.

@JHound "Just one niggle - people refer to it as “celebrating Afro-Caribbean culture but really it’s simply celebrating Caribbean culture. Trinidad and Tobago which has an Indian majority and that ancestry is a huge influence on the music and the foods"

I totally agree. And let's not forget there's been a significant Chinese population in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana and Belize since the 19th century.

I used to live in the Notting Hill carnival zone and it was an absolute misery. Each year it got bigger and bigger and louder and louder. Elderly people in care homes were literally bussed out for days at the seaside. For weeks beforehand barricades go up in front of council flats, portable loos and portable urinals line the streets and shop windows are boarded up. Everywhere is used as a toilet even though there are plenty of portable public loos because there are just too many people.

The chief executive of Kensington & Chelsea * once said to me “well you knew what it was like when you moved here“. Well, I didn’t, actually because when I moved there, it was quite low-key. The sound of the police helicopter overhead, the smell of the cooking, the crowds who just don’t give a damn that this is where you live, the enormous speakers that are stacked on top of each other, so you’re in your living room and you can’t hear the radio or television but you can feel the thump in your chest, ruin the last bank holiday of the year. It’s bloody awful.

Many years ago there was a letter in The Guardian, and I’m talking about 40 years ago, from a woman who said that despite the multicultural origins that are claimed for it. She and her neighbours had lived in Powys Terrace and they started it for their children who had nothing to do over the summer. But I dare say she’s dead and nobody gives a shit now how or why it really started. There was a plan to move it to the parks that was resisted, quite rightly. I just can’t see it ever ending. It’s an imposition on the people who live there who, I would like to inform anyone who doesn’t know the area, are not all rich people living in white stucco three million pound houses.

• he, of course, did not live in the carnival zone. In fact, I’d known him in a previous job and he was a reasonable man but that was an unreasonable comment..

Football supporter here, and I have been attending matches since I was 7 years old. Female, almost 40.

I have never seen sex acts emulated at a football match. Never seen semi nudity. I don't think I've ever seen a fight off the pitch. I've heard swearing and very harsh words, seen heavy drinking but thats it.

You're comparing apples and oranges there.

I went to Reading Festival once in the Summer of 2005. It was unbelievably tame...apart from the last night after the final bands played. Then it was Bedlam and we barricaded ourselves in our tent.

What's weird is that lewd behaviour by leather clad gays at Pride are condemned on Mumsnet, but lewd sex acts at carnival not.

They don't, but my cousin used to get police leaflets about moving her car and pretty much any moveable exposed property when the hooligans from some of the clubs visited her locality.
Police would then line the streets from the stadium into the train station.

I'm shocked by that! I would have expected better from cricket fans. It sounds as bad as when I lived close to Selhurst Park in the late 70s/80s, and that was every other weekend in the football season. I caught some football fan pissing through my railings onto my front windows once (house was down several steps).

At least the disruption from carnival is only one weekend in a year. I went several times when I lived in London and thoroughly enjoyed it.

People who live in an area will often complain about disruption, litter etc from big events held locally. People in Brighton complain about Pride, people in Hastings complain about Jack in the Green, people in Lewes complain about bonfire night and I wouldn't be surprised if the people of Helston and Padstow complained about the Furry Dance and 'Obby Oss events.

YANBU but I went 10 years ago and it was the same then.

I remember being pretty shocked at seeing people defecating in the streets and that was on the 'family' day.

I would never take children and doubt I will ever go again.

“Many years ago there was a letter in The Guardian, and I’m talking about 40 years ago, from a woman who said that despite the multicultural origins that are claimed for it. She and her neighbours had lived in Powys Terrace and they started it for their children who had nothing to do over the summer. But I dare say she’s dead and nobody gives a shit now how or why it really started”

this isn’t true. The lady who wrote to the guardian lied and claimed carnival 😂