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.

With the streets as crowded as they were, looked like there was zero crowd control. I was concerned that a stampede was a real risk and end up with dozens or hundreds killed/injured. Would not go anywhere near anything like that ...

If that’s all you can take from the information I give then your spec spectacularly missing the point.

At Glastonbury the organisers have to pay to clear up the mess which is presumably funded by ticket sales.
I assume the taxpayers have to pay to clear up the mess from the Carnival.

You think that the fact that you've been and enjoyed it 'cancels out' behaviour like setting fire to things? Really?

I used to go many years ago but toward the end I did notice much rougher gangs and people coming in and I can't imagine what it's like now

'It is actually UK culture which has been heavily influenced by grime and drill music which is the problem'

• grime doesn't necessarily promote crime, like hip hop there are strands that promote positive messages, but some does. Drill music is definitely awful. The original carnival doesn't seem to have had these issues, it's due to problems that developed in later decades.

Well, that poster thinks the whole experience where 2 million attend should be cancelled because of her experience.

So why can’t my experience cancel out her experience?

I thought what you said was interesting but also repeated posts already made and the guardian woman really made me laugh

Well if you read this thread you will see that clearly it is not only her experience.

The fact that it's possible to go and have a nice time if you are lucky enough to avoid being set fire to or defacated on is neither here nor there.

If those things are happening at all then it has gone too far, it doesn't matter that not every single person going directly experiences it.

I was there yesterday and didn't witness anything that would have warranted police intervention at all, but I did see plenty of police officers. In front of one stage a man was taken ill - paramedics arrived, the DJ stopped his set and asked the crowds to step back to give everyone access and everyone complied instantly and the whole situation was dealt with in a couple of minutes. People were kind, respectful and the atmosphere was great.

The press really do seem to go all guns blazing for NHC and ignore the bad behaviour at other events. I lived very close to York Racecourse for a while and saw far more shocking behaviour after a day at the races than I did yesterday.

Your race and class is irrelevant, every decent person should be outraged by drug taking, drunken fights, crime and litter

Glastonbury is a private event held on private land by the way.

I was replying to that poster, not the whole thread.

And by your logic, given there have been airplane disasters, we should ban all flights.

Given there was a fire at Bradford FC where many died and a disaster at LFC where many died, we should ban all football matches.

I would hate to live there. You pay millions for a nice house and once a year your street turns into a nightmare.

I live right next to a huge park (middle class area, yummy mummy, nice cafes and dog walkers). A few times a year there are festivals with loud music (often bad) and crowds, people urinating in the bushes by your fence. It drives me absolutely mad and it's not even in front of my house, just across the fence. If I had this circus on my street I would move very quickly...

God I sound like a grumpy old person and to think I used to stay in clubs until 6 am not longer than 10 years ago 😂😂

Posting from Golborne Road. You wouldn’t have a clue Carnival has just been and gone.

I’ve been many many times and yes of course it’ gets busy but my god, it’s such a blast! Let the crowds take you where they take you and relax and enjoy the vibe.

The people who paid millions to live there can afford to move if they don’t like it. It was there before them for most of them.

"Music festivals accounted for 722 deaths in a 15 year period."

That comes from festivals around the world which may have had very different safety standards. Almost half of all those deaths came from one incident. 347 deaths occurred from a stampede/ trampling at a 2008 Cambodian music festival.

Other deaths from stampedes included 54 people in Belarus in 1999, 21 people in 2014 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 21 people in Germany in 2010, 11 people in South Korea in 2005 and 11 people in 2009 in Morocco.

There was also a structural failure which led to 16 deaths in South Korea in 2014.

Two of the music festivals were the targets of terrorists. A bomb killed 16 people at a Moscow festival in 2003 and another bomb killed 10 people in Bangladesh in 2001.

That leaves 215 deaths. Of these, the reasons were

Overdose 96
Motor vehicle related 39
Trampling 13
Structural 12
Natural causes 10
Drowning 8
Environmental 8
Assault 6
Other/Unknown 23

.

Given that background, and just how many music festivals there are worldwide every year, I think that just giving the bare figure of 722 deaths without any sort of context at all is somewhat misleading.

Are they setting people on fire and defacating on them too 😱

I used to go almost every year in my younger days. My only issues were it could get a bit claustrophobic and there weren't enough loos. In fact I don't think there were any provided, you had to find a pub.

I used to live in Highbury. The first time I used the Arsenal station tube I wondered why a section of the tunnel going down to the train was wired off. The second time I used it , incidentally pushing a pram, I found out. Thousands of drunk, VERY drunk football fans, coming up the tunnel from the trains, banging on the wire mesh, spitting through it, saying foul things to us, pissing in the tunnel and outside the station. We soon learned not to use the tube on match days. and the big tube at Highbury and Islington was no better, there would be constant streams of urine flowing across the pavement outside the station from where the fans were lined up against the wall treating it like a urinal. This was in the seventies. Police were there, they ignored the fans behaviour.

I used to live in the heart of Notting Hill and went one year. So so crowded, I didn’t know how anyone could stand it. While squeezing through a crowd to get to my doorstep a man stuck his hand down my trousers. It was just so crowded impossible to find a police office to report it. This was 20 years ago though! After that we made sure we were out of town the bank holiday weekend.

Weird how house prices in the area remain so high, given how impossible it is to live with. You'd think they'd fall.

Another option would be load up on food and do lots of reading and boxset binging.

Hahahaha have you seen the nimbys of Herne Hill attempting to ban every public gathering in Brockwell Park? Especially fenced events?

And noted that Pride used to finish on Brockwell Park but had to be moved because the park and approach routes weren't big enough?

And as for charging £50.... flies on the face of everything carnival is or ought to be.

Yep, but it must be banned because of the opinions of people who mainly don't even live in the area,

636 arrests. I don't recall the equivalent percentage ever happening at football. Yes sometimes things happen at football but never on an equivalent scale, and I've been to literally hundreds of matches over the decades and rarely seen any trouble.

The first and last time I went to the Notting Hill Carnival was 1999, and the second my sister and I arrived, a guy swung around out of nowhere and punched me hard in the stomach. Absolutely unprovoked. We'd literally just arrived and were chatting quietly.

So as far as I'm concerned, the carnival can get to fuck.