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.

Or go in someone's basement.

It's such a shame. DS2 who is a musician and loves music, cancelled seeing a friend last weekend as he lives near the Carnival and he wanted to avoid it. I was amazed and said, surely it's fine during daylight hours and he just rolled his eyes and said, 'Not any more mum.'

I remember taking his brother about 15 years ago, when he was still at primary school, because King Tubby's family were playing and he was obsessed with King Tubby. They had a really quiet afternoon slot and they noticed this small kid just smitten by their music, so they invited him up onto the stage and he jammed with them. It was unforgettable.

A carnival taking place nowhere near you that you don’t have to go to is someone imposing a new identity on you? You loon 😂

The people that chose to live in an area renowned for it's yearly enormous street festival. It's not like it would be a surprise to the residents that it's happening. It's been going on for more than half a century?

This is super weird. If it means nothing to you that’s great, don’t go.

Stay home and enjoy Chaucer and Monty python. Or even better, start your own festival .

"Of the arrests this year nearly 200 were people who were arrested BEFORE they even got to Carnival or had committed a crime - people identified as troublemakers using facial recognition before they even got there. Not people who were arrested for crimes actually at Carnival - but are included in the numbers."

I think that you are mixing up a couple of different things here. There were a total of 636 arrests.

The Met police say that 193 people were arrested "on the approaches to the event, with the remainder taking place within the event footprint."

So the remaining 443 arrests were within the "event footprint"

I would take that to mean that those 193 people were walking towards the carnival route but had not reached it yet.

"...BEFORE they even got to Carnival or had committed a crime"

[emphasis added]

This is where you are getting mixed up.

Separately, the police said that there were 121 arrests made based on the use of facial recognition.

These are not, as you say, "people identified as troublemakers" or who had not committed a crime. The people they are searching for are typically people who have active warrants for their arrest or people that they are searching for who are suspected of having committed a crime.

So, out of the total of 636 arrests there were 121 arrests of people that the police were actively looking for because they had already committed a crime. The other 515 arrests were of people that committed an offence on the day.

Hmm your same the poster that created a post slating an African colleague about her views on supporting the England football team - and now Notting Hill Carnival…but of course… you claim to black yourself. 🙄

To answer your question it’s a bit too crowded for me - but the beautiful floats and costumes are amazing - along with the steel pans. It’s a wonderful celebration of Caribbean culture.
Though maybe getting to big for the narrow roads of Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill.

Nope. Never did that. Nor did any of my friends.

Who pays for the 7000 police?

What a load of shit. Other people going to a party, for one weekend of the year, that you don't want to attend anyway, isn't imposing anything on you.

It’s terrible. I can’t believe we pay for this to happen every year. Imagine the outcry if we stopped it though.

Imagine if we had this mentality and didn't actually think what we were saying.

This poster wishes that rock and roll near touched the UK.
This poster wishes that the cultural dynamism of the 1960s never happened here.

And that we all still played harpsichords and pranced around in bustles and thicks tights.

They wish that we didn't have pizza and Indian takeaways. They want us to all just eat turnips.

Fortunately this isn't the case.

Do you think people at carnivals aren't kind?

There you’re wrong. The cost is immense - I saw stats quoted that 7000 police officers are deployed each day, 2 police helicopters in constant use. Imagine the ambulance staff, medics etc.

It would be tough tits if an old man had a heart attack in another part of London.

It’s not my culture but I like the idea that we can embrace a different and vibrant culture. It’s sad it requires such resource to limit the numbers of people being injured and killed though. That is not a great mark of culture.

Yes, but that was from something over 36 million people who attended football matches in one of the four leagues (or rather 36 million attendances at football matches, people generally go more than once per year).

Estimates say that around 2 million people attended the Notting Hill Carnival.

The big thing about the Notting Hill Carnival is that it's

A) free to enter
B) in the middle of London
C) the sheer size of it

If any other big music festival was free and in London and this big, I can guarantee it would have similar issues.

Did you see the police photos of the drugs found at the Creamfields site?! The dealers bury them every year. Unsuccessfully.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1mv0e9nm3mo

If it didn't have a ticketed entry system, what do we think would happen?

I’ll happily condemn both! Not my vibe. And I think it’s pretty reductive to assume that every Black person likes or approves of carnival. We’re not all the same believe it or not.

About 2 million attend the carnival, so the rate is higher, but I wouldn't say spectacularly so. Having attended both it's also policed very differently to a field-based festival, particularly in regards to drugs (not a criticism of the police btw - it's just because it's a community site).

Yes but you also comparing ticketed football games with thousand of attendees and where everyone is corralled to an open event like a carnival with two millions attendees.

It’s not a like for like comparison.

It's the same as any large event. I have never gone as I hate large crowds.

The lucky tax payers! Wonderful to have to pay for a bunch of druggies and knife weilding lunatics to behave badly for a few days

As long as it doesn’t come to my neck
of the woods that sounds a great idea. I don’t see large numbers of the attendees travelling anywhere else though? It grew up
as a local street festival on people’s doorsteps, they surely aren’t going to want to schlep over to Gloucestershire (or even the former Olympic park, could that be a possibility?) and many won’t be able to afford to…

local London taxpayers pay for it. Unless you pay a London borough council tax that’s not you

Does tax not pay for the police whether there are carnivals or not? “Druggies and knife wielding lunatics” behave badly all the time and everywhere not just at NHC.

Good way for the police to reach their quotas. If only they had something to do with them when/if convicted.