Safety concerns sounds like a convenient line to take in the face of bigger problems to be honest. Its the St Paul's carnival, the whole thing's been a bit bonkers right since the start, but was always tolerated. I always figured it was a community relations hang over from the riots in the 1980's, and the police were more times than not well on top of any real trouble there anyway.
A few months ago they seemed to have one of their usual 'we can't afford it' moments, which have been happening on and off for a few years now. Story was they took £3000 in donations from 100,000 visitors over the weekend last year, which seems like a mad ratio if true, but then St Paul's has always been a pretty low budget and informal community thing anyway, loads of residents out selling stuff and so on. There was a benefit night at Lakota a few weeks back with Roni Size which was raising money for this year's carnival, with the implication being that enough money wasn't yet arranged to pay all the bills for this year's event.
So, for 'safety concerns' to be cited after a massive fund raising drive just seems a little implausible, or at least not the entire picture. The council says it's still investing the money it was going to into the carnival this year anyway, so I hope its just a year to get the thing back in shape like has happened a couple of times now.
Might well be seeing quite a different sort of carnival afterwards though. After all, the Ashton Court festival is effectively back on again this year, just on a different date and with a different set of organisers, ones who are taking the difficult decision the old organisers felt they never could, of charging £20 a head or whatever to get in. I do wonder if something similar will start to happen with St Pauls.
