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LETTER TO EDITOR : Cost of a ticket for Pride

October 11, 2013

Brighton Pride 2013As I waited in the queue to get into Preston Park at Pride I chatted with the lady next to me. She said she had paid £1 for her ticket. I had paid £17.50 for my ticket and asked why she had got hers so cheap. She was not sure. She said she used to volunteer for a voluntary group but that was two years ago.

I really feel very strongly about this. I am unemployed and paid £17.50 to get in. Why should people get in for £1? It quite simply is not fair and is potentially devisive within a community where over the years we have campaigned for equality.

Carol Harwood, Portslade

 

Gscene comment:

“Last year (2012) Pride organisers made available a block of community tickets costing £1 for community groups to attend Pride. This year organisers did the same and asked MindOut, the LGBT Mental Health Organisation, to administer the distribution of the tickets. I attended the community meeting at Legends Hotel when this process was agreed and was somewhat surprised to find out the distribution of tickets had not been controlled more carefully in the past and expressed that view. I was also surprised as to how few voluntary organisations that benefitted from those £1 tickets had taken the trouble to attend the meeting at Legends.

The present Pride organisers are now delivering a tried and tested fundraising model which has for the last two years raised £75,000 to be distributed to deserving LGBT organisations delivering front line services to the LGBT community. It is now very important to look at who should receive these tickets or whether any of these tickets should be available at all.

Every year and this year was no different, Pride has trouble recruiting volunteers to help on the big day. Everyone wants their Pride but when it comes to doing something to help, sadly there are not too many in the queue.

Maybe a solution to this problem is that anyone who gives two hours of their time to volunteer on the big day as a steward or bucket shaker receives a free or £1 ticket to the event.

The days of a free Pride in Brighton & Hove are over. Years of bad management and financial and incompetency saw to that. Now that the fundraising aspect of Pride is guaranteed each year through £1 a head on each ticket sold being allocated for distribution to deserving organisations, maybe the time has come to put the brakes on the ‘something for nothing culture’ that has developed locally over the last few years and concentrate on what can be done to make the amount of money raised for voluntary groups to more than £100,000 each year which is what Manchester Pride has managed to raise annually for the last 10 years.”

You won’t do this by giving away or expecting to receive £1 tickets at the expense of others.”

James Ledward, editor Gscene

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