Reply to BBC Documentary

Another day, another piss-poor documentary dragging down the nightlife scene of our good city for the purpose of propping up dubious statistics of drink-related crime.

So we have more bars than anywhere else does: good news, tell the world. Clubbers take over as the drink flows, whilst mild mannered shoppers go home. All seems logical to me. If Nottingham is trying to be more European in it's approach to the late night / all night idea of fun, surely all's good. A higher concentration of bars than anywhere in the UK, and liberal drinking hours has helped rejuvenate the city and bring in important large business. So what's the problem?

More than 50,000 people party in the city centre on a weekend night and there are only 20 police to shepherd them all, as well as take care of the odd mugging, burglary and accident in the suburbs. So that must be the problem, no? No! 

It's our liberalism that seems to ultimately get on these BBC filmmaker's tits, when making last weeks documentary.  Too many bars, too much alcohol and what time of the morning do you call this, sonny Jim?

Is a good thing that the police commissioner is personally blocking the renovation of buildings for leisure use? Wouldn't it be bolder and more inspired to admit city centre usage has changed, and drive to accommodate that change with suitable policing?  One of the above would clearly apply to the top dogs job description, and the other appears to just be a white hared conservatives roll. 

Why has our police commissioner come over all Esther Ransen? The bars attract people from around the country for stag w/e, there are clubs for residents, students, townies, rockers, even that Goth that lives in hockley.

It's not a case of 'ne'er the twain' either. We all mingle and have places to go. The centre now bears more of a resemblance to a holiday resort at the weekend, and it is fantastic - apart from the lack of policing!

So the programme makers came to the conclusion that the root cause of the majority of the weekend scuffles are people's liberal attitudes to drink and dancing late. This rhetoric doesn't bear dwelling on for too long. The point is that a much more interesting and pertinent program would have focused on why the police have remained so far removed from development of Nottingham's contemporary city centre weekend.  

The fact there hasn't been anarchy in the streets, given the lack of policing and diversity of party gores would probably have been a better story. It may also have been one the filmmakers naturally discovered, had they gone with the flow rather than trying from the outset to predict the root cause (no doubt from a bar in Shoreditch). Given the vacuum of talent the documentary makers displayed they are probably infants, although it may have been that an adult helped and thought for them.

There's been a lot about drug related gun crime in the city making national headlines, and jumping on the bandwagon is always easy. Bad press resulting from our central geography and motorway links we can take. But shite 'footage' of Bill and Geoff pushing each other outside the Old Angel at closing? Looped in slo-mo, then flogged to the beeb as hard-hitting evidence?

Absolute bollocks! We only see a couple of altercations throughout the programme, despite the BBC's intensive four months of filming at ground zero (those guys are so brave!).

The same two scuffles were repeated to the point that the programme could have passed as a lost episode of `the day today'. Basically, I think it's a credit to us that there isn't already a full on, Oldham style, city shut down every weekend. Given the tragic state of our policing, the cities cultural diversity and the influx of the non-locals every weekend, we're pretty fucking cool, and I bite my thumb to the phallus that made the documentary.

There will always be dickheads that start fights, and there should always be police  around to deal with it, rather than greater restrictions being placed on everyone else.

It's a shame the police will never be able to legally cull stupid filmmakers...

Have you got strong feelings on this issue? Please feel free to speak your mind in the comments section on the right or join us in a discussion about The state of Nottingham in the LeftLion forum.