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"Edinburgh's Hogmanay" - but not YOU, Edinburgh resident in the "Underbelly zone

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  1. unhurt
    Member

    https://twitter.com/Angus_Duncan/status/1208857248564436992?s=09

    Some highlights from the thread:

    "If you live within what Underbelly deem as the ‘arena’, you’ll not be able to access your own home without a pass and a wristband issued by them.

    If you want to have a party in your home, it’s up to Underbelly to decide if it can go ahead."

    "Incredibly, residents will be vetted before being allowed access to their homes on Hogmanay. They’re sharing details of all applications with the police before approving/declining requests."

    "It’s a business, whose job is to sell party tickets, who gets to decide whether you get to hold a party in your own home.

    This is pretty dystopian."

    Posted 5 years ago #

  2. steveo
    Member

    That is pretty bad but judging by other threads it's only Airbnb in the "arena" and I'm sure we can make them fight to the death for residents entertainment!

    Posted 5 years ago #

  3. chdot
    Admin

    https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/wristbands-required-access-your-own-homes-hogmanay-underbelly-tells-edinburgh-residents-1348295

    Posted 5 years ago #

  4. LaidBack
    Member

    We're just outside barrier on Mound. Apparently they are putting a footbridge across entry to Giles St to allow people (non ticket holders) to move up and down High St to Lawnmarket. New stage in Parliament Square but that will be in a controlled zone.
    All very complex.
    They also promise to not make too much noise building all this stuff (!)
    We are offered discount tickets but Mrs LB not impressed!

    Posted 5 years ago #

  5. acsimpson
    Member

    Is residents requiring tickets a new thing? My memory from 20ish years ago is that residents have always required tickets. However the resident tickets only allowing access to security lanes may be a new thing.

    Perhaps it's a response to Airbnb party flats advertising free access to the party for copious quantities of visitors.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  6. gembo
    Member

    When we lived just outside the zone (thistle street) when tickets first started (the free vibe in previous years was lovely but became too popular) we became a toilet and a glass recycling street. We used to move on out to friends in trinity to escape (we had young kids)

    Posted 5 years ago #

  7. minus six
    Member

    i used to sub-rent in the udderbelly festival zone

    legit complaints regarding sub-optimal sound engineering would be a pointless circle jerk betwixt police > council > udderbelly > council > rinse and repeat

    the finale would inevitably result in an unwelcome complimentary pass to some lame bristo square udderbelly comedy show

    apart from that one time sadowitz was on, but i still refused the ticket on point of principal

    the first time they did the whole edinbugh hogmanay ticket barrier affair back in the late 90s, i know via a solicitor acquaintance at the time that the chief cop was on verbal record as admitting it was not strictly legal to impose the block centre-wide restrictions across our public right of access

    i assume they've ironed that all out post-haste -- given that all public space has been fully corporatised in edinburgh for quite a few years now, yes ?

    Posted 5 years ago #

  8. crowriver
    Member

    If memory serves, we have had 22 years of privatisation of the city centre on Hogmanay.

    Time for a re-think?

    Posted 5 years ago #

  9. gembo
    Member

    @crowriver the first 3 years were open access (the third year 180000 people on the mound causing a crush or numbers in this ball park) so whilst private they were free but you are right that the jazzed Up Hogmanay has been going for 22 years. Before that at the Tron I found it to be rubbish. Never been a fan of Hogmanay though.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  10. crowriver
    Member

    No, the "ring of plastic" was first erected in 1997, so it's 22 years. Before that was the panic and crush of the stampeding revellers which prompted the enclosure of the city centre. What they should have done instead is scale back the event. I was outraged at the time about needing a ticket to enter my own city and I'm still outraged two decades later.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  11. minus six
    Member

    Before that was the panic and crush of the stampeding revellers which prompted the enclosure of the city centre

    a mostly fictional notion by my hazy recollection

    those anarchic early 90s tron gatherings weren't without casualties though, it must be conceded

    Posted 5 years ago #

  12. minus six
    Member

    when you think about the tron though, its the beating heart of edinburgh, or was, or could still be, the potential is always there

    g8 summit 2005, a weekday afternoon, cops from england were outnumbered top of cockburn street with batons suddenly drawn in panic, and the tron mob just laughed

    the cops had bought the hype and misjudged the mood entirely

    it was a glorious moment

    Posted 5 years ago #

  13. wingpig
    Member

    Crushed revellers or not, the denser the crowd, the harder the jobs of the paramedics getting to people in trouble and getting them out, particularly when people seemed oblivious to them.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  14. steveo
    Member

    a mostly fictional notion by my hazy recollection

    Nope I crowd surfed down a chunk of the mound. There were people getting panicked but most folk just literally went with the flow.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  15. crowriver
    Member

    @bax, there was one year, 1996 I think, where it got out of hand. Too many folk all in the same place. My brother was there so I know it definitely happened.

    Still think the response to (potentially) dangerous crush was over the top. One might almost say overcrowding was used as a pretext.

    I recall going to the Notting Hill Carnival in 1994 and experiencing panic stricken overcrowded conditions, with folk pushing, shoving and getting aggressive. No "ring of plastic" introduced at Notting Hill though.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  16. Snowy
    Member

    The crush I was in was where Hanover St meets Princes St. The metal roadside railings were bent right over by the force of the crowd. Very fortunate nobody was seriously injured. Think the railings have possibly since been removed when the pavement was widened.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  17. Try Cycle
    Member

    Guardian had an article about this yesterday. Maybe that and their article about PSG and free and easy approach to planning permission might ring in some changes.

    Definitely feels this year has brought things to a head, but not sure what will change. May be events will be spread through out town. Having it all condensed in the city centre makes it easy for me to avoid it though (tend to avoid town for most of August and all of Deccember)

    Posted 5 years ago #

  18. Morningsider
    Member

    The crush was no fictional notion - I was there, near the junction of the Mound and Princes Street. While I never got any particular feeling of panic (although I was blazing at the time - along with nearly everyone else), it could have easily ended in people being seriously crushed. There were points where you just got carried along in a tide of people, feet not even touching the ground.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  19. minus six
    Member

    fair enough, i do remember that one, britpop era wasn't it, wonderwall was sung on the craigmiller bus into town like it was some kind of folk anthem, which maybe it was very very briefly.

    anyway i was near top of the mound with a bunch of assembled company and then WOOSH suddenly everyone was split to the winds for the rest of the night, jumped a railing to get clear of the sudden flow

    Posted 5 years ago #

  20. minus six
    Member

    @crowriver

    yes sir, 80s notting hill w11 at all saints road, meanwhile gardens, powis square and the rest, nothing like it is now of course

    have been taxed round that vicinity back in the day, can accept wealth redistribution sure but i was on a giro myself goddamit

    Posted 5 years ago #

  21. Tulyar
    Member

    Worth checking title deeds - many older feus include the rights to free ish & access to the properties. Blocking this can give rise to a civil action.

    I gather the Police will not enforce any blockade & Underbelly has no powers to prevent you accessing your own property.

    Where were the TRO for road closures advertised & what T&C?

    Posted 5 years ago #

  22. Try Cycle
    Member

    Underbelly has no powers to prevent you accessing your own property

    Think it depends, Underbelly tend hire either big burly guys or meek college kids. Guess which ones will try to enforce it

    Posted 5 years ago #

  23. ejstubbs
    Member

    @Try Cycle: Underbelly tend hire either big burly guys or meek college kids. Guess which ones will try to enforce it

    Simply hiring big burly guys just allows you to try to exert your will by threats and/or use of violence. It doesn't grant any powers not allowed by law.

    Just about everyone has a mobile phone capable of recording video these days, so I would hope that if a "big burly guy" tried to exceed their authority and/or exert their burliness without justification then plenty of people would be on hand to make a record of the incident.

    Regarding the crush: the one time I went to the "street party" was 1998, the year I moved up here. I was there with a pal from That London. We got caught in a crush on Castle Street at about 23:45 and she started to have a serious panic attack. It was extremely difficult to persuade people to give a distressed, hyperventilating young woman any space, or allow us to make progress away from the crush. The problem IMO wasn't the number of people inside the cordon itself, but the number of people trying to get a decent view of the fireworks at the bells. You didn't get to see that much from George Street, where we found sanctuary.

    For several years after that we watched the fireworks from the relative calm of Calton Hill (helped by having friends who lived on Regent Terrace and who therefore had access from the private gardens). More recently we've become a rather jaded with the whole thing and tend to stay in with just a few friends.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  24. LaidBack
    Member

    Used to live just up from Tron in a tiny top floor flat. Many new years from mid 80s to early 90s spent hanging out stair window with invited (and un-invited) friends.
    Even had fireworks one night out from back.
    On street level we had contrast of the new Filling Station and old Black Swan which would empty out.
    People facing Tron Kirk to see clock count down. More radge elements would jump on bus shelters (we had several handy routes such as 1 & 35 on the street). Street would end up packed but not any entertainment other than interacting with people round about. Sometimes bottles were thrown.
    Once we moved our new neighbours did some first footing in our tenement. Then daughter arrived and the era of the Hogmanay event with wrist bands followed a few years later. On first one the barrier was at the George IV Bridge so many more residents were in the zone. Since then gates moved to Deacon Brodies.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  25. Morningsider
    Member

    Wow, those fireworks (for some reason at 9.15 on 30th December) were incredibly loud. Is this now some sort of real world trolling by Underbelly?

    Posted 5 years ago #

  26. Rosie
    Member

    I do remember those Tron Hogmanays as fairly miserable occasions. The pubs closing at 10:30 and traipsing about the streets until midnight. They didn't even ring any bells. And low unwashed characters would take the chance of snogging you. I thought having something organised was quite a good idea, and we did get tickets to the Gardens one year and saw the Proclaimers, but it's really got out of hand now.

    A boyfriend of mine had lived in Tigh-na-Bruach when there was the full proper Scottish New Year of first-footing all around the town for about a week, dropping into houses for whisky and soup. What worked in a small town doesn't work in a city.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  27. Rosie
    Member

    The Citizen Project – does anyone know anything about this? Mike Small of Bella Caledonia is a major contributor. I see that some of the big hitters, like Living Streets and the Cockburn Association, are not involved. I’ve skimmed through it and can’t see anything about Open Streets or the Transformation Project either. They’ve got plenty on Hogmanay and Underbelly.
    https://reimaginingthecity.scot

    Posted 5 years ago #

  28. chdot
    Admin

    “I’ve skimmed through it and can’t see anything about Open Streets or the Transformation Project either.”

    That’ll be partly because their primary interest is the ‘effect of tourism’.

    Lots of intent here -

    https://reimaginingthecity.scot/aims/

    Think individuals and orgs like Spokes should get in touch and point out things that would make things better for residents (and visitors) and make it still something of a ‘must visit’ place without some of the downsides (perhaps!)

    Obviously Ed is a victim of various types of success (some more desirable than others).

    Part of the problem is the universals of vested interests (usually well funded) pushing certain types of development - hotels, shopping centres, ‘mass’ entertainment etc.

    Also the (ought to have been) discredited idea of ‘more of the same is obviously better’.

    Plus large ‘business as usual’ elements within SG and CEC.

    Even without ‘Climate Emergency’ considerations, Edinburgh is not working as well as it could for those who live in it - or would like to but feel priced out, adding to transportation problems - or want to visit because of the city not just its transient attractions.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  29. Rosie
    Member

    @chdot
    10 "Promote an environmentally sustainable transport infrastructure for the city with greater priority for active travel i.e. walking and cycling and better integration of transport and land use."

    That's relevant to Spokes of course.

    I note that they do have practical suggestions eg shopping rogue airbnbs. Probably worth getting in touch about tram consultations, Picardy Place etc.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  30. chdot
    Admin

    https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/underbelly-director-labels-hogmanay-concerns-edinburgh-residents-red-herring-and-mis-truth-1352413

    So that’s alright then.

    Posted 5 years ago #

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