g7uk.com

in reply to Charlotte:
Thanks for your comment. If you had been able to read a bit further you would have discovered that on 25 August 2006, in the article ‘We’ll attract record crowds predict Pride festival chiefs,’ The Manchester Evening quoted a Manchester Pride spokesman who said:

‘Last year, police estimated that about 250,000 people gathered [my emphasis] in the city centre to watch the main Manchester Pride parade on Saturday.’

And further down it shows a leaflet that was distributed by the organisers in 1999 which states: ‘The estimates for spectators on the city’s streets was a staggering 600,000 plus’.

Obviously people who watch on TV or aren’t otherwise physically there don’t ‘gather’ in the city centre ‘on the streets’.

You’re right, some articles are ambiguous and use the word ‘viewed’. In fact, initially, Manchester Pride tried to justify all the inflated figures by using the excuse that people ‘viewed’ the parade from somewhere else. But there are many other articles, quotes, press releases and web pages out there that clearly state a physical crowd number.

It is physically impossible to fit 200,000 spectators on a parade route that is only about 2,500 yards long and on streets that are only about 15 yards wide in most places measured from building to building. Let alone 600,000 which would be more than quarter of the entire population of the whole of Greater Manchester (population 2.2m).

You can’t expect to have any credibility at all if you post a rant without even looking at the evidence that is immediately in front of you. It isn’t just the media that spreads misinformation. You have done it above and without even reading the article.

It’s especially sad that you seek to justify it on the grounds that everyone is doing it (supposedly). That’s just desperate.

One more point, if you have taken the time to write all this because of something the media said, then you have sadly misconstrued the point of the media. They are there to make everything seem more important than it is. Get over it. They do it about everything, not just Pride.