For a second year running, Manchester Pride has raised one of the lowest amounts in its 17 year history. Just £95,000.
This is despite the highest ticket prices ever (some people paid £18) and more than 40,000 tickets sold according to a report on the LGF website.
This is further proof that running costs for this event are completely out of control and that businesses and the City Council are not contributing enough.
Amounts raised in recent years:
| 2007 | £95,000 (pay event) – Manchester Pride becomes a charity in its own right. | |
| 2006 | £70,000 (pay event) – the organisers are forced to pay VAT on the years 2004-2006 after the taxman (like the rest of us) comes to the conclusion that Pride is no longer a charity event | |
| 2005 | £120,772 (pay event) | |
| 2004 | £129,426 (pay event) | |
| 2003 | £127,690 (pay event) | |
| 2002 | £65,000 (free event) | |
| 2001 | £70,000 or £100,000 – reports vary (free event) | |
| 2000 | £105,000 (free event) | |
| 1999 | zero raised – the first year with the ‘pledgeband’/wristband (pay event) |
Back in August, the Pink Paper reported that sales of Manchester Pride tickets were up by ‘a massive 200%’. I speculated then that this ‘200%’ would turn out to be hype as it had in previous years. Sure enough, figures for ticket sales in the past have ranged from 35,000 to 45,000. There was no 200% increase in 2007.
Also in August, Andrew Stokes, the chairman of Manchester Pride claimed that 100,000 people ‘pass through the event area during the four-day Big Weekend’.
This was further spin (and that’s putting it politely) as no one can ‘pass through the event area’ without a ticket. Both articles also carried the usual misinformation about 200,000 people watching the Saturday parade — a physical impossibility.
No doubt Manchester’s businesses enjoyed £22m of extra business thanks to Pride, as usual. This is the official Manchester City Council figure.
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Curiously, the Inland Revenue and the Charity Commission do not regard Manchester Pride as a charitable event, and indeed, according to Companies House records where all UK charities are legally obliged to provide their accounts, the LGF is largely funded by the NHS as a marketing arm for it’s safer sex drive to reduce STI’s and STD’s.
Interesting to note that as Manchester City Council is forcing all ‘undesirables’ out of Manchester City Centre by stealth, including the Sidney Street LGBT Community Centre, sex workers, street homeless people, beggers, buskers, street drinkers and adhoc protests, business ventures, such as West Properties Mordor Development on Princess Street, are actively encouraged to create and maintain an identifiable “gay ghetto pink zone” of the City – revolving largely around pink pounds and targeting affluent white middle class gay men!
The radical Manchester queers and their allies are constantly observing and gathering evidence to challenge the corrupt corporate-council-stranglehold partnership currently suffocating Manchester’s large LGBTQI Community.