Tangled...Is red tape threatening the future of May Week?
As reported exclusively by The Tab in June, Cambridge City Council have come down hard on traditional May Balls.
Weighing in at a hefty 83 pages, The May Ball Handbook aims to eradicate the complaints of a handful of anal local residents, and could spell the end of May Week as we know it.
The Tab has waded through the dross to compile an essential guide to enjoying May Week:
• Make your marq: make sure there is a baffling distance of 6.06m between marquees before heading for the hog roast.
• Throw some shapes: 6-8 feet of ‘dancing space’ must be provided for every raver.
• Night fever: in a section fashionably titled ‘discoteques’, amplified bands after 1am ‘must be avoided whenever possible’; there must be no ‘amplified music’ after 3am.
• Killjoys: the council come down hard on hypnotists, fire-jugglers and Chinese lanterns, with new safety measures that will make them too expensive for many poorer colleges.
Last year's balls were particularly blighted by council restrictions.
Ents at Jesus' Oz themed ball were silenced an hour and 20 minutes before the advertised end following complaints from curmudgeonly residents.
Magdalene too were handed the ultimatum of pipe down, or shut shop, choosing the former to the dismay of DJ act 'Scratch Perverts'.
Related Articles
No related articles.
Shit.
its all fine stop making a mountain out a molehill
Fuck them, it's not like any residents actually live in the centre of Cambridge. Just hire a hefty porter to politely inform any jobsworth council inspector that turns up that May Balls have existed for longer than the council has. Idiots.
"Fuck them….May Balls have existed for longer than the council has." Oh, the wonders of a classical education. How the townspeople must quake in fear of your wrath. Most of the ludicrous regulations which appear intended to cramp your style are the product of the legislative organisations crammed with your predecessors at Cambridge and, as uncomfortable as it may seem, you may well go on to be the miserable curmudgeon blighting the social lives of later generations. Tough luck, enjoy the adult world in due course.
Dear Student #2,
Well, fuck you too, you snobby elitist arrogant spoilt little brat. Why the hell do you think you’re so much more special and better than everyone else that you deserve to be above the laws that everyone else has to live by? The stuff in this document (which I actually read, I bet you didn’t) is just your basic health and safety and organisational standards that any professional operation should aim for even if it wasn’t law, it’s nothing that the Strawberry fair or anyone else organising this kind of event doesn’t have to do. You really going to go to the barricades for your right to have shitty substandard wiring hanging all over the place getting tripped over and pulled out and starting fires? Don’t expect any sympathy for your “cause”.
Oh, and there are lots of residents in the center of Cambridge, you’re just completely ignorant about that.
http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/content/policy-and-projects/population-statistics.en;jsessionid=0D314D50AF1ABC58F570E5213C9B52ED#internalSection4
Look at the figures for Market ward. It’s as populous as any of the others but a lot smaller than most, so either you’re claiming all those people are stuffed into a tiny ring on the very borders of the ward, or a whole lot of them live in the middle and you’re a dumbass.
Anyway, in summary: please stuff your unwarranted self-importance and your unrealistic sense of entitlement up the place where you undoubtedly believe that the sun does, in fact, shine. Thanks!
Well that’s odd. I know I only wrote it once and I don’t see what I could have done to get it all to come out before the dateline header. Maybe it’s a consequence of posting without javascript turned on, in which case this one ought to do it too.
much as i think student 2 overstated the case for no-one living in the centre of cambridge i also think you have overstated your case by referring to the market ward statistics. unfortunately this statistic does not take into account that many of the inhabitants may in fact be students. furthermore, this would account for the surprisingly high density of inhabitants that you mention as students tend to live in small residences at, i would guess, higher densities.
DaveK:
there was some fair on at the midsummers common a few weeks before may week which was as loud as a mother fucker. During the entire city's revision period as well. I could physically feel the never ending bass for the entire 2-3 days it was on. It was without a doubt obscenely loud when compared to the jesus may ball which was relatively inaudible, and yet Jesus was still dicked on by the gownie hating council as a result of TWO complaints: one of which was in Bedford and was upon reflection considered to be unlikely as a result of Jesus.
In addition, I agree with 1926: I think you will struggle to find many, if any, residents in the centre who are not students, or connected to the university in some way.
[...] year, the council shocked ball committees by issuing a hefty 83 page handbook outlining new rules for May [...]