After doing a post about how they were considering it, I forgot to do a VICTORY !!! post when the evil London Mardi Gras (spit) actually decided to give up and go home.

Ken would like a 'high profile' 'world class level' event next year.

So it looks like next year's event will be on 3rd July (ok), be free to attend (yay), cost about £300k to stage (told you so), involves Jason Pollock, the ex-festival director of LMG (hiss)… and looks like being held in Jubilee Gardens (eeek).

Why eeek? Well because of the London Eye, Jubilee Gardens is even smaller now than it was in the mid-80s, when it was just large enough to hold the event. I can remember the fact that Erasure were going to play there one year (1988?) was kept 'secret' to stop hordes of teenage fans attending – there wouldn't have been room for the people on the march and them!

It seems to me that 'high profile', in this location, means almost by definition that it can't be 'world class', not least as the people at the Mayor's consultation forum wanted the community village section to remain too. Last year, that alone would have taken up about a quarter of the space available. Ghod knows how they're going to control entry or how many people will be allowed in.

Perhaps it will be spread along the South Bank? That would roughly double the available space, but it would still be much smaller than any event since 1990ish, when Kennington Park got 100,000 people.

Oh, it looks like Soho Pride wants to become an annual event. 1st August is the date next year, St Anne's Gardens.

And there's a mention of 'North London Pride'. Ghod knows what, who, where and when about that one.