Scotland on Sunday Letters: Bigger is not better when it comes to Edinburgh festivals

Your lead article (6 August) quotes organisers saying the Edinburgh International Festival is “stretched to breaking point”. This, however, is true more from the perspective that it has reached capacity than from dwindling public financial support.

Recent research from BOP Consulting found that the various festivals generated a whopping £492 million of gross economic output for the Edinburgh economy in 2022, operating at around 75 per cent capacity, suggesting well over £1,000 in a normal year per resident that few will ever benefit from. Much of this bonanza goes to landlords, hoteliers, restauranteurs, publicans and shop owners. It does not subsidise council tax or improve public services. It is therefore difficult to justify any public money being invested, far less increasing the £11m that currently collectively subsidises the festivals.

The research also brings into focus the Festival’s sustainability given that in a normal year around 1 million people attend events, that means that the population potentially doubles, causing immense strain on transport, waste and accommodation infrastructure. Given about 70 per cent of expenditure comes from visitors outside Scotland, huge additional carbon emissions result. Flights to and from London, for example, rise to a total of over 60 per day, an increase of over 50 per cent during the festivals. Pollution from traffic and congestion is also greatly increased.

Instead of asking for more public money organisers should focus on a smaller higher quality product, mitigating the effects on the environment and on the lives of residents.

The doubling of Edinburgh's population in August is a drag on resources, reckons reader (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Stop moaning

The stooshie over the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge is much ado about nothing. Where were all the campaigners concerns when oil rig workers have been living in older accommodations with fewer facilities after working a 12-hour shift out in the North Sea elements? At the risk of sounding like a Monty Python sketch, when I worked offshore it was normal to live incabins with three other workers, sharing the toilet and shower facilities with complete strangers from different parts of the country.

We have a generation of mischief makers dictating what the government shouldn't do while trying to stem the flow of Illegal immigration, instead of providing solutions to a problem which is not of this country's making.

Allan Thompson, Bearsden, Glasgow

Ding dong

Clark Cross (Letters, 23 July) asks whether cyclists “cannot afford a bell?” Amidst a cost-of-living crisis can we suppose this question does not refer to their means of investing circa £5 in this item? Instead, why these same culprits do not routinely sound their bell upon passing pedestrians.

I refer him to the Knock, Knock joke punchline. “Isobel necessary on a bicycle?” On this point the Highway Code, in its Rules for Cyclists section, recommends, rather than mandates, that a bell is fitted and suggests examples of how a pedestrian can be alerted to the passing of a cyclist: “For example by ringing your bell or by calling out politely”. The “DING! DING!” of a bell can seem to some as aggressive in itself.

I far prefer the calling out idea as the vast majority of us, being equipped with fully working vocal chords, can politely say, calmly and clearly from a reasonable distance, “excuse me, please?” or “bike passing on the right”. It usually does the job.

Blair Hutton, Edinburgh

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