Music concerts are going to cost us

AS it seems to have gone widely unreported, I think it is important to make people aware that the muchhyped BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend taking place in Coventry over the May Bank Holiday is actually going to cost the city a huge amount of money.

As reported by BBC local radio, the council have agreed to cover the ‘infrastructure’ costs of the event and £300,000 of public money will be spent. The cabinet member responsible for events, Councillor Abdul Khan, has issued the usual statement telling us about the benefits that the event will bring to the city without actually specifying them.

Cllr Khan is also a great proponent of the annual ‘free-tothe-public’ Godiva Festival which will take place this summer. A recent Freedom Of Information request revealed that the net cost to the taxpayer of holding this event last year was £319,157.

Combined, that’s probably over £600,000 that the council will be spending on music festivals alone this year.

So perhaps the councillor, or any of his Labour comrades, could explain to the people of Coventry how far that money would go in funding emergency accommodation for the homeless, keeping a library open, getting disabled youngsters to school free of charge, dealing with fly-tipping or getting on top of the current bin collections fiasco?

It really does appear that the ‘austerity’ excuse so often used by our local Labour politicians to justify their savage cuts to our basic local services doesn’t apply to extravagant spending on superfluous projects like this, which will inevitably grab positive headlines for them. How convenient. Matthew Batson Coundon