Lies Of Our Time: Pride Attendance Figures

I added this as a footnote to the Brighton Pride post, but think it deserves its own blogpost.
It makes a point about one of Fagburn's main points which I've probably bored you to buggery with;
So much of what is written in the media about the World of Gay is just a land of fucking make-believe - where pleasing fictions are presented as facts - and which everyone seems happy to collude in.

An internal document admits that the official figure given for attendance at Brighton Pride 2010 - 150,000 people - was a massive over-estimate.
They needed to come up with a realistic figure to work out costings for this year's event - as opposed to one plucked from the ether cause it sounded impressive and would impress corporate sponsors.
After studying ariel photography it is thought there were around 25,000 people in Preston Park at 3pm - peak time.
This is one-sixth of the figure they fed to the media.
They guesstimate total traffic on the day might be double this.
Bear this in mind next time you see a boast of a huge attendance at any other Pride event, like the laughable claim there were a million people at last year's Pride London.

Photo: Brighton Pride 2005 - From Realbrighton.com