There've been some comments about the non-festival buskers and the traders on the front. I raised this with the organisers at the feedback meeting, and basically the problems are that the traders all have peddler's licences. These can be got (more or less on demand) from your local police and are valid over the entire country. They are NOT licenced, encouraged or organised by the festival. Because I was on the collecting team, I spoke to a lot of people and know that there is a perception that they are in some way organised by the festival, so if anyone says this can you correct them. Peddlers licences allow people to do mobile trading: their stalls must be movable on demand and, in theory, they should be moving around during the day. In practice, the law is vague enough that the semi-fixed stalls on the front may be legal, and would not attract a substantial penalty even if they were charged with illegal trading and found guilty. Also, if the police *did* take action, every one they picked up would take 2-4 policemen off the streets for most of the day. Given the numbers of traders, you can see why the police take no action. A similar situation applies to the amplified muisicians. They did make some contribution to the festival: one of our team toured them every day, and collected about UKP50 from them (in total) each day. Not much, but something. Even the traders admit there are probably too many (though none want to be the ones to go). I did suggest (at the meeting) that areas be blocked off for musicians/dancers, but this raises a legal question in that the Festival would become legally responsible: thus needing stewarding, H&S evaluation, insurance etc, etc, etc. The Festival and Council are well aware of the problem, but solutions are not easy.

Nark Austin