Thank you Dave, for thoughtful comments. I sent you an email about three minutes ago suggesting you look at my site....you beat me to it. I am highly supportive of the festival as an event in Sidmouth - it is one reason why I moved here (so did several people I know).

I'll reply later on the economics - this is a hurried reply just for now. My principal gripe is with people accepting whatever figures are thrown into the air and basing policy on them. I have worked with economists so know a little about the subject - the AFO report is just so insubstantial, as are figures used by EDDC.

The festival should not in my view have to 'make a profit' and Sidmouth should be very glad it has such an event in town (profit from it or not in narrow financial terms).What is wrong is the model, whereby it is presently excluded from (say) Arts Council funding because it is run as a business.

I put the webpages together so people could get a much better idea of how things were viewed down here, instead of just reading the national press. The argument about traders not making a lot out of the festival has been going on for years - some do, some don't but you need firm figures and some logic on which to base arguments and these have been sadly lacking from Council debate.

My preferred model would be for EDDC just to 'give' the use of land etc much as now and keep out of the organising as much as possible. Arts Council and/or a commercial sponsor would be needed unless perhaps some money could be saved by altering the structure to reduce costs without affecting the income too much.

More later.