Reply to comment

These changes are not just happening here - they are everywhere, they are the result of BIDs - public private partnerships to PRIVATISE your public space. BIDs represent the most massive changes in the public right to access public space since the Enclosure Acts of the 1850s forced people off farms and into the cities. They are stealth imposed legislation cunningly concealed in minor pieces of "routine" legislation like Environment Acts and Local Government Acts ...hived off to local government to implement -
as local Government's job is to take the blame for all the most unpopular legislation. Specifically to avoid ANY PUBLIC DEBATE OR LOBBY GROUPS FORMING UNTIL IT IS TOO LATE! BIDs even have their own private police forces - the City Guardians.
The Business Police - Here to keep your small business small.

Insanely though BIDs can be voted in by businesses once they exist not everybody who pays the business rates to fund them has the right to joing them.

Westminster Council's arguements are Bullshit. They are part of a coordinated strategy to NATIONALISE the promoting industries and exert political control over the distribution of printed matter. Obviously if you told the public upfront their public space was being sold off and the police privatised a riot would break out. So the changes are implemented covertly in a piecemeal way using salami tactics. There'll still be as many people in promotion - they'll just be under government control.
Westminster Council is revamping the Square for the Olympics and the Film Industry and ordinary people who want to break into the entertainment industry can now get stuffed as we dont do social mobility in this country any more.

Leicester Square was given by Albert Grant to the Government in 1874 to be preserved for the FREE USE and Enjoyment of the Public not for a Public-Private partnership to abuse into a posh-people-only-cartel.

Welcome to the world of Government organised "fun".

Leicester Square is not a "level playing field for comedy promoters" like Tiananmen Square.
It is only a matter of time till someone is imprisoned for political flyering as has happened already in Japan.
Not since Daniel Defoe has a British government gone to such fantastic efforts to punish someone innocent for self publicity.