<div>Hi Clive,</div>
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<div>The organisers of these events would be more deserving recipients if you do decide to ram the Christmas tree somewhere.</div>
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<div>GLASGOW’S GEORGE SQUARE TO HOST ‘GLAM IN THE CITY’ CONSUMER EVENT...</div>
<div><a href="http://www.britevents.com/whats-on/lanarkshire/glasgow/glam-in-the-city/117290/">http://www.britevents.com/whats-on/lanarkshire/glasgow/glam-in-the-city/117290/</a></div>
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<div>Cadbury Spots v Stripes George Square 21/22nd August</div>
<div><a href="http://www.spotsvstripes.com/events_glasgow_overview.aspx">http://www.spotsvstripes.com/events_glasgow_overview.aspx</a></div>
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<div>Kind regards,</div>
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<div>David Kerr</div>
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<div>The ice rink and the art show. I'm trying to think of other events<br>that are held there during the year. There was talk for a while of<br>moving the central monument to the side to make it a more open space<br>
and also moving the cenotaph down to the other end (where it was<br>supposed to be built in the first place) but they all petered out.<br>The cost would have been enormous but just the central monument moving<br>would have made a much larger open space for public activities.</div>
<div>The Christmas activities in the square are popular and bring a bit of<br>life to the square. I'm not sure they're as profitable to the<br>operators as they'd like.</div>
<div>Yes, George Square IS classed as a park and maintained by the parks<br>department. You don't need to claim it back. It's freely open most<br>of the year for people to sit on and have their lunch as many do.<br>
It's planted areas are maintained regularly if anyone even bothers to<br>look. It makes sense to have at least a few events there during the<br>year though, since it is a nice central location</div>
<div>I should mention that it's me who puts up the Christmas lights on<br>George Square (yes the battered old 20-year-old ones) so if you do<br>hold a protest and anyone vandalises the lights at ground level then I<br>
will personally ram the entire George Square Christmas tree up their<br>arse. :)</div>
<div>For the geeks amongst you (here's the actual electronic bit), the only<br>Christmas lights on George Square that aren't now LED based are the<br>swinging bells, nativity spots and the angel floodlights. We've been<br>
gradually refitting the old frames with good quality LED tubelight<br>with an immediate power reduction of 75% and a considerable increase<br>in brightness over the old (and troublesome) tungsten tubelight. The<br>new stuff is so sensitive that the leakage through the dimmer snubber<br>
networks was enough to make them light dimly when they're supposed to<br>be off! We had to add small resistive packer loads to shunt the<br>leakage enough to turn them off completely. All the lights are<br>controlled via dimmers on a DMX network to make everything operate in<br>
sync.</div>
<div>Most significant new bit to look for this year is the column which is<br>now lit entirely with warm white LED (top and base) with a few strings<br>of xenon strobe caps to add some sparkle. The sleigh and reindeer<br>
have also been converted to LED with a sudden resultant power drop<br>from almost 40A to just 6A! (made things a lot easier for me).</div>
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<div>On 23 November 2010 02:09, M.Hersh <<a href="mailto:m.hersh@elec.gla.ac.uk">m.hersh@elec.gla.ac.uk</a>> wrote:<br>> Slightly off-topic for this list, but there are also issues of reclaiming<br>> George Square. It used to be one of 3 places in Glasgow where there was an<br>
> automatic right to stage protests and you did not require police permission.<br>> It now seems to have been taken over by a range of commercial activities<br>> and we have lost this community ownership of it. Also tuition fee events<br>
> are Wednesday, not Thursday,</div>