Sometimes I wonder if those who promote our city to tourists really appreciate that there are people who live and work in York.

At times they seem to be so fixated on bringing people into the city they forget about the residents, employers and employees who are its beating heart.

Take St Nicholas Fair.

Throughout the first half of November there was a sense of everyone in the city centre taking a deep breath.

We all knew what was coming and sure enough last weekend our worst fears were confirmed.

The centre was packed so full of marketgoers even a mouse would have had difficulty making its way down Parliament and Coney Streets.

This year there was the added bonus of the anti-terrorist devices that sprang up practically overnight on all the approaches and created queues to get in and out of most of the city centre.

All it needed was someone to shout “fire” and in the resulting stampede people would have fallen and possibly died.

But the organisers believe St Nicholas Fair is a success.

In terms of tourist numbers, yes, it is. In terms of simple humanity, no.

Why didn’t Make It York do more to encourage coaches to spread their visits?

Since the Fair doubled and trebled its length there have been lots of extra weekends available.

Whatever the limit on coach permits per weekend is, it is too high.

It needs to be lowered, otherwise there will more crushes with all their inherent dangers.

Then there are those barriers.

York’s rulers and the Minster have been talking for months about anti-terrorist barriers in one form or another – the ones on Church Street and outside the cathedral have been in place that long.

Surely in all that time, someone from the Fair could have paid a little attention to safety barriers, how to make them look attractive and think about how they would work in practice.

The ones in place look as if they were a last-minute addition to the plans and were borrowed in a hurry from wherever they could be found.

There are barriers that can stop a lorry without squeezing pedestrians into a thin line.

There are ways of making them visible and attractive.

Someone needs to find both in plenty of time for next year.

As for the problems the market traders have – did anyone from Make It York bother to speak to them beforehand?

If they did was it a proper conversation or was it one of those consultations where the consulters’ mind is already made up and they were merely going through the motions.

It needed to be a proper dialogue and the agreement reached this week needed to have been agreed long before the Fair began.

It isn’t as if the Fair is a new thing – coach companies down South were booking for this year’s Fair before last year’s Fair ended.

The impression that comes across from this year’s Fair is that Make It York believe that York residents and York businesses are happy to put up with whatever disruption it causes because it brings trade and money into the city.

Happy is not the right word.

We know that St Nicholas Fair brings people to stay in the city and eat in its restaurants; so do a lot of events, such as the Jorvik Festival, the Races, the all-year tourists attractions and so on.

But the money spent in the Fair tends to go out of the city because the traders are generally not local.

And St Nicholas Fair “disruption” is harder to avoid than that of other events.

As for the disruption, compare it with the Races and the violence and drunkenness of Race Nights.

You can guarantee from about the last race onwards, there will be drunken racegoers in their bedraggled finery making a life a misery for everyone else from Knavesmire to the city centre after the last race.

No wise resident would go to the city centre on Race Night.

That is not an option during St Nicholas Fair.

Christmas shopping has to be done and the best place to do it unless you go out of town is the city centre.

So for six weeks from the middle of November, the local people have to throw themselves into the maelstrom of St Nicholas Fair.

Please, Make It York, talk to us, listen to us and stop trying to ram more and more tourists into York.

There is a limit to the number of people the city centre can

hold.