London fairs are taking us all for a ride

As the Ferris wheel reached the top of its arc, some 200ft above Hyde Park, I watched my five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son gaze out in awe at the surrounding streets. There is no better vantage point from which to view the Christmas lights in the West End.

Some people might describe such an experience as "priceless", but the moment was ruined for me by its exorbitant cost. I had bought a family ticket for the Giant Wheel which set me back £22 (including the booking fee) — quite a hefty sum for a 13-minute ride, but at least it was better value than the Giant Toboggan Snow Slide. Four tickets for that cost £16 and it was all over in about 30 seconds.

As children's entertainment goes, funfairs have got to be one of the biggest rip-offs in the capital. There is one that comes to Acton Park that looks like the set of a horror film. The rides judder and creak, doormats grind to a halt halfway down the helter-skelter and bumper cars struggle to go above 3mph.

But it isn't the age of the equipment that makes this funfair such an unsuitable place to take young children as the age of the staff. On my first visit, I assumed that a gang of pickpockets had chased off the usual employees and were now running amok through the crowds. In fact, these were the people operating the fair. To use a phrase from one of Evelyn Waugh's novels, they had "faces of ageless evil".

In the course of 2008, scarcely a weekend passed without these hoodies descending on Acton Park, trailing their rusty machinery behind them — and the same scene is played out all over London.

What the local councils who rent out their green spaces to funfair operators don't realise is that their presence turns the parks into no go areas for anyone with young children.

It is impossible to go within 100 yards of them without your offspring clamouring to go on the rides — and the prospect of entrusting your precious little bundles to these hatchet-faced youths and their mechanical death-traps is
very unappealing.

I'm not suggesting that funfairs should be banned from London altogether. Only that councils exercise a little more discretion about who they allow to operate them.