DON Quinn has been running events in Colchester for the best part of 20 years so he knows what makes the town tick better than most.

Ahead of this weekend's Medieval Fayre in Castle Park, Gazette head of content Dom Bowers spoke to Don about his festivals, the commercialisation of Colchester Council and the Labour Party and cannabis.

Here are his views on:

Colchester's future

It's a wonderful town with a huge depth of history - we don't take enough notice of the great history we've got, if we did we'd have more visitors and tourism.

One of my big criticisms of the borough council is it doesn't seem to understand that.

If you give people a reason to come into the town, people come in. When we put on an event, the town is flooded.

The town has a great future but it must start to look at its past. We've got the Siege of Colchester, yet kids in the town haven't heard of it.

Colchester Commercial Holdings, a company set up by Colchester Council to run commercial ventures - like hiring Castle Park

The issue is whether it is ethical for the borough council to flog off the running of the park, which was handed to the community.

We're hoping they will learn lessons and become more community-orientated.

But their brief is to make money. They have proved that at Colchester Leisure World by kicking out the National Childbirth Trust and putting in cage fighting.

If the Conservatives took over the council, how long would it take them to sell it off?

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

I'm disappointed with the Labour group on Colchester Council. It's a hangover from Blairism. Look at the trouble with PFI contracts and academies.

If you hand it over to someone else to do the job, you have no way of getting it back.

We're losing community assets to somebody else's management structure.

The Labour Party

Tina McKay (Colchester Labour's parliamentary candidate) is a very gutsy, intelligent woman and would make a great MP.

While Will Quince (Colchester's Conservative MP) is a nice bloke, his voting record is terrible.

He appears to be quite liberal but ends up voting with the right wing of his party, he keeps voting for horrible things.

The Corbyn bounce was quite profound and it worked in Colchester (in the 2017 General Election).

He's a great engine for change and people are desperate to get rid of austerity.

Overworked foodbanks in Britain? I go to Mexico once a year and when I tell people they don't believe it.

Cannabis

I worked for four years for the Homes Office and European Union; we prepared a report which came down very clearly in favour of decriminalising or legalising cannabis,

For some reason the backwoodsmen (Peers who rarely attend the House of Lords) can't see this as a sensible solution to the problem.

People talk about a war on drugs; if there's a war we're getting a kicking.

The direct link to harder drugs is through the people selling cannabis. If you're going to a street corner to buy from someone who has other drugs, the dealer is the most definitive link we found.

If you legalise it and sell it in a shop, you take the bad boys out of the equations.

The major tobacco companies are already setting up machinery to produce cannabis cigarettes.

But the conversation is not there with politicians, the research isn't there, and what we've resigned ourselves too is police breaking down a lot of doors.

Festivals

The Medieval Festival (this weekend) will have performers from across Europe, including flag throwers from Italy and recurve bowmen from Poland.

We had to pull our fingers out because the borough council moved our dates to accommodate Craig David.

"I've got nothing against Craig David or people who want to see him, I just wish they hadn't trod on my toes.

When you get a kicking, the trick is to get up faster each time. We're really proud of what we're doing.

The Food and Drink Festival (June 29 and 30) is coming up to its 20th year. There will be 150 stalls and bar and kitchens.

It has built itself to a certain extent, two thirds is the very serious part of food but the other end is people picnicking, having a couple of pints or a glass of wine.

It's very mellow and very nice. We've never had to call the police in 20 years because it's chilled; we keep people laughing and keep it friendly.

Everybody puts the public down but we don't, we think they're great.

"One year the ground was like liquid chocolate after the rain but we had 6,000 people come in, laughing and enjoying themselves.