Glastonbury 2005

[Giles]

Giles

I'm aware it's not actually a Government sanctioned scheme, as you say it's private. The one statement of yours I don't necessarily think is reliable though, is the one at the end of your post that I've bolded. I think the suggestion that the Citizens Card database details would never, or could never, be used as a basis later on for national ID should not (IMO) be taken as a given.

I understand your concerns, but I genuinely don't think it will be used this way.

A big, big problem if they DO go ahead wih ID cards is making sure that the database is as close to 100% as possible accurate from the start. And many existing databases just aren't, because they have never had that much security from the off.

The Citizens card is mostly aimed at kids and young adults from 12 up who need some way of proving if they are old enough to rent a DVD, buy a video or computer game, or fags, or whatever.

Their own FAQ says "we check all applications" but "check" means that the kid has to give a "responsible person" (adult with quasi-respectable job) to say "yep I know xxxx and they are indeed this age".

Now, they can be fairly sure that its pretty unusual for a 14 year old to persuade someone a lot older and in a vaguely responsible position to lie just so they can watch a rude filem or get pissed, but how hard would it be for a half-way serious crook/terrorist/fraudster???? Not f***ing very! ( I can see a problem with people like Peter Stringfellow lying on behalf of his latest girlfriend though!)

You do not need to provide any vaguely "source" documents like Birth Certs. (not that these are that hard to get, but thats another story), just the word of a responsible adult that you are who you say.

I wouldn't base an all-powerful national ID card scheme on that, and if they do, I will laugh (and worry!).

Giles..

 

[Velouria]

I archived that thread using the old print thread/show all posts on one page function. That made a 6Meg MHTML doc or a 4Meg zipfile. No fancy icons or owt. Even so, how on earth did you make it 23Meg?

HTML bloat. All those links to the icons, the inter-page links, the header bar at the top, all those Send a PM and Report this post links, the page formatting, font size changes...it all adds up. Vbulletin produces extremely bloated html No wonder the ed's bandwidth bills are through the roof!

I started archiving the 2004 thread and got bored. It's a big job. The 2003 one took abt 5 hours of work to make it the nice, portable, interlinked version you see

$ du -sx urban75_forums_-_glastonbury_2003|awk '{print $1/2;}'
24938

 

[Lord Camomile]

Aw thanks! Free tatty anarchist rag to you if you find our stall and stand on your head shouting 'I am Lord Camomile!'

Free stuff? Don't tempt me...

 

[bluestreak]

my brother and i are the only ones who didn't get fucking tickets this year. i shouldn't have read that glastonbury 2003 thread. i'm getting sadder and sadder as the seconds tick on...

 

[Velouria]

I've got the 'how was it for you' thread for 2002 if anyone wants it. Only 300k zipped.

This should have been a PM. Ignore it

 

[aqua]

CAn anyone get through to wayahead? If so what numbers are you using?

I need to sort out duplicates (well check they did what I asked) and they've been constantly engaged for the last 36hrs

 

[newbie]

HTML bloat. All those links to the icons, the inter-page links, the header bar at the top, all those Send a PM and Report this post links, the page formatting, font size changes...it all adds up. Vbulletin produces extremely bloated html No wonder the ed's bandwidth bills are through the roof!

I started archiving the 2004 thread and got bored. It's a big job. The 2003 one took abt 5 hours of work to make it the nice, portable, interlinked version you see

blimey. I'm ashamed to say I just use the IE Save As|Web Archive (*.mht) function. Simplistic, me! Works though, and doesn't take 5 hours. But it does rely on Vbulletin formatting the whole thread into a single page, which this new shiny version flatly refuses to do. Saving threads page at a time is ludicrous, even if I did have a sensible way of knitting them all back together. So the 2002 is actually 4 separate .mht files which have to be opened separately.

 

[Brummie Ben]

Just looked over the messages for the last day or so....am I classed as an 'urbanite' now....im impressed....do you guys all know where the best place to camp is? Are you able to get in on the wednesday? And I love cider, pear cider sounds great..where can I get some? Sorry for all the questions but now I know I'm going im getting excited and its distracting me from my work!

 

[aqua]

is it your first time?

 

[felixthecat]

CAn anyone get through to wayahead? If so what numbers are you using?

I need to sort out duplicates (well check they did what I asked) and they've been constantly engaged for the last 36hrs

I got thru on 0871 220260 but it took a while.

 

[aqua]

thats not a working number you typed it right?

 

[newbie]

Just looked over the messages for the last day or so....am I classed as an 'urbanite' now....

yeah but you do realise it's a life stretch?

The best place to camp is hotly disupted. There are those who reckon that a little known spot on the far western arm of the spiral nebula has particular qualities which brings enlightenment and cures all known ills. Then again, some of us can't be arsed to drag our stuff further than a few yards from the gate.

 

[Brummie Ben]

No, I was volunteering last year so had secure camping and everything which was nice..but I saw the chaos that was the other camping areas and wanted to make sure I camped in a place where my stuff was resonably safe and there might be a bit of room. I dont think there will be though!

 

[Brummie Ben]

sorry didnt refresh!

 

[felixthecat]

thats not a working number you typed it right?

Bugger - sorry Aqua, missed a number! Its 0871 2200260

 

[aqua]

right aloud are doing their ticket tracking thing again if anyone has queries about their tickets

try it here

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

No, I was volunteering last year so had secure camping and everything which was nice..but I saw the chaos that was the other camping areas and wanted to make sure I camped in a place where my stuff was resonably safe and there might be a bit of room. I dont think there will be though!

Sign up for the glastourbanites email list when I post up the details and come camp with us all

 

[bluestreak]

No, I was volunteering last year so had secure camping and everything which was nice..but I saw the chaos that was the other camping areas and wanted to make sure I camped in a place where my stuff was resonably safe and there might be a bit of room. I dont think there will be though!

i knew a brummie ben when i lived in tottenham.


no point to that, just saying, like.

i really ought to stop looking at this thread, i'll get sad.

 

[Brummie Ben]

i knew a brummie ben when i lived in tottenham.


no point to that, just saying, like.

i really ought to stop looking at this thread, i'll get sad.

Sorry mate never lived in Tottenham, Just Brum and Plymouth. This forum aint sad..It got me my tickets!

 

[boing!]

Bollocks!! One of my mates has had their tickets cancelled, apparently due to insuficient funds, but she rang them and it turns out she put the wrong expiry date on her order.

What do people think the chances of it getting sorted are?
I don't think its looking too good.
Any advice would be massivly appreciated!

 

[aqua]

Bollocks!! One of my mates has had their tickets cancelled, apparently due to insuficient funds, but she rang them and it turns out she put the wrong expiry date on her order.

What do people think the chances of it getting sorted are?
I don't think its looking too good.
Any advice would be massivly appreciated!

give them a ring and talk to someone, I'm sure people got it sorted last year

 

[newbie]

No, I was volunteering last year so had secure camping and everything which was nice..but I saw the chaos that was the other camping areas and wanted to make sure I camped in a place where my stuff was resonably safe and there might be a bit of room. I dont think there will be though!

I noticed that you'd mentioned your experience of 'secure camping' a few times. Personally I think it's one of the least attractive parts of the festival. While poking around archive threads earlier I noticed something I posted after the 2002 festival, which bears repeating:


Gated Communities

The increase in secure camping areas is very noticeable, even compared with 2000, let alone a decade ago. I think it's true to say that most people I spoke to were camping in some sort of formal compound, be it backstage, crew, trader, whatever. Many of these were properly stewarded, with a pass or wristband required, while others were less formal (eg Green Futures and Healing fields) but still set aside from the masses with fencing.

One effect of this is that ever larger areas are fenced off, making direct, cross country, navigation much more difficult. I frequently found that I knew where I was, and where I wanted to go, but had to think hard about which of the main drags would get me there sensibly, rather than threading across as in the past. You can get a bit of a sense of this from the aerial photo published in NME, which also makes clear how empty some of the compounds were.

Residential Traffic Calming

Even in the public camping areas we noticed how many groups had used guy ropes, string, tape or whatever to create artificial boundaries. Now this isn't new- there have always been those who prefer to use the firewood to make stockades, for instance- but perhaps in the past people tended to make more natural areas, often circles of tents, without feeling the need for artificial boundaries. One feels rather unwelcome to cross the tape, whether walking through or to simply say hello. This also impedes navigation, making wandering through tents more complicated than in the past, and increasing the tendency to do most walking along the main drags.

Some of this must be to do with security- the paranoia about tent theft etc was palpable, despite the statistical chance being so slight, but I wonder whether it's also to do with scale- the thing is now so big, and so amorphous, that we feel the need to carve out a little bit of space to call our own, exclusive of everyone else.

The thing is that this parallels the other major identifiable trend- away from the old fashioned festival 'bring what you seek to find, we're all in this together' ethos and towards the brave new world of huge queues for the cash machines and expectations that someone else will provide, just like in the consumer society outside.

 

[William of Walworth]

You should still have it on your PC. I gave it to you, remember?

Stig had a virus-initiated meltdown in December. We lost a lot of stuff when she had to reformat the whole hard drive, and I expect that old Glasto thread was included.

 

[William of Walworth]

Unlikely to be resales of cancelled or duplicate tickets (so they say now anyway)

Bad news, probably, reported on efestivals about LOW prospect ot rerelease of cancelled tickets :

i've just had a chat with the guy in charge of ticketing for GFL.

He tells me they're a day or two off knowing the exact number of any duplicate orders, etc, but that all indications are the numbers of duplicates is very low - no where near the numbers that there were last year.

He tells me that if the final numbers are as low as he expects them to be, then NO tickets at all will be made available to buy thru aloud, and the small number of tickets that might exist will be added to the locals tickets.

Sorry to bring you bad news.

He also said this :

last year the ticketing f**ked up badly, and there were thousands and thousands of tickets that needed to be sold. This year the system to a large extent worked.

The orders being "cancelled" now are the duplicates, of which to all readers here it'll be obvious there's some, but it should also be obvious there's nowhere near as many. And out of them will no doubt come some of the orders that the bank wrongly declined payment on - some of them are likely to get re-instated (as happened last year).

As for cancellations uptil 13th May, how many does anyone seriously think they'll be? Do you know anyone who might cancel their ticket? Nope, didn't think so.

It's possible that some tickets might get sold by aloud, but at this moment it looks VERY unlikely. And if some are sold, the chances of it being you that gets them is much much smaller than last year.

Keep hoping if you want to, but the reality is it's very unlikely that anyone without a ticket now will get one. Sorry.

(Unless of course you win the two tickets that eFestivals will have to be won in a competition, probably in May-time)

BTW - my info hasn't come from aloud, but the man in charge of the ticketing for the Festival. He assures me that what he's told me is correct, but he did also say that if (and it's a big if) any tickets are going to be sold, he'll let me know

A half convincing counter argument from another poster on that site :

This could end up quite weird. There's probably a load of people waiting to see if their mates can get tickets before they decide whether to go. If there's no resales, then they'll all refund their tickets. Meaning loads of returned tickets. So there'll be a resale. Now I'm confused.

Surely there'll be some though, just because of the sheer size of the festival. Say 1 ticket holder out of every hundred cancels cos their mates aren't going/gets ill/changes their mind/falls on a spike/whatever. Thats still a thousand extra tickets. Plus I can't believe Aloud didn't f**k up at least a bit. Some people's bank payments will have messed up. Some will have tried to buy loads with one card and get cancelled.

They said the same things last year for the same reason - so that they don't get pestered by thousands and thousands of people a day desperate for a returned ticket. Considering its not hard to keep an eye on this place or even pop the order form up every morning to check, I think its worth a go. I know I'll be looking for my friends sakes...

But the current word seems to be that the chances of any, or any significant, general resale will be low.

Will keep folks informed if this changes., I already have bluestreak and feyr in mind if anything changes. Don't hope too strongly though ...

 

[belboid]

I find it incredibly hard to believe they won't re-issue any tickets that have to be returned/cancelled. there's bound to be something approaching 1000 - which is over £100,000 revenue! Who'd miss out on that?

but, mick n diane have had there tickets sorted, so I'm happy whatever.

 

[William of Walworth]

I'm sceptical too, but it IS likely to be true that there have been far fewer system fuckups than last year. And a Somerset local on EFests has confirmed that thing that there will be some tickets rereleased to locals (Mendip District Council area) as their allocation had been reduced this year, they were unhappy and let Michael Eavis know this ...

All that said, there MAY end up being a limited rerelease. Watch this space and if I'm around, I'll post news as soon as I get it.

 

[boing!]

Bollocks!! One of my mates has had their tickets cancelled, apparently due to insuficient funds, but she rang them and it turns out she put the wrong expiry date on her order.

What do people think the chances of it getting sorted are?
I don't think its looking too good.
Any advice would be massivly appreciated!

Panic over! My friend got a phonecall from a very nice man, who asked her if she wanted to re-book the tickets. All is good again.

 

[mr steev]

I fucked up my order on Sunday too.

Just got through to Seetickets and the bloke says someone will call later in the week to re-order.

So they do call back then Boing? That's good news (hopefully!!!)

 

[aqua]

right I've just rung them (got them at last) and they didn't cancel the set I asked them to but the other ones

fucking good job I asked or I'd have transferred the money to the wrong person

 

[Brummie Ben]

Fair comment Newbie, It was the first time id ever had secure camping last year and although there were no toilet and shower queues and space to set tents up there was a distinct lack of atmosphere as most people were working shifts and sleeping at odd times (like at night). It was also right at the top of muddy lane and it took me ages to go and find my friends, but hey it was free! Im still interested in signing up for that glastourbanites thingy e-mail list when its out.