Party Vibe

the Sun aren’t the biggest problem here. They are only reporting the news.

What is far worse is that the event organisers and punters brought this on themselves.

The promoters didn’t have a policy in place to set a minimum age group. Until they do that, human rights laws apply so anyone of any age is allowed to the venue.

If they had set the age restrictions, I would have meant the bouncers could have said it was not appropriate to bring the baby (or anyone else below age 16/18 depending on license conditions) into the venue, and the Police would have backed them up and diplomatically requested that the mum and baby went home.

Because of this punters decided to pass their own judgement on what was an acceptable age to be at the event and some of them even made their concerns known to the Police officers present. Once you tell a police officer you have concerns over a childs welfare its their duty to investigate and take action which is fair enough. It also seems that someone from this crowd told the papers, as I bet half the Sun reporters from London otherwise don’t even know where Wales is, let alone that there was a relatively small music event going on there.

People can’t be wishy washy about stuff like this, its not fair on anyone. Either refuse entry to the mum and baby but make sure they have somewhere safe to be instead, or have full crèche facilities set aside for such babies/children like many other hippy events do.

@DeezNuts 522704 wrote:

Man.. from a young age I was blasted by music louder then that I guarantee as my dad loves his tunes and has a fucking hooooj sound system. It’s not bad at all imo, especially in a licensed place where there will sound restrictions – plus she had ear defenders on him..

@Tank Girl 522718 wrote:

Loads of my mates … and ive seen tons of other parents- take their little uns to festivals / free parties, they are responsible adults who also put ear defenders on etc, what is a woman to do? put their life on hold when they have a baby, not care and show support for their older children? What a load of shit

Sadly its only been in very recent times that parents have been even able to encourage their kids doing something creative or unconventional. My mum and aunts are very talented musically, and my late father encouraged my interest in electronics and audio visual technology. Only now I get the impression my mum feels Ok about encouraging me with music / creativity (in fact Dad didn’t even get the chance to live to see me achieve some of the things I wanted to) as when I grew up in the 70s/80s there was a similar level of intolerance.

BTW both my parents were hippys in the 70s but were basically forced out of the lifestyle by the social norms of that time and financial pressures. These students are reversing gains in personal freedom that previous generations fought for.

There are plenty of far worse parents who drag their kids along to far sketchier places, right under the noses of the London based journalists and they don’t end up in the papers… I don’t read the Sun regularly it but it is fairly rare to see a story from Wales in the national news. Even the Sun can’t just go printing full information about suspected child neglect cases complete with the suspects name (which usually can be used to trace the kid) without jumping through a number of legal/compliance hoops. (I wonder if that uni has a media/journalism course and thats where the tip off came from?)

Maybe resentment was growing against the mother previously but her enemies didn’t even have the courage to confront here there and then – or they did but were unhappy with the response of the proper authorities so complained to the media.

A friend of mine nearly lost custody to his son because he took the lad to a (safe and clean) squat where there was a party and his ex went to Social Services and TVP and made the same allegation.

The other problem is technically she did break the age restrictions as it says 18+ so the rules had essentially been bent for one person. But she may well have also driving the other teenage/young adult daughter and perhaps her friends to the performance and would have driven these youth back (and being sober would be safer for all of them, provided the baby was put in the correct seat). This would have been why the heddlu and bouncers did not make her go home, as that would create a further youth safety issue as young people are actually classed as vulnerable up to age 25 in some regions so leaving them without transport back late at night would be even worse. (I have to learn this stuff for volunteering at the radio station as we have young volunteers from college/uni)

In any case the damage has been done. in my area which is actually more affluent than Wales something like this would prompt a licensing investigation and the promoters would have had a lot of trouble ever getting a chance to host an event again and the venue managers would be wary of licensing any EDM type events. This is why venues get more and more licensing conditions and go bust. Its yet more fucked up that the cops and bouncers are essentially more tolerant than the punters of a EDM event. What next, people getting grassed up and/or pointed out to bouncers for taking drugs discreetly? Worse still it is normally the new young parents what judge the others, everyone else who is older but doesn’t have kids is perfectly happy to leave the parents to look after them.

@Savvydravvy 522926 wrote:

From the looks of the place and the controls that were in place, I think the word ‘Rave’ needs a definition.

That dont sound like no rave fool!

Unfortunately cops and licensing authorities are not music experts so a “rave” or “rave-type disco” (the cops really do use this term :laugh_at:) is viewed as anything from a grime night with combative MC’s to a fluffy trance/hard dance type event.

Out of all my local Councillors here only the Labour and Green seem to have the slightest clue of what different music genres are and they are mostly into either shoegazer 90s era indie or prog rock (depending on age). The Lib Dems try and bluff their way into knowing about music and come across like a embarassing dad/uncle trying to be cool.

Even many the lefties think that the night time economy is “bread and circuses for the working classes and they should support it but not get too involved themselves” and the right wing would rather everyone went to bed after midnight or when the cops tell them to and be ready for work or religious gathering early in the morning..