Party Vibe

not heard this from the local media, they only blamed the “club” scene. Free parties weren’t even much in the news back then as they were confined to Norfolk.

Incidentally people who know some of the girls have hinted the reason their lives fell apart was their own parents disowning them rather than tolerating what was at the time relatively unproblematic drug use. East Anglian stubbornness works both ways..

problem is youths themsleves play up to the “illegal rave” type image (such as the rubbish being chatted on bebo)

incidentally once the free parties have been locked down I can see the traditional nightlife (including townie/cattle market venues) being next.

this is only true for poor areas (i,e like Birmingham). In more affluent areas the cost of picking up the pieces (dealing with violence, illnesses etc) outweighs the revenue generated by these late night venues.

Actually this may well turn out to be the case even for less affluent areas.

As soon as the NHS and cops come up with the right sums, the lockdown will intensify. I’m not talking about an “Islamic style” clampdown though, more a case of late licenses being revoked, more dogs/cordons, people literally being herded through lines of bobbies… this is already happening in SE England and may well soon be the case in the East.

a couple of points worth noting..

BBC news deliberately framed the shot so as not to give us direct publicity.

People who post here only recognised it because of the shades of green used on one of our profiles.

This would mean we are considered to be “part of the problem” (i.e linked with these “crimes”) rather than part of the solution.

As for the cops saying “they are making loads of money from this” to us it sounds like exaggeration but I suspect what they mean is they are looking at the value of sound equipment seized and thinking “how can these kids be prepared to risk all this stuff? they must be selling drugs to fund it”.

bear in mind also that for those on dole or any form of benefits (including council housing or housing benefit) the cops can get access to some of your records. They can’t initially get the exact amounts (this requires more legal paperwork) but they can ask if someone is a claimant, using the excuse that “they may be getting money cash in hand from holding unlicensed music events”. This requires less paperwork (or is the sort of info handed over during “canteen chat”).

“back in the day” the bulk of people involved with raves had normal day jobs (even lower paid boring ones) or didn’t take dole if they were unemployed, and strangely enough the feds didn’t have all this info on people…