Party Vibe

@process 386015 wrote:

i suppose the big corporate festivals also have a lot of cash due to all the advertising so can pretty much just agree to whatever policing costs the cops ask for, which is gonna make them a lot easier to get on with id have thought… i wonder how much eavis has to pay the cops to police glastonbury?

if the police argue that scum going to an event is a reason to cancel it then its pretty retarded. the sort of people that act like that arent just gonna stop cause there not at a festival, they’ll just act like cunts where ever they are. suppose if its not in the area then it doesnt bother them. nimby cops. :you_crazy

According to a FOI request made in 2008 the total cost according to Avon and Somerset constabulary was £1 737 534 of which Eavis payed £1 192 514.

This meant that local council tax payers incurred extra costs of £545,020 even with the organisers contributing to costs…

The two issues are linked. what the cops are saying is that “the event has had 20 more incidents of violence than last time. So either organisers pay for 10 more cops, or they object to the license”. if the organisers pay the policing costs and also make at least a pretence of not encouraging drug use they are left alone. Otherwise stuff like HTID, Slamming Vinyl and other large scale commercial raves/festivals would also have been closed down a long time ago.

local scum will of course always cause problems (when I lived in Reading would hear very interesting stuff on the radio scanner when Womad/Reading was on as the local scrotes would try and prey on the hippies) but if the festival isn’t there the cops can deal with the problems just like any other normal weekend.

There is an argument that a bully /controlling type what doesn’t have the cover of a transient ground of a festival will stay in his own territory, and is more likely to come unstuck there as he commits the crime in a smaller area with more witnesses some of which may know him and pass on info to the Police.

@process 386029 wrote:

just seems recently that there is more and more reports from various festival of the police force in that area being more difficult and uncontactable or unhelpful, and then lumping additional costs on the festival very close to the date of the license, meaning less time to negotiate or find additional revenue or backing meaning the festival has to close. guess its just a case of ‘put up (the money) or shut up (the festival)’. shit really.

They were doing exactly that back in the early 1990s to stop the larger legal raves.

The elephant in the room for all dance music festival organisers is when the detectives dig deep enough into the backgrounds of all involved, their associates and their sources of funding they must eventually be able to find at least some “soft intelligence” evidence of links with sellers of either illegal drugs or contentious “legal highs”.

Of course not enough to nick people or they would have done so, (they did try with that Andy Thimbleberry bloke up north – it failed but the fallout has been enough to disqualify him from holding a license again) – often a few words from the cops enough to convince the Councils that the event is a “drug friendly” one which would lead to other problems. Unfortunately the culture in this country of extreme hedonism and bingeing and previous incidents at events doesn’t do the scene any favours in bad economic times when everyone else thinks they are paying for it (actually it was the last recession when these clampdowns happened)

they take a more pragmatic view – although so do the festival goers, who by and large seem to behave a lot better than in the UK. However even in NL events are being refused licenses following local elections returning right-wing candidates and the shootings at a big open air rave a year ago (a surprising event!) didn’t help matters.