incident

Yep. I'm confident that UK events won't have any further restrictions going forward - but really, that's only about a third of the story for acts based outside Europe. In that scenario, the tour logistics are likely to be fairly finely balanced - it only takes one country putting restrictions on events, or introducing new travel rules, or for the wrong person in the touring party to test positive before the tour becomes unviable or just more hassle than it's worth.

To date, there never has been barcodes on public tickets, and they're not checked against any database. The part where ticket is "scanned" is just a UV check, used to identify counterfeit tickets. The photo check is against the one printed on the ticket itself, so it's all fairly rudimentary.

Agree with all of that, and just to add when you say "gates", it doesn't just mean the 6 main public gates. Depends on exactly how you define a gate but there'd need to be at least 19 separate sites.

Public tickets (and wristbands) have never had barcodes on them, up to and including 2019, so yeah there's never been a viable way to identify and retrospectively cancel one. Asking gates staff to watch for certain names and/or numbers obviously isn't a runner. However - in 2019 they did start barcoding Staff tickets and Wristbands, like many other festivals have been doing for a while, as a trial with the expectation that it'd be rolled out for the Public in 2020. It remains to be seen whether they follow through with it this year or not, as they could just decide that any covid checks/mitigations are too much change already, but my guess is we'll probably see it happen. The question then becomes whether the "we won't reissue lost tickets unless pretty much forced to" policy is changed immediately or stays in place until the new system is considered proven.

Not exactly. There are early shifts, but they're both incredibly rare and earlier than that - they typically involve arriving Saturday and doing a shift on each of the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before gates open. But apparently almost everyone applies for them and only a tiny percentage will get them. For most people the shifts are spread fairly evenly across the 5 days of the festival with one Morning (6am start), one Afternoon (2pm start), and one Night (10pm start) each. There's exceptions on that as some gates don't operate overnight, and with some shifts being moved to account for demand.

Good spot.. I've also noticed that they haven't confirmed their dates for 2022 yet which is slightly unusual. The latest would be Tuesday evening, though personally I'd recommend going on the Monday as the (relatively) empty site and Mon/Tue night bar crawl are one of the big benefits from working.

As if by magic, the email comes through..

Correct, although if they look a bit older than they are then it may be helpful to have a photocopy of their passport or a picture of it on your phone, just to save time in case someone queries the age.

While I'm sure "only London show" is technically correct, it's a cheeky thing to advertise given that they're doing Standon Calling and Windsor Racecourse, both of which are closer to London than most of the London airports.

I understand that - but literally, in the two weeks leading up to the 1990 leadership challenge that sunk her, Labour were 15-20% ahead in polling. When she resigned, the polls switched overnight into a Tory lead - it was that big and immediate a difference. I can't see how invoking her resignation as "this is why you should rally behind Boris" would make sense to anyone with a vague awareness of history.

Do the Boris allies really not remember history, or is it a selective thing? They removed Thatcher precisely because they thought she was going to lose them the next election (single biggest factor being the Poll Tax). Then 18 months later, the plan worked exactly as intended - with a new leader they changed course and won in 1992 by a decent margin. By removing Thatcher when they did, they basically bought themselves another 5 years in power.

Disagree strongly. Sure people would've liked it to have been announced sooner, there was certainly anticipation for the lineup drop and attempts to piece the info we had together, but that's not the same thing. We knew the score regarding Q in late May so you didn't get the petulant toys out of the pram "why haven't they announced the lineup yet" type posts that have become common in the past few years and we'll doubtless see again starting in a couple weeks if it's not out by then. Basically, it's all a lot more negative now.

Above 80%, and I think that's a conservative estimate. Many of them would still moan about it though.

It was expected so people were fine with it. It's only the last 12 years people have got entitled about early announcements - prior to 2010, it was typical to get the announcement about a month before the Festival - for most of the 00s you might get the odd name or two early, but most acts were announced in the June issue of Q magazine (published at the end of May) and the copy of The Guardian that came out the same day.

Far more, and with a younger average age.

I think you've missed the point in spectacular fashion. I doubt he expects to "win" ie Spotify to cancel their deal with Rogan, but simply that he feels it's something worth taking a stance on. Which it is.

Honestly, for me, I'd say no. Others will see it differently, as they'll be a lot more patient than I am, but I think the important thing is to be aware that there's going to be an insane number of unsupervised kids running around and there's no respite anywhere. Just need to decide whether or how much that'll affect you. Granted, that's based on CB at Lulworth 10 years ago, so CB and Weston in 2022 may well be different.

They did in 2019 and 2020 - prior to that it tended to be a bit later.

I can't remember where I saw this, but I'm sure I've seen it suggested that the (very provisional) target is/was Priority in the last week of Feb, and General in the first week of March.

To be fair, with a thousand odd acts and two years to plan, they really should be able to fit all 6 in.

Not sure about the fee aspect, and don't know whether this is still the case or not as I believe allocations have increased, but I know one big factor in the past has been wristbands - if a booker can get someone who's already going to be on site, then it helps preserve the limited number of wristbands available. Stage bookers can also work together to coordinate this - One band I knew years ago ended up playing 3 sets across the weekend as it was the only way to get the 5 wristbands they needed for the 4 band members plus the sound tech.

Yeah, it'll likely be a coincidence. Off the top of my head, both EOTR and Camp Bestival are announcing on the 25th as well.. It's a sensible date - the dust has settled from Christmas and it's a few days before January pay day.

Given the electorate in said contest, I'd consider that a badge of honour.

Thursday 10th March. 08:00

Not with the poster, but they did release Spotify (or whatever service it was) playlists later on which were split by stage. Would imagine the list is kicking around somewhere.