DeanoL

But the flip side of that is that if you're a multi-millionaire, the sort of fees that would be reasonable are also kinda irrelevant. Like, most of us would think £10,000 to come out and do two songs would be a hell of a payday. Springsteen wouldn't even notice it. He's pulling in over $1 million a night on tour. There's no fee McCartney could offer him, taken out of the already lower than average Glasto fee, that could make it worthwhile for him. So at that point, even if he's being paid a few grand, he's essentially doing it for "free" and so often at that point they just don't bother with fees at all.

Yeah if each individual has a 1/10 chance to get through then a group of six with everyone trying will have a 1 - (9/10^6) chance or 47%

I think I confused that by talking about two different things. For those who aren't techy, hiring actual people to try for you in cheap labour markets like China is also an option.

I mean, to an extent. The people *organising* those groups definitely deserve tickets if its based on effort because it's a tonne of work. But that's maybe one or two people per group. There's then 10s or 100s of others that are just benefitting form that organisation.

Some people claimed they had done it. I mean you're right, they could have been lying though, we don't have the receipts. But it was people claiming they had done it, rather than people claiming other people must have done it because they didn't get tickets. I didn't try for tickets this year, but if I was trying in future I'd definitely set up a small bot farm. It's fairly trivial to do if you know what you're doing, and cost-wise is very small proportion of the ticket price.

It moved on to that because of someone expressing concern about how they might feel about certain things at the festival, and most of my posts I've tried to make in the context of that. I've actually found many of the posts made here quite interesting and informative, and am sorry you've not got anything from them. But I still don't really get why you feel the need to point that out. There's plenty of threads on here of no interest to me, and I just don't read them.

You can also just not read it? I'm always weirded out by comments like this* - if it's run its course, why does it need to be shut down? I genuinely don't understand. (*unless from the mods, who have to read it, and will have to deal with it should it get heated)

There'd be plenty of Americans that would feel personally upset with criticisms of Trump though, and if Rishi was actually elected maybe some Brits might find that upsetting too... The issue is you might be able to separate the state from the government, but the person on the other end may still see that as an attack on them, because they don't see that separation as clearly. Or don't know that you're someone making that separation in the first place. It can be tough, and it does create difficult feelings, and think plenty of young Jews outside of Israel have been feeling that for the first time ever in the past months. It's a tough and difficult thing to deal with. But I do believe it's something that does have to be dealt with. That people do have to grasp that there's a difference between the government/state, and its people. But we can often all see that in abstract when aimed at someone else, but when it's coming our way, it can feel very different. Those feelings aren't invalid at all. They're real, and they exist. But they also shouldn't be used to stop people criticising the actions of a state.

For the former I think yeah, if it's work you don't want to do then I'd just close it and wouldn't blame you for it at all! But to the second point I've never really subscribed to the notion that the OP "owns" a thread on a discussion board - I feel they're more just a starter for discussion and things go from there. In this case it feels very much like the OP is a friend of Paul's and was trying to generate interest in a community they expected to be broadly sympathetic, and it's turned out, as ever, to be a bit more complex than that.

I don't disagree with that - and to be clear, a belief that Israel shouldn't exist also doesn't equate to believing it should just be handed over to Palestine and people left to fend for themselves. What I was really trying to get at was those saying they might feel uncomfortable at the festival because of people being anti-Israel, and feeling threatened because of that. I do get why it would be uncomfortable, but I'd wager that no-one at Glastonbury wants you, or your friends and family, left homeless or put at risk. Even if they say stuff like they hate the current Israeli government, or think Israel shouldn't have the right to exist. I do recognise those points of view are also often put forwards by those who do literally just hate all Jewish people. But you probably won't find them at Glastonbury.

I don't think anyone is getting angry or upset here, just people having a calm discussion on things. I'd agree that there's potential for it go bad, in the same way I get nervous in real life where anyone I don't know too well brings up the whole Israel/Gaza situation, but it's not happened yet.

That's great. My point is you're saying Israel is a secular haven for all cultural Jews, and has nothing to do with the Jewish religion. But that's not the case. If you were culturally Jewish and changed to another religion (rather than just became an atheist) you're explicitly prevented from obtaining Israeli citizenship. https://lawoffice.org.il/en/moving-to-israel/

Jewish atheists maybe. Jewish Christians, Jewish Muslims, Jewish Hindus, not at all. The law of return doesn't apply to cultural Jews who have converted to another religion. So it's really not fair to present it as entirely secular.

Not really. Plenty of Irish Unionist believe Northern Ireland has no right to exist and want it abolished. The vast, vast majority of them don't hate everyone that lives in Northern Ireland. You can disagree with the political basis of a country without wishing ill on the inhabitants.

At one point I ran a weekly comedy show and we had a bunch of acts that were regulars trying out new stuff, often multiple weeks in a row. I'd got myself in a mess and accidentally booked far too many people for the show the following week. One of the acts was also on that night, and I figured I'd just have a chat with him that night after the show and ask if he minded dropping out. He went up to do his set, and got into a big argument with someone in the crowd about if his material was misogynistic or not. I don't think it was, but the gig went a bit weird, some people left... So now I'm in this position, where I'm overbooked for the next week, and need to ask him to drop out, and had planned to all along... except now there's no way in a million years he'll believe it's just because I'm overbooked and not because of what had happened that night. I'm sure he still believe that to this day. But it was entirely genuine on my part.

I understand why you would feel more comfortable with that but the reality is that's not how it works. You can see that clearly from the fact that it doesn't cut both ways. There are many Israelis who don't care at all about what happens to the people of Palestine, and are very much Islamophobic. Yet in the immediate aftermath of 7 October, very few people were saying "this is a travesty, but we need to acknowledge Palestine deserves to exist and Gaza has been treated very badly by Israel." And those that did were (rightly I think at that point) called out, it really not being the time. Because generally, most people who just don't want people dying, will deal with the immediate tragedy in front of them. Right now, that's the genocide happening in Gaza. On 7 October, it was the terrorist attack in Israel. That people want these things to stop, or are reacting to them, doesn't mean they don't acknowledge the overall situation is more complicated than that. (And there will also be people there who absolutely don't believe in Israel's right to exist, and that doesn't mean they hate Jewish people either)

While the ongoing joke is that T&C book the same acts every year, hence him having done every festival for 13 years, they actually *do* rotate acts out, albeit very slowly. You have folks like Mitch Benn, John Otway, Atilla The Stockbroker, Woody Bop Muddy... they were all doing multiple shows every year, until they weren't. It's entirely possible that he's just not been booked this year and it has nothing to do with this at all.

Yeah but as soon as one group is successful, they start trying for another group, which increases their odds, so that group get tickets, then try for another group, and then it tends to snowball from there. It's why you often hear in big groups either no-one got anything, or maybe one or two groups nabbed tickets just before they went off-sale, or the entire group got tickets. It just needs a couple of groups to be lucky to get tickets in the first five minutes and then it snowballs from there.

Yeah we weirdly never get any posts of here of "I slept in, logged in at 9.30 and didn't get tickets, a ballot would be better" - y'know, the actual people who would do better out of a ballot! Even those people can just pay people to try for them. Which is the issue I think we're going to see in the coming years, in that people will just use bot farms (or even cheap labour farms in China) to get their tickets. At which point all the large groups will start crying foul and how it's unfair someone has an army of 200 people trying for them, which at the same time having a group of 200 people trying for each other. (This literally happened with the main sale last year) I suspect that's what might ultimately lead to a change in system.

I think that's just a case of not putting the resources in to serve more than a few people at once. For example when tickets for The Lion King in Birmingham went on sale, they went up at 9am, I forgot about it and logged in at around noon, was told there was a 12 hour queue. It dropped down a bit, and I got a message saying I could now go in and get tickets at around 10pm, after waiting 10 hours. After which I proceeded to book tickets on the front row for a random Tuesday night later in the run. Tickets were still available the following days and weeks. It's a much more complicated transaction as people were browsing for the best seats on particular days and such, but it wasn't demand that was causing a queue, it was the site only being able to handle a hundred or so people on at once.

I'm not aware of that. They've always got on as far as I know. Frank is a odd figure politically - he's quite open about his hostility towards the current government but could never quite bring himself to then tell people "so maybe vote for something better" which I found frustrating. He's toured with Bragg, Chris T-T and Grace Petrie so almost seems to be consciously bringing lefties on tour with him, hence helping put those views in front of his fanbase, but never seeming to want to actually say them himself.

They never fell out - Billy was one of a few who actually spoke in defense of him after the Guardian piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/08/frank-turner-political-post-ideological-culture

Well yeah, there's loads more people about I wouldn't trust to be able to safely look after a fire these days.

How are you defining fair? This system, or a ballot system, would undoubtedly be fairer, if "fair" means "everyone should have as equal as possible a chance". The current system is intentionally unfair, as it rewards people willing and able to put in a modicum of effort (an hour of refreshing a page). It also rewards larger organised groups which may or may not be intentional. I think it's fairly reasonable and probably the best way to do it. It doesn't require an excessive amount of effort, or a level of effort most people couldn't achieve - if the sale were longer, or required physically queuing as some always suggest, that's excluding more people. Some people will still get caught up though. The current system looks a load less fair if you're in a job where you can't clear that hour on Sunday morning. (And yes, I appreciate most people can, but that's the point, some will always get caught up in it).

Problem is it's probably Beans on Toast and they're mates so that'd be mean...