£200 barrier breached

[Rufus Gwertigan]

I think they should put a cap on the number of kids you can take in. 2.4 and over that you can either leave one (or parts of) at the gate or you can take in a normal sized kid and a really fat one. Obviously kids destined for the BBC backstage area will be exempt.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Rufus Gwertigan

[indieboymatt]

Erm, right. I think you may get a bit of a shock at Glasto.

[thesecretingredientiscrime]

Read this in the evening standard on my commute home tonight. (Awful paper, but it beats staring at the tube map for 20 minutes). Make of it what you will, but it says we each give about £3.75 of our ticket price to ME, and £12 of it makes up the pre-tax profit which is mostly distributed to charities. The rest is used to put on the festival. Scandal

Newly published accounts for Glastonbury Festival 2011 Limited showed revenues of £32.2 million, up 5.2% on a year earlier.

Despite the recession and tough times for many other music festivals, turnover has grown steadily in the past four years from £23.6 million in 2008, an increase of 36%.

Founder Michael Eavis and his daughter Emily, who are both directors, are known for running their five-day festival at only a small profit and eschewing most commercial sponsorship.

But gross profits still rose to £22.5 million in 2011 against £21.7 million a year earlier. Pre-tax profit slipped to £1.8 million from £2.6 million after expenses. Glastonbury shares much of the proceeds with three charities, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Water Aid.

The highest-paid director earned only £60,000. Eavis also receives £500,000 for renting his farm in Somerset for the festival because of “loss of earnings”.

[Craigston]

Last year at Glastonbury this guy came up to our tent looking pretty distraught. He said he was looking for some lost earphones. I said I had a pair he could borrow and he said "That's not the problem, the earphones cost me £300".

Other than the fact that he actually spent the £300 on earphones, the fact he took them to a festival...

Edited October 8, 2012 by Craigston

[Paul ™]

I think they should put a cap on the number of kids you can take in. 2.4 and over that you can either leave one (or parts of) at the gate or you can take in a normal sized kid and a really fat one. Obviously kids destined for the BBC backstage area will be exempt.

[WillyVWade]

If the £10 extra is enough to put it out of your range, you probably should spend the £195 you have on keeping the lights and gas on.

Yes, it doesn't accommodate for everybody's budget, but neither do fuel prices nowadays, plus staffing, plus whatever the fuck else.

I reckon we should also exclude anyone over the age of 42. The festival has been going that long, if you haven't been by then tough!

Edited October 8, 2012 by WillyVWade

[WillyVWade]

DoublePsot, my bad.

Edited October 8, 2012 by WillyVWade

[shoptildrop]

The most shocking thing is people paying £4 for a pint of Tuborg. Its the closest thing to real piss currently available in the drinks market. The worst drink out there.

[smudger]

Umm reveals a lot there..Your want better prepared, more choices and to get so much for yout money..

Once apon a time we were happy with a band, snakebite, maybe some drugs and entertained ourselfs.

[pouxin]

I've said it once, and I'll say it again, the level of middle class hate going on in parts of this thread is creepy.

Plus, we're all writing in good sentences with proper grammar, so... it's all just bourgeois whining really, isn't it? <she says, in danger of being hoisted by her own petard>. Clearly none of us are writing on this thread having left school at 11 to work on the rag and bone market in Watford. Just sayin'.

I mean, if we want to push this to its fullest potential... It's shit to be unemployed, It's shit to have no money, It's shit to miss out on an awesome festival and experience lovely people, lovely times and lovely music. Do you know what's more shit? Living in a refugee camp in Darfur. So let's take that 10% extra all us hunter-wearing, Torygraphy reading w*nkers were about to pay for some "poor" (ahahaha) English people to go to a pop festival, and spend it on sending circumcised 11 year old Sudanese girls to school. BOOM!

Seriously. I mean, the slow decline of the peaceandlove ethos is sad and all. But middle class people aren't intrinsically dicks by definition. And poor people aren't all "deserving". This whole issue is super shades of grey (not in a porn way). Having the moral high ground does not make you 'right'. It is what it is. And, at the end of the day, there are bigger things for us all to worry about from a social conscience point of view than an unemployed person not getting to listen to The Rolling Stones this year.

[markeee]

I fully expected it to be 200+ - i thought it would be more tbh 210+

[abdoujaparov]

And, at the end of the day, there are bigger things for us all to worry about from a social conscience point of view than an unemployed person not getting to listen to The Rolling Stones this year.

[mcshed]

I mean, if we want to push this to its fullest potential... It's shit to be unemployed, It's shit to have no money, It's shit to miss out on an awesome festival and experience lovely people, lovely times and lovely music. Do you know what's more shit? Living in a refugee camp in Darfur. So let's take that 10% extra all us hunter-wearing, Torygraphy reading w*nkers were about to pay for some "poor" (ahahaha) English people to go to a pop festival, and spend it on sending circumcised 11 year old Sudanese girls to school. BOOM!

[Filthy]

How on earth would you means test people? Also what's to stop a non working partner of a top earner applying? Completely unworkable.

[The Nal]

When did the Glastonbury 'ethos' become established? Was it ever a declared one?

The way I heard it, ME went to the Bath Festival, saw Led Zeppelin and decided he'd like to give it a go himself... and that's it

[Jie Bie]

Isn't this why so much of the money goes to Oxfam, Water Aid, Greenpeace? 10% discount for the unemployed funded by a 5% increase to the price for everyone else seems perfectly reasonable and given there would still be many more employed going it would probably even raise more money for those charities.

[mrtourette]

How on earth would you means test people? Also what's to stop a non working partner of a top earner applying? Completely unworkable.

[jimmyk83]

Isn't this why so much of the money goes to Oxfam, Water Aid, Greenpeace? 10% discount for the unemployed funded by a 5% increase to the price for everyone else seems perfectly reasonable and given there would still be many more employed going it would probably even raise more money for those charities.

[mrtourette]

So your suggestion is a pricing structure of:

£215 standard ticket price / £185 for the unemployed/unwaged.

Let's forget for a minute the difficulties in defining and identifying who is deserving of the £30 discount. Let's also forget the additional cost of the checks that would need to be put in place to make sure that only those who met whatever criteria were established qualified for the discount.

The main question that springs to mind is does £30 off a £205 ticket really make it "affordable" to those who we are concerned about missing out? To me that smacks of nothing more than a gesture.

When I was growing up money was tight, due to a variety of reasons I won't waste time going into here. If someone were to have told a member of my family that they could have had a Glastonbury ticket for £185 instead of £205 they would have laughed in their face - this kind of discount means nothing to those who are truly struggling.

If we are going to offer discounted tickets to folk who are struggling it needs to be a real discount to make it affordable - I am talking half price tickets here. Unless something like that is brought in I doubt you'll see many more unwaged/unemployed attending.

[Mr.Tease]

When did the Glastonbury 'ethos' become established? Was it ever a declared one?

The way I heard it, ME went to the Bath Festival, saw Led Zeppelin and decided he'd like to give it a go himself... and that's it

[mcshed]

So your suggestion is a pricing structure of:

£215 standard ticket price / £185 for the unemployed/unwaged.

Let's forget for a minute the difficulties in defining and identifying who is deserving of the £30 discount. Let's also forget the additional cost of the checks that would need to be put in place to make sure that only those who met whatever criteria were established qualified for the discount.

The main question that springs to mind is does £30 off a £205 ticket really make it "affordable" to those who we are concerned about missing out? To me that smacks of nothing more than a gesture.

When I was growing up money was tight, due to a variety of reasons I won't waste time going into here. If someone were to have told a member of my family that they could have had a Glastonbury ticket for £185 instead of £205 they would have laughed in their face - this kind of discount means nothing to those who are truly struggling.

If we are going to offer discounted tickets to folk who are struggling it needs to be a real discount to make it affordable - I am talking half price tickets here. Unless something like that is brought in I doubt you'll see many more unwaged/unemployed attending.

[abdoujaparov]

I think it's incredible that anyone thinks that it is shocking that it doesn't happen or that the very idea is some how ridiculous.

[mrtourette]

The idea is nice. That's about as far as it would go.

[abdoujaparov]

How on earth would you means test people? Also what's to stop a non working partner of a top earner applying? Completely unworkable.

[mcshed]

Internet discussions tend to be polarised by their very nature. Not many people feel inclined to post about how ambivalent they feel, or that they don't really hold an opinion, so naturally the people with the strong opinions get heard most