Time again....

My comment piece was influenced from a story I read in the telegraph on the 15/02/08 about what could be the end of glastonbury festival and then another story on the BBC website about Reading and Leeds festivls. Link to the story telegraph HERE and to the BBC site HERE

It’s that time of year again, the sun is trying to peep around the clouds a bit more often and we don’t have to have to central heating permanently turned to MAX just to stop us freezing to death in our sleep. It’s also the time of year when me and my boyfriend start our annual discussion of what festivals we will be attending in the summer.

I’ve been attending festivals since I was about fifteen and try to get to at least one of the major ones every year. I live about 30 miles away from where Leeds festival is held in Bramham park and it was one of my first weekend festivals that I attended. However that was five years and when we got back home last year I said that I’d never go again.

There was a multitude of reasons for my decision but it all came down to one thing, commercialism. When I first started going tickets were around £100 for a weekend ticket and you could go in the knowledge that you were going to have a good time and see a few good bands. But not anymore, tickets for 2008’s Leeds and Reading festivals are over £160 plus an extra £5 ‘handling fee’ and £5 postage charge. Now I’m not really convinced that a £5 handling charge on every ticket is very realistic,

Leeds festival accommodates around 85,000 people every day so they’re average earnings for handling charges for one day of the three day festival is £425,000. Now times that by three for each day of the festival and you’ve got a staggering £1,275,000. FROM HANDLING CHARGES!!! (This amount does not take into consideration that Leeds and Reading festivals are twinned and that Reading is not included in these findings or that Reading can hold more people than Leeds.

Am I wrong to think that this is a ridiculous amount of money that mean fiddler and ticket master (the main ticket sellers for the festival) are pocketing because people want to enjoy the august bank holiday weekend??

However, when I got an email telling me about tickets coming on sale I was straight on the phone and pre-ordered two weekend tickets, because no matter what we say when we get home dirty, tired and VERY grumpy every year both me and Stewart know that we look forward to Leeds every year because its not all about the cost it’s about the atmosphere, the music and the fact that it’s the only time every year when we see all of our friends together as a group as we used
to be.



This video was shot by my friend who won a competition to shot the festival and have his video shown on television, see if you can spot me!