A Miracle!

[Hawkfan]

I've met Michael Eavis a few times (I grew up in Wookey Hole 6 miles from
Glastonbury; he went to the same school as me though considerably earlier)
and I've always found him a decent chap. Before Glastonbury was so big (and
before regs were so strict!) he went out of his way to help local bands
perform in his barn. Back in the early 80s I've seen him wander up and down
the queue to catch touts. I don't feel as strongly about ticket touts as he
does, but I applaud his stance.

Yes touts only have a market because demand so strongly outstrips supply,
but if he adopted the usual capitalist view and doubled ticket prices he
would then be criticised for cashing in. Seems like a no win situation to
me.

JR

-----Original Message-----
From: BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List [mailto:BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET] On
Behalf Of M Holmes
Sent: 02 April 2007 16:42
To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET
Subject: A Miracle!

Amazingly, for the fist time since 2001 we got Glastonbury tickets.
Looks like we'll be out of Hawkfest and into Glasters. Anyone else going?

Of course this wasn't without hassle. Everyone had to submit photos this
year to support Eavis's perverse pogrom on ticket touts. Thus all Eavis
really had to do was run a lottery which allocated tickets to one in three
of those who registered their photographs.

But no, this was too simple for the people who have previously had a
substantial fraction of the nation waste multiple man-hours redialling
critically overtaxed phone lines. So we had to get up early on a Sunday
morning to travel to work to take advantage of fast comms and press Reload a
thousand times each to get tickets. No doubt some pressed ten thousand times
before giving up. A national RSI epidemic is now predicted...

I do hope I meet the man. Perhaps he can be persuaded that ticket touts are
simple people arbitraging a price mismatch in favour of those who want
tickets and that if he really wants them out of the loop then the most
sensible thing is for he himself to auction tickets on the web so that they
are sold at the market-clearing price. As an added bonus, those hundreds of
thouands of man-hours would be available for more productive use, and the
charities favoured by the festival would probably have a multiple of the
current money made available to them.

In short: Glastonbury Fayre needs Laissez Faire.

FoFP