No Rock And Roll Fun

AH! ASSURANCES ON SECURITY: So, Leeds council withdrew its objections to the Leeds Festival after receiving assurances about security and sanitation plans for the event. Apparently references were taken from Glastonbury before the Council were happy - presumably whoever wrote them sketched over the three officials who were arrested over that assault, then. Meanwhile, Oxfam are offering people the chance to get into Reading and Leeds for free by volunteering for stewarding positions. It would be easy to raise an easy laugh at the prospect of the future of the Leeds Festival being put into the hands of Norris Coles, but in fact the Oxfam scheme has been tried and tested over years at Glastonbury - stewards who aren't already well known to Oxfam have to provide a reference, which does get checked out; to be given any sort of supervisory responsibility you have to demonstrate that you've participated as a steward before. Indeed, since this is the first year that Leeds/Reading have used Oxfam stewards, the irony is that the Glastonbury licensing committee wanted Glasto to bring in the Mean Fiddler to use their knowledge of how to run a festival, and the MF have ended up acknowledging that maybe Michael Eavis had come up with a better system anyway.