Saturday, February 22, 2003

Leeds United

So, after a huge police effort to find the culprits, eyewitnesses describing the scenes as "worse than anything I saw in twelve years in the army", half a million pounds worth of damage - so the court feels that a couple of hundred quid's worth of fine each and a few hours community service is the fitting sentence?

Surely not connected in any way with one of the Festival Riot Boys being the son of an MP, of course. Since (as far as we know) there's been no action brought against the organisers for their rubbish security, we're assuming the authorities are really seeing the whole meltdown as some sort of act of god.

So, planning is going ahead, and since it's hugely unlikely Mean Fiddler will be able to use temple Newsham again, the idea is to move the whole thing to Bramham Park in Tadcaster. We wonder what they're telling the owner of the estate, Nick Lane Fox, because he confidently told the Guardian he was relaxed about the idea of the riotfest moving into his back garden:

"We are talking about the sort of fencing they have at Glastonbury - 18ft high, a barrier no one can get through."

Right, so he really believes that he's going to be allowed to build a permanent structure like that in the grounds of his house? And he really believes that there's the million quid available that Eavis had to invest in his Big Fence? Maybe he will be, and maybe there is. That still doesn't explain how it'll stop a replay of the 2002 and 2001 riots, which were systematic destructions by ticket-holding festival-goers. The Glasto Berlinesque Wall is designed to stop people without tickets sneaking in, not to stop turmoil developing inside the site. That would call for better planning of security.


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