Glastonbury 2009: Registration remains

Michael Eavis has announced the plans for selling Glastonbury tickets for 2009.

And, yes, you're going to need to register again:

"We have come up with a scheme that will allow people a much longer period to plan and pay for their tickets, while still continuing the battle against ticket touting.

"By paying as little as £50 up front this year, festival-goers from all over the world will be able to guarantee a ticket for next year's event. At the same time the very successful registration scheme will ensure that tickets will only go to those named individuals who have reserved them in advance."

That would be the "very successful registration scheme" that helped leave piles of unsold tickets this year, and which had to be quietly dropped in a bid to try and get the venue up to capacity.

And, yes, you read it correctly: there's going to be a deposit system, where you can secure your tickets for fifty quid now, and pay the balance of £125 by February. Yes, that does make £175 for a ticket.

If you don't decide to buy a ticket in the end, Glastonbury will still pocket a tenner - graciously returning forty quid. This, apparently, covers "administration" - nice to see that Glastonbury has embraced the fee structures of the High Street Banks whereby you're charged a large sum for a small amount of work. You might wonder if the interest earned in sitting on piles of fifty quids for half a year or so might not cover the cost of this administration in full, but that would be allowing cynicism to stare down on the festival.

And what if you buy a ticket this autumn and are unable to attend next summer - perhaps because you end up in a Turkish jail, or get a job as a weekend sous chef? You can return your tickets - again, the organisation will charge a ten pound fee for your trouble - but you can't pass the tickets on to your brother, uncle, sister or dogwalker:

Tickets may not be transferred to another name. Should you be concerned you will be unable to attend the Festival due to unforeseen circumstances, you may wish to consider insuring your ticket.

There's no word on how much this would cost - around ten quid, probably - but since after May 8th you can't even return your tickets at all, not even for a ten quid admin fee, it might be a good idea after all.

Yes, May 8th. A month and a half before the festival, effectively any value inherent in your ticket vanishes at that point, and if you can't go - tough.

There's also this strange little image at the bottom of the FAQ page. Fair enough, marking the page as being the only official source of information on the Glastonbury tickets - but why is it an image rather than a piece of text? Furthermore, an image which has alt and title attributes simply of "Tickets and Registration Notice" - which isn't going to be very informative for people who use screen readers.