Did the festival result on an increase or decrease in your business turnover?

Interesting: Mendip Council is attempting to measure the impact of the Glastonbury festival on the local economy. It's inviting local businesses to complete a survey which, once the numbers are crunched, will discover the extent to which the festival helps, or hinders, the all-important local economy.

Of course, if Mendip Council has both its wits sharp and its heart in the right place, it would be using this as a starting point to discover how much of the cash generated from the festival is spent locally - if the amount is high, that would imply the festival is taking a sustainable approach; if large proportions of the money floats into Somerset and then floats out again, that would suggest Festival Republic might be generating a much larger carbon footprint than it should. But let's not pre-judge.

A sign that we're in the final stages...

The traditional signal that the home straight has been entered for the Glastonbury festival: Michael Eavis telling the BBC that the festival has been a success:

Festival-goers had complained of poor sound from the Pyramid Stage, with The Killers' set on Saturday being punctuated by cries of "turn it up" from some.

Mr Eavis said the speaker system had been changed for this year's festival.

"I'm sorry about the PA, it's not quite strong enough for us here, so I'm slightly disappointed by that. I think we're going to have to look at that again."

Mr Eavis also conceded that there were problems with the photo ID system used for festival tickets this year.

"The printing wasn't really good enough so we have to improve that," he said.

He revealed that 2008's headliners were already confirmed, but refused to reveal who they were.

"It's not Muse or U2," he added.

Well, at least that's a relief.

Apparently, Bjork went on for 20 minutes past the curfew time on Friday night/Saturday morning, but the council don't seem unduly bothered:

[T]he local council said that an over-run of Bjork's set on Friday night, breaking a 0030 curfew by 20 minutes, breached the festival's licence.

Mendip District Council's planning and environment manager Charles Uzzell said: "There could be a review of the licence, and the ultimate sanction is the removal of the licence but I don't see that as a possibility."

He added that the rest of the festival had been a "success".

And you have to praise Mendip's grown-up attitude - a lot of places would have sent the cops in to shut down the stage rather than adopting a "we'll talk about this later" approach.

I'll never tell

Official Glastonbury Site, yesterday: "the festival makes no assumption that it will get a license"

nme.com, today: After the meeting Michael Eavis said he was "not too bothered" by the failure to secure a licence and that he would be appealing to magistrates.

"We lost by one vote and the unfortunate thing was that the members weren't all there and it was a poorly attended meeting," he said.

"We will go to the magistrates court and appeal. The council, police and fire service have been very supportive."

"We are not too bothered and I think it's all going to be fine."

Festival farrago

The official Glastonbury Festival site is very strict in saying they won't publicise the name of the website offering tickets for next year's (still only mooted) Glasto because they're "clearly trying to profit from all the hard work" (presumably Ticketmaster and the other people who sell tickets with a booking fee are public spiritedly attempting to take money out of an overheating economy.

But surely if you're trying to keep the name of the company secret, calling the images used to illustrate the story by something very close to the company's name and saying where they're based is surely an invite to Google.

What's really interesting is when you find the online ticket shop's website they're asking £175 for a fictional ticket, a figure the official Glasto people describe as exhorbitant. (We, of course, think the whole festival has become an exhorbitant price anyway).

Interestingly, the site sniffs that "the festival makes no assumption that it will get a license", which must make planning really, really difficult - surely if they're distributing information to interested traders they must work on the very basic assumption that they will get a licence? They're inviting demos, and according to the music press some artists have already been sounded out - all of this doesn't sound like the activity of a site that isn't working on the assumption of licensing, does it?

Meanwhile, today Mendip Council are holding an open meeting to canvass local people's opinions on next year's festival; that means from young people (or rather the prematurely middle-aged) who want to speak up for the weekend as well as those who seek to condemn the concept of rock music, cow muck and swearing; Thursday 12th is the decision day when the licence will come up for consideration by the licensing body.