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TommyT

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Everything posted by TommyT

  1. Jefferson Starship - Blows Against The Empire a loose concept album in which a bunch of hippies get brassed off with the government, so hijack a starship and head off with their friends for a new life somewhere else. They don't write 'em like that any more!
  2. Did think there would be for a moment when I saw Adam West's name mentioned - thought it might be these guys: http://www.fandangorecs.com/adamwest/ Now there's a question - is this the first guest ever to have a band named after them?
  3. On the "some people saying the WHOLE crew should be sacked" front, having read the entire thread, I believe that precisely one person has made this suggestion, seemingly based on a short visit and experience with a few members of the crew. I don't think anybody either pro or anti has agreed with this person (whose suggestion is perhaps unfortunately the first post you read on the thread). I would certainly suggest not over-reacting (or indeed reacting at all) to the suggestion. "we all get on really well" - don't you hate it when your words come back to bite you on your bum?! I refer of course to the two female crew members who in the pages following your post gave such a marvellous demonstration of sororial love (and with such dignity ) "some people obviously aren't posting here to improve things and only to try and stir up trouble" - there may be some agent provocateurs amongst the critical crowd, but there again there may well be some against the crew or crew defenders. Certainly those on the "pro" side who maintain that all is bright and wonderful and that the whole crew were entirely wonderful and everybody else can p*ss off are either deliberately trying to provoke (OK, prolong) an argument, or are just ludicrously deluded, when there are any number of crew members here who have admitted that things weren't perfect and have also cited examples of poor crewing amongst some of (and probably a minority of) their colleagues. Those who insist that the whole crew were wonderful, and that the entire fault rested with the great British public are as stupid (or as stirring) as those who say the opposite. I really do hope that lessons can be learned, and given the number of people who have proffered prolonged and unbroken working hours with insufficent breaks and nourishment as a reason for sub-optimum performance, people should either not work if they can't handle the conditions and maintain performance, or more realistically the organisers should be sensible (and ethical and plain decent) and grant you folks the breaks they would be legally obliged to give you in the real world. I'll stop now before I repeat the rest of my previous post.
  4. You think you love it, but you don't really... Yes, I'd guess a lot of the crew love being "exploited" as presumably cheap labour (certainly in comparison to professional event staff) in exchange for some *possible* access and for presumably having a good time as part of a team of like-minded people. But it's the other aspects of the exploitation, like being cannon fodder for disgruntled punters (both at the show and here) that don't seem to be so popular with the crew (and who can blame them for that?) And reading some of the defence put forward by the crew, I notice an interesting pattern emerge: * words like "it's difficult to stay cheerful when you're working 11 [or other reports of 14, 15, 20] hour days with no breaks" - oh good; so punters have to make allowances because you're being working hours which would be illegal if you were formally contracted as employees. By taking you on as volunteers with a small cash gratuity, it's not just saving you tax, it gets them out of all sorts of other legislation that people like the Health & Safety Exec would nail them for. (Incidentally, if you're volunteering to work those hours then frankly that rules it out as an excuse in my book. As does having a hangover - if you can't work effectively with a hangover then don't get one - although if I was getting exploited as thoroughly and cynically as you lot then I'd want to be getting royally stocious every night too). Of course, they could take on some more staff to make sure everybody actually got the sort of break they would be normally legally entitled to, but that would increase their expenditure, wouldn't it? * crew members have cited that there was no formal guide or handbook circulated in advance, apparently because SM were too busy doing other things. So everybody is a bit clueless and doesn't have an easy reference guide they can whip out. Again, it would be nice to have, but it's more expense/staff time to prepare it, so we'll just exploit the volunteers by making them look a bit clueless to the punters, and most of the flak gets taken by the volunteers. * the (dis)organisation of the talks is suggested as being because SM were too busy to organise numbered seat ticket sales in advance, or indeed really get their advance sales and confirmation working in any credible form, or consider any of the problems caused by the venue. But don't worry, because again most of the flak gets chucked at the volunteers. This and the previous point would strongly suggest they might need to employ somebody additional in their organisation for some period in advance of the show, if not full-time. Or is that too much expenditure for them? * there have been suggestions on some threads (perhaps not this) that they took on a high number of "locals" who may not have been particularly suitable, in preference to experienced crew, to save on their hotel expenses. Meaning that decent crew members who are working are exploited by having to carry unsuitable people they brought in just to save some hotel bucks * suggestions that the venue was too hot and crowded and was responsible for bad attitudes by some - well gee whizz, would that be because they've got a nice cheap venue they don't want to leave irrespective of its suitability these days? Sorry folks, if you can't handle working in those conditions, then don't. And if you haven't been warned that the venue can be hot, overcrowded, and that this can bring out the worst in some people (and most of humankind can act like scum at some point), then they're skimping on training and information for people in customer-facing jobs, which is just another way of exploiting you. I've seen a number of crew say here that a few of their colleagues weren't up to scratch, as well as some punters. And it would seem that most of the crew's problems are pretty much due to woeful organisation by SM (which presumably means they really can't organise, or they're just trying to do it on the (too) cheap) - to use a phrase from WWI, are you in fact lions led by donkeys?
  5. Before you ask (or assume), I have no connection with the organisers, and wasn't there either. I think that your statement about parking is somewhat sweeping. Having visited a fair number of shopping centres in my line of work, I would say that a more accurate (but still not completely so) statement would be that * those shopping centres that are either significantly out of town (e.g Crib's Causeway, Swindon Outlet Village, Bicester outlet village, Lakeside, Bluewater), or are pretty much the only thing in town (e.g. Street) don't charge, since you've pretty much got to make an effort to go there, plus you're more or less a "captive" customer * those shopping centres that are actually in a town where there are a significant number of other retail facilities outside the shopping centre but in reasonable proximity (e.g. Maidstone, Chatham, Southampton, Basingstoke, Reading) tend to charge, because otherwise they'll be overrun with people using their car park for free, but not spending anything in the shopping centre. This is doubly so if the town is within commuting range of London and the shopping centre is within halfway reasonable distance of the train station, as otherwise the shopping centre carpark is heavily used by commuters' cars. I suspect that the MK centre falls into this latter category. I can't comment on all, but Street definitely does charge for parking which is why I refuse to go there! the more 'savvy' centre organisers know people who pay less - or nothing - for parking are likely to visit more often and spend more money. As most of the people going to C7 had money to spend I think it would have been reasonable to either waive the parking fees, subsidize them, or refund them with a purchase. [some cut] Lastly, whatever else they may do, few places charge you to park on a Sunday at the same rate as a weekday. All in all not entirely unexpected, but worth complaining about if only to see the cockroaches come crawling out of their holes I apologise for my error over Street - I must have been comped there, rather than the more usual pay and reclaim. Your observations on Sunday parking rates are also noted, and I'll agree with you (although the "Sunday differential" does seem to be shrinking), but if the particular place in MK doesn't conform to that norm, it's hardly the event organisers' fault (although it is of course their choice of venue). The suggestion of waiving or refunding the parking fees - well, assuming the shopping centre were willing to play ball, that would probably require the event organisers to pay the shopping centre for the loss of parking income for the whole period for everyone (since you can't just identify those coming along to a free event that does not require an initial admission ticket), or pay the shopping centre for the loss of parking income for those they refund, plus the admin costs of implementing such an administrative arrangement. Since they're already using cheap volunteer labour, we both know how likely this additional expenditure on their part is I actually agreed with most of your non-parking points (hence I didn't post a rebuttal to any of them) and charmingly I still get labelled as a cockroach. Do I take it that the Diplomatic Service haven't been kicking down your door to drag you off to their fast-track program?
  6. A problem faced by pretty much every other theatre, auditorium and seated concert venue on the planet. At the end of the day, there's always going to be an element of luck involved. Presumably it's not beyond the wit of the organisers to arrange that for instance they start off selling the left hand side of the room via phone sales and the right hand side via e-mail, and then every couple of hours or at the end of every day making sure that they're selling both at roughly the same rate (and adjusting if necessary). That's as close to FCFS as you'll get without ludicrous amounts of admin. And those people who just absolutely positively utterly have to have a seat in the front row but don't get one could try trawling the forum for suitable tickets (OK, that assumes that the organisers can confirm them in advance). Or they could just get a life.
  7. Before you ask (or assume), I have no connection with the organisers, and wasn't there either. I think that your statement about parking is somewhat sweeping. Having visited a fair number of shopping centres in my line of work, I would say that a more accurate (but still not completely so) statement would be that * those shopping centres that are either significantly out of town (e.g Crib's Causeway, Swindon Outlet Village, Bicester outlet village, Lakeside, Bluewater), or are pretty much the only thing in town (e.g. Street) don't charge, since you've pretty much got to make an effort to go there, plus you're more or less a "captive" customer * those shopping centres that are actually in a town where there are a significant number of other retail facilities outside the shopping centre but in reasonable proximity (e.g. Maidstone, Chatham, Southampton, Basingstoke, Reading) tend to charge, because otherwise they'll be overrun with people using their car park for free, but not spending anything in the shopping centre. This is doubly so if the town is within commuting range of London and the shopping centre is within halfway reasonable distance of the train station, as otherwise the shopping centre carpark is heavily used by commuters' cars. I suspect that the MK centre falls into this latter category.
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