Ticket Touts - A New Age

I am convinced that ticket touts are legal and that promoters are not bothered so long as they get their cash.

This week I set out to buy tickets to see Queens of the Stone Age, in November. My mobile provider 02 very kindly told me that as a customer I could get pre-sale tickets on Wednesday, so at 08:58 I started out on my quest for 4 tickets - F5, F5, F5 until 9 o'clock - enter 4, enter standing, enter 2 security words, press Buy Tickets - "sorry nothing matches your selection', so I tried 3 tickets, 2 tickets and 1 ticket - still nothing. Great, how can that be?

So on Wednesday I learned that Live Nation will have pre-sale tickets on Thursday, so at 08:58 - F5,F5,F5 etc - guess what - NO FRIGGING TICKETS!!!!!

Friday morning rolls around and its time to join the queue that is lovingly known as General release. 08:58 and full of anticipation - F5,F5,F5 - guess what - NO FRIGGING TICKETS!!!!!

So my only choices now would be (1) Ticket tout on the day - who will rip me off with hugely inflated (and possibly illegal tickets) or (2) Ticket sell on companies - who will again sell me highly price inflated tickets. Generally I don't visit these sites for a few days because I am (a) frustrated at not securing tickets when I wanted to and (b) I know I will have to fork out probably twice the price.

Having been disappointed and frustrated about not getting tickets I broke the norm and went off in search of tickets on the World Wide Web - on the day of release - and to my amazement Ticket sell on companies Viagogo and Getmein already had hundreds of tickets for resale by 09:10. How is this possible? unless its just ticket touting on a legal, grand and on line scale.

Are ticket companies simply passing tickets on to sell on companies (bear in mind that Getmein is owned by Ticketmaster)? I also love the tagline of Getmein 'TICKETS FOR TRUE FANS'.

Viagogo are owned by a Venture Capitalist firm called Index Ventures who are a Swiss company set up primarily in the IT and Life Sciences sectors, so how can a company like this this be allowed to Venture it's Capital in ripping people off?

The law for selling football tickets has changed, where touts cannot legally do this for a profit, so why not music and theatre tickets?

That said I have paid for my tickets now and am happy I could get what I wanted.
I am just annoyed that I have had to pay through the nose for those tickets, that have not been bought by people who then cannot attend the gig, that are simply big companies making lots of money off the back of True Fans.

If you don't want a fine don't do the crime!

Slow news day today. Apparently people who get fined for speeding, parking illegally, driving in bus lanes and generally going up against a sign think that councils do it to make money?

If the sign is there and you are told you will pay the price - don't do it! Simple surely?

Yes there may be 1.3 billion raised through these driving offence fines but if people were sensible and didn't act like dicks we would not need parking and driving enforcement. One person even said "oh I don't think people deliberately go out to break the rules" is she stupid? Of course people do, it's a bit like saying he didn't set out to rob that bank!

Stop blaming everyone else for your mistakes, get your cash out and pay your fine or better still don't break the rules.


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Location:High Street,Twyford,United Kingdom

Tax avoidance - The facts please

I keep hearing news stories about tax avoidance but I never hear the hard facts. Those missing facts are what would he impact be if we persuaded these companies to be fairer.

If these companies, who employ thousands across the UK, paid full taxes what would this do to their profitability? If the tax impacts their profitability how many jobs will they have to cut to maintain the right level of profits to ensure they keep open? If they do cut jobs and those people end up on the dole just what is the difference between tax gained and benefits paid out?

Don't get me wrong I expect all to pay fair tax but I don't have the facts to decide when that works in our favour or not. Facts please you news readers and journalists.


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Location:High Street,Twyford,United Kingdom

PeopleWonderWhyIHateKidsOfToday

I am sitting working, and watching (in the background), a programme on Channel 4 called 999 What's your emergency. Holyfuckingcrap if those were my kids (thankfuckwewontbehavingany) I would put them up for adoption or stick 'em in a sack with rocks and chuck them in a very deep lake or simply terminate them on the spot.

What happened to the respect for the police by youngsters, come to that what happened to the respect for the police full stop?

I really hate how this world is turning out and how kids are allowed, by their parents, to stand up to authority and seemingly get away with it. The trouble is kids are bigger, brasher and getting away with what they want and the trouble makers force the nice ones to have to sand up and fight.

Innocents in children has been lost, childhood has been skipped. Unfortunately intelligence in a lot of these kids has become what it has because we have simply given in to them, not because we have to, not because we want to, but because we are forced to through peer pressure and the need for them not to be excluded.

All I can say is "I hope we wake up and smell the coffee one day" and make kids realise that you have to grow up slowly.

On top of that we need to make kids realise that a sentence in prison is a sentence that sticks, you do the crime you do the time. Right now, and for some time now, we have told kids do the crime and be out in a short time to do it again, or do the crime and live a life of cable TV, sport, warm bed and regular meals. Oh yes and rent free........

I am not saying this is all kids, I know some great parents, I just think that we as a global society need to teach the kids the good stuff, not the bad, we need to show them the error of their ways and hope that parents also want a better life for their kids. Just because you are hard up, just because you are out of work,or just because you can't give your kids a smart phone should not lead them to a bad life - we just need to care about improving them and showing them a better way.

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Location:Manchester Road,,United Kingdom

People wonder why I get moody.......

Sometimes when I write my blog I think to myself did I go too far this time? Okay in all fairness I never actually do that, but it's articles like this that really get on my tits. I went to work this week feeling full of flu and I took home less than this unemployed mum.


If this doesn't get on your tits too then maybe you are one of those lucky people who get pampered by tax payers. Don't get me wrong I am all for benefits for the worst off, the genuinely sick and needy, but just explain how she fits the bill?




She apparently used to have a good job but I bet if I lost my job I wouldn't get anywhere near the consideration she does. The thing is my life is consumed by the things I love in life but I wont get cash for it if I lose my lively hood, I guess a music love is not as important as kids are.

It's been a while since I had a rant so thanks to Carla for sending me this article.
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Location:High Street,Twyford,United Kingdom

Wokingham Borough Council - are all councils the same?

Carla and I have been speaking with the council since the beginning of December about a little matter (then) that has grown into something of a major complaint - that had they been responsible would have been resolved without issue.

The complaint relates to what we thought was a pot hole in the road outside our house, which is actually a services cover but has the same resounding THUD THUD every time a vehicle drives over it - on a High Street that's very often, day and night.

After several complaint mails and phone calls (and a cancelled fix) we finally got a date when they would come and resolve it. So on the day I (with a large grin on my face) stood and watched as the Highways road crew fixed a minor road defect the opposite side of the road, which was definitely not outside our house (as we had told them many times) and was definitely not going to cause the noise issue I described to them. When i contacted the council a week later (thinking that surely they could not be that stupid) they told me we have fixed it - to which I laughed and asked them to check their records as they may have not read my many letters / emails / on-line chat sessions correctly. Do you know what they said? Oh okay thanks, we will send the Highways manager out (by this they mean the same man who checked it wrongly 3 times before?).

Did I get a call back following their call out? No, instead I had to call them a week later when I was told "it's not a council/Highways matter at all - in fact this is actually a problem caused by a Thames Water service cover and as such they have issued a section 81 to Thames Water". This sounds great right? Wrong! Having issued it there is no statutory time for the water authority to correct the matter. 1 month on and the council have decided it's not their job to chase Thames Water so I phoned them myself. My complaint was listened to but I was dismayed when they told me it was not their fault despite the month old section 81. They told me they will do a temporary fix today and dispatched a crew - guess what - it's not their problem as it's the fresh water department! They have now been told to fix it immediately, which - in their terms I am told - means 12 days. I think I will pay my next water bill promptly in 2014!

The council of course have washed their hands of any responsibility on behalf of a tax and council taxpayer (that's me - I pay their wages) and so I have now issued the council with a compensation claim for their negligence and the noise pollution that has disrupted our lives for 3 months.
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This is of course the same council that believes this sign


means anyone can park here after 6 o'clock and will not be breaking the rules. I mean call me old fashioned but when I pay for one thing I don't expect to get something else. At £650 per car per year my wife and I stupidly thought we had a right to park here and others who don't pay cannot. Are we being inconsiderate to law breakers, are we making a mountain out of a mole hill?out of touch with reality? This blogger thinks not.

Bloody advert wee breaks

Short post.

I use TV ad breaks to nip to the toilet. Come on channel 4 I know I am getting old but for goodness sake I really don't need a piss every 6 minutes.



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Location:High Street,Twyford,United Kingdom

Harry Hill! What? Why?

I have never ever understood the Harry Hill phenomenon. He has just won another TV comedy award when all around him stood (sat) a number of real comedy people in proper comedy.
Now I know we cannot all like the same thing, what a boring world it would be etc etc etc, but I am sorry I have just witnessed 3 clips of the 3 categories he was nominated in (which should surely be a representation of his funniest bits), for f***s sake if poor ventriloquism, a reversed vacuum cleaner and some other clip that I forget are his best bits the rest must surely have been truly bloody awful.
The good news is its the last series of his TV Burp, but does that mean the bad news is that he has a new series of some more inane crap heading our way.
Whatever his next project is can I just ask you all NOT TO WATCH IT.
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Location:High Street,Twyford,United Kingdom

"Oh the times they are a changing"

In the news this morning the matter of should the state pay for families to have as many children as they want. My opinion is NO, capital letters NO.

Back in April I posted about this on my blog and, after hearing people on the news discussing this, I decided to rant again.

It is quite rightly, every persons right to have children but it is not every persons right to expect others to fund them, fully or partially. Don't get me wrong I am not having a pop at the parents of one or two kids, it's those that think they need to have many.

The bit that everyone is missing here is not just that we don't have the money to support an ever growing population, but that people are selfishly having them seemingly without realising that life for those kids will be tougher as they grow up right through to their old age.

We have more people in the world which means fewer jobs to share.
We have become more technology reliant and are doing this because its cheaper than using people to make things, again removing the number of jobs we can share.
We now live a lot longer and have to retire a lot later.

All of this stacks up to a huge problem for your kids unless we think sensibly about what it means for them and not what we want today.

Yes it does sound like restricting the number of state supported kids you have. If the better off people get to have more kids then so be it, if they can afford to feed, dress and school them then why not. We just need to make sure that they are made to pay the right levels of taxation.

I think it's simple if you don't have then don't expect others to pay. Bankers did that with our money and now look at the mess. Lets recognise that you do not need many children to make you happy and that we as a world cannot afford to pamper those that think this way.

It's not about me not wanting kids, thats my choice. Its not about rich vs poor as i am neither. It's about common sense when the world is in recession and will continue to be in one (or dip in an out of it) unless we tighten things up.

Actually what I'm saying is that its your right to have kids but please think about their future and ours.



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Location:High Street,Twyford,United Kingdom

Sick

I may be old, that seems to be indisputable, I may have a number of things that wind me up, my blog points to that fact, but I don't get the phrase "sick" when describing something good or great.

I thought the Radio one gig in Hackney was sick! They did a 5 minute section talking to people about the event and the summing up from someone was it was sick!

And we wonder why the world is broken!


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Location:Ashville Way,Wokingham,United Kingdom

Men in Black 3

So went to see the new MIB3 tonight. Great bit of 3D and a good story to go with the effects. But wait why am I praising and having good things to say on my Grumpy blog? Oh yes it's all
Coming back now - why the bloody hell would you drag your loud grandad and thick 8 year old child ( I can only assume was 8 as this is the minimum age for a PG) and talk throughout the film?

So there you go - thanks to that annoying family for your behaviour. I can now just hope that they got very wet walking back to their car in the torrential rain that hit Henley late evening.


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Location:Henley

Bloody Jet Lag

So If you are up to date with my blogs, and you have seen my posting yesterday, I am back from almost two weeks in Thailand.

In my above mentioned post, that is on my good stuff blog (accessible from this site) you will see how nice it is to be back in Twyford.

The downside is that it's 11:30am in Thailand and so at this ungodly hour in the UK I am now fully awake. Great!

I know it's all about hours and time zones but we need to invest now in matter transportation devices so that my fatigue of 18 hours travel will not play with my sleep patterns. Come on scientists catch up with Sci-Fi!!!

Enough said for now.




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Location:Twyford,United Kingdom

Human Wrongs

I am updating my blog having learned that the cost of arguing the toss over this persons rights is now up to £800,000 I think that says it all.

So it appears the European Court of Human Rights bods are happy for someone who arrived here in the UK on a forged passport to have his right to stay upheld. Okay it may be short lived but come on he has no right to be here.  He may be guilty of terrorism, he may not but the point is he broke the law coming here. So the end of this story should be get him the fuck home to Jordan now.

Before anyone decides to slate me for being racist think again as the things I loathe most are ignorance and intolerance. So what I have to say here is for the good of this country and it’s people (and not in the ways of the BNP) and I think we should simply hand criminals back to the country they came from. Crime is crime and I am sorry but if you re-settle in another country but you break the law in doing so then what human rights should you have?

Don’t get me wrong I think bodies like the Human Rights organisations do some great work and have their aims and goals set for the right reasons. I do however think that their mandate is allowed to be abused by utter scum who will come up with any reason why they think they should not be deported. Well its about time we stopped standing up for criminals and start looking after the innocent, the victims and those people who deserve to live in this country.

Foot note - this applies to any country and any scum bag criminal protected for all the wrong reasons.

How to confuse!

Why have 2 horses called Neptune in the Grand National. Thats confusing when in the bookies. Guess which one of the two I had?

No not the winning horse, despite having gone to the bookies with it written down I go and select the other one who was 150-1

I just think it should all be much clearer like having numbers, oh yes they do.

Idiots

The dick head who brought the boat race to a stop should in fairness have had his head sliced clean off by an oar or propellers. Unfortunately he will probably just be given a slap on the wrist! God these idiots make me mad.

Speak the lingo

I am sat in a cafe in Brighton and listening (not being nosey) to a group of foreign nationals talking to each other in their own language and i am reminded about people (local to me - by that i mean England) who complain about why foreigners (by that they must be referring to anyone who is not born and bred in England) walk around our country talking in their own language, why don't they speak English if they live here? Well you know what how many of us, if we were to move to a new country, would speak to our friends and family in our new found language? You know the answer to that one.

Students booze

I have just seen a news article (concerning the minimum price for alcohol) and where students are saying booze is part of the process of being at university and that they are being hit again because of it. I don't doubt that drinking is but i also don't condemn boozing. Heres the thing though, if you drank less you might actually have more free cash and therefore not end up in so much debt, which seems to be one of the main gripes about going to Uni these days. So tighten your belts like the rest of us.

Facebook..... grrrr

You know what really surprises me is when companies allow employees to access Facebook (to name but one anti-social site - yes I am aware i just launched my website and blog on Facebook) during office hours. Sorry the reason why we go to work is 'TO GO TO WORK'.

So when you say you have a shit job on shit pay ask yourself the question "Just why is it that I don't seem to be doing as well as that other person"

Guess what? that is my tax resource you are wasting not big business profits.

Okay so the Occupy London protestors were were making a fine stand about the world today and the greed of big corporates. Really?

What I saw was a bunch of people who were in the main probably unemployed, or had brilliant employers who let them have massively extended leave, camped outside of one of the capitals fine old buildings who were eventually evicted this week. Who paid for their eviction? Thats right it was the big bad corporates so well done protestors you really hit them

Kids - How many do you want? How many do we have to pay for?

The world is getting more populated every year, we have more mouths to feed, and the situation is not going to change unless WE (that we is not the Tories, or Labour or the Liberals, Greens etc it is us, the everyday worker) start to do something about it. We are quick to blame the country for not having enough money, but we don't stop and think should we have 3 kids, can we afford 3 kids, we just have them knowing that's the country will support them with child allowances, housing and tax credits all over the place. 

The Children are our future. Someone famous wrote that into a song but they are, at the rate of worldwide growth, potentially one of the biggest problems on the planet. If there are no jobs now (well ones you want to do) and we are coming up with ways to make things cheaper, more efficient, time saving and free of human touch there will be even less next year,