Three pieces of good news pushed their way through the angry crowd of miserable news items today* and made Monday morning less dreary than it otherwise might have been.
*Well, I say today, but given we are approaching the witching hour as the random inspiration to spontaneously dip my toe back into the world of blogging, you may well be reading this tomorrow, so you need to substitute the word today with yesterday.
What were these three things? I hear no-one cry. Well, I list them here in reverse numerical order, to build up the tension as you wait to find out what number one was.
THREE: DOGSHITE: The top item on the news on Radio Wales as I drove to work this morning was that Rhondda Cynon Taf council have issued £22k’s worth of fines to people who let their dog shit everywhere without having the decency to clean up after them.
Several things about this item made me smile.
The obvious one is that the streets are, presumably, less shitty as a result of this campaign. I hope particular attention was paid to the dirty bastards that go to the effort of picking up the dog shit, putting it in a bag then hanging it from a tree. The people that do that should be tied to the tree themselves then shot in the face with a ball of their own shit.
But the thing that really made me smile was the fact that this was the headline news. Clearly nothing more important than this had gone on over the weekend in wales.
TWO: NAZIS: News has filtered in from over the pond that a massive white power rally outside the House of White, had been a damp squib. Only a handful had turned out and they were massively outnumbered by anti-fascist counter protestors.
All is not lost. Despite having a friend in POTUS no 45, the KKK are not having it all their own way.
THREE: TICKET TOUTS VIRTUALLY KICKED IN THEIR VIRTUAL BOLLOCKS. Ticket touts are the second lowest form of life, coming a close second after bailiffs.
It is bad enough that they stand in the street taking advantage of people’s devotion to a band, football team or play. Gig tickets can be pretty outrageously priced to start with, but some of these touts charge prices that make a solicitors look positively respectable.
But in recent years they have been hiding out on the net added and abetted by legitimate ticket sales outlets. Outrageously, some of these tout sites are owned by the official ticket outlets. I find this astounding. Not only is it astounding that it is legal, it is astounding that people buy from them and it is astounding that there does not seem to be any shame. They should be tied to a tree and shot in the face with a ball of somebody else’s dog shit.
The law has not changed, it is still going on, but it would appear that shame has resulted in two of the big sites Seatwave and GetMeIn closing down today. Good riddance.
It does not really affect me. In over forty years of going to gigs on a regular basis I can honestly say I have never paid a penny to a tout and, to be honest, I rarely go to gigs that would be of interest to a tout. But this news might mean a few more genuine fans end up with tickets at face value. And that made me smile today* (*or was it yesterday?)