I think people would have, i was there for a bit after the police arrived and people were running about with bin bags picking everything up.

But as they forced everyone to leave people couldn’t really clean up. If they had let us all clean up i think the place would have been looking a lot better….

yes, people would eventually have helped clean up the bottles/cans/balloons if the cops/heddlu hadn’t moved people on, but I can also see what Forestry Commission are getting at.

A lot of ravers claim the reports of needles are “anti-raver propaganda”, but unfortunately I don’t think thats the case.

If we are all honest with ourselves, we all know at least one person who has injected at least once, and out of these people there are some right scummy types who would throw a needle in the forest merely to piss people off. Of course one needle soon becomes a hundred when the cops and media get involved..

Also although the “nicer” rubbish would have got picked up, you can’t blame anyone for not wanting to pick up other peoples shit :yakk:.

This is the big problem for any large bank holiday rave, not just 3 days worth of shit but from people some of whose health isn’t 100% and may be carrying all manner of diseases.

For 16 years crews have told people to bury their shit when they do parties – but no one listened so the problem has got worse. Now everyone is losing out because of it..

all seized as evidence. The vehicles may be returned soon as its against human rights laws to keep them as they are not an essential part of the sound system (and some are hire vans).

In fact there is a big arse dicussion on here about it!

http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/swanews/display.var.1319035.0.0.php

I also suspect they are also not letting the ravers clean up because the CID want to inspect the rubbish in case there is any forensic intelligence (this was done after the Davidstow teknival).

People drop cards, wallets, bits of paper from their vehicles which can be used to identify individuals.

It is all “big brother” stuff but with so many drugs being sold there the cops clearly aren’t gonna turn down any piece of intelligence, plus bear in mind however much we love raves the authorities and many “normal people” are angry that people still keep getting away with it after nearly 20 years… and are stepping up the enforcement against events…

its a suprisingly, but not completely sympathetic response from the local media…

They are acknowledging the fact that ravers didn’t want to cause the mess or disturbance but all the editorial is really saying is “get permission / a TENS”. Its still surprisingly positive for a local newspaper….

In fact dont ever leave home without one :noway:

I reckon it depends on which crowds you tend to hang around with, and both of us tend to associate with the more “sound” people at raves who aren’t usually involved in injectable drug use.

Needles have very rarely cropped up at Reading warehouse parties (perhaps not the more recent ones you attended), as the people who were dropping them stopped attending raves by 2002/3 as their addictions took over their lives.

I’m talking about two or three in a seasons worth of raves though, not loads.

there was one chap whom we both know who saw needles on the ground at Davidstow (and he’s not the sort of guy who would bullshit about this)…

Also someone on SJ admitted to using syringes without needles at the Welsh rave to add colouring dye to ketamine as part of a “marketing exercise” – a daft practice IMO, but people do these sort of things.

Plus there are a lot of the pikey contingent who attend the bigger outdoor raves.

also I suspect what the cops are doing is that via their computers/surveillance they’ve already got a good idea of who is attending raves (via PNC vehicle and person checks, particularly the automatic ones) and their level of drug use. I remember from the days when scanners worked that a significant minority of people attending raves had some experience of injectable drugs (even if they have given up), the feds put it on their record virtually for life so other cops know to look for needles when searching them – they can then spin it to the media that there are people who may have needles at raves, and because it comes from someone in authority journos tend to believe it.

But as I said, one needle or syringe becomes 100 when the cops and media get involved; and unfortunately we are all judged by the lowest common denominator of those present at a party.

True, but I can’t help but think the cops and locals in other areas of England exacerbated the situation with their local clampdowns…

I’m glad I came as I met up with loads of my old friends as well as partied with my new friends (BTW they think you look nothing like that avatar :laugh_at:) but it was a last minute decision for all the eastside crew, many only came because of the 4-force clampdown in East Anglia…

And IMO if they had just tolerated the usual areas in East Anglia, SE England and and Bristol/Wales a lot of crews and their followers would have stayed in their ends anyway, at each rave you would have had about 1000-1500 people in a manageable size area, with less rubbish/noise and it could have ended peacefully with the ravers cleaning up.

I feel sorry for both the Welsh crews and even the locals, I think they have been stitched up a bit because of the intolerance of Middle England..

Oh, and stopping parties/taking rigs and clamping down even on legal events (which is increasingly happening) isn’t going to miraculously eliminate the demand or desire for raves, music and drugs – it is more likely to have a worse knock on effect by encouraging people to play loud music in their flats/houses and take drugs there and increase anti-social “behaviour”…

plus if rigs are permanently confiscated doubtless other crews will fill the gaps, and unlike todays rave crews who are by and large young(ish) professional people funding everything through legit employment, any “new guard” could be a bit more ruthless about stuff like selling drugs or doing crime to cover any potential losses (like what used to happen back in the 90s when cops were harsher about confiscations…)

I did think you looked slightly different (maybe lost some weight?) as I saw you and wasn’t sure it was you at first… :laugh_at:

I don’t think its anything to do with “health and safety”.

I suspect the cops have declared the area as a “crime scene” and they want to therefore control who has access so as the clean up proceeds they can gather evidence such as discarded drugs, camping equipment etc (which ravers would otherwise recover) to examine it closely and see if they can bolster their case against the crews – or if it gives clues to other crimes such as dealers’ networks.

after the Davidstow event last year, there were incidents which suggested that cops had even gone through rubbish bags looking for clues..

Look at it this way, if there were 3 500 people there (probably an underestimate) and each spent £20 on drugs (probably also an underestimate), thats £70 000 worth of drugs that might have been served up at the rave.

This level of suspicion (of course the drugs could all have come from many other areas rather than the rave) as well as the alleged cost of £10 000 for the clean up is classed as at least £80 000 worth of crime – plenty enough for the heddlu (and English bobbies) to justify all the “CSI” type malarkey (which would cost less than £80 000)

Also (perhaps more the case with English cops) they assume that if crews can afford to get stuff confiscated but keep bouncing back, that the whole scene is being funded by drug deals.

I personally think its an overreaction, especially in this day and age when the free party scene is in fact smaller and closer-knit than even 10 years ago – but I definitely get the impression these days that with the massive unlicensed raves that cops start thinking its no longer “mischevious kids making a bit of a racket in a field”, but its becoming “medium level organised crime” and it gets treated accordingly.