something I've been confused about for a while - people on this forum and elsewhere keep saying things like 'the reason Mrs Casey stopped running the festival was because they weren't making enough money/because people didn't buy season tickets/because they couldn't actually afford to run festival of that scale' etc etc (ok so I'm paraphrasing and have probably missed some points)

I thought Mrs Casey were perfectly clear at the time - they said they could not afford to underwrite the festival in case of another bad weather year. The implication I would assume is that they were ok with the year to year running costs of the festival, just didn't make sufficient profit to build a disaster fund... and if they had made sufficient profits to build a proper disaster fund no doubt there would have been all the whingers saying 'we're not getting value for money, where are all the profits going?'.

If we assume that this was true and that had disaster funds been made available from elsewhere Mrs Casey would have continued to run the festival, should the debate about future festivals not also focus on 'what happens when the weather is bad'? Sounds to me like there is enough of a market for the festival as it was for it to be able to build up to a similar sized event again once a new organisation has had time to bed in, but that if that is what happens they'll be stuck in the same position again as soon as the weather turns bad. Haven't heard anybody mention this aspect for a while, it just all seems to have dissolved into 'well I'm not going because it'll be crap...' or 'well I am going and how dare you be so negative...' etc etc ad nauseum.