If some people on here would bother to calm down and be rational, I don't read either of the recent threads as ATTACKING SIDMOUTH and certainly my own website doesn't do this - there are different views on how events should be run, which audiences should be nurtured (at the expense of others), what ticket structures should be in place, and what are the possible consequences for the festival of alienating some groups of potential attendees. This is all entirely legitimate.

Whilst highly personal attacks and fake identities are never welcome I can tell you that the number of people who respond to comments on here (measured via click - throughs to my website) is a tiny fraction of total UK interest - so mudcat members (some of whom seem to think they are the prime voice of Sidmouth!!) would do well to recognise that they represent a very small fraction of total interest in the festival. Therefore, anything on here is likely to have a small impact if any impact at all!

So, if some people (or a person) has gone to considerable trouble to stir things up here, he or she has expended much effort to probably very little if any effect in the real world.

I actually thought Joan (Ruth) answered the ticket based criticisms on here very well - it is clear of lot of work has gone on to streamline ticket systems but wearing my hat of data analyst (previous existence!) I really do doubt that having 'on line real time data' of ticket sales is going to help much.

But I'll leave that one for now!