Flagging.

I can feel a bit of a rant coming on, and like all good rants, it's been simmering away inside my head since I heard the BBC cameraman moaning that he couldn't get decent shots of the stage because of all the flags.





Let's look at it logically, from the standpoint of someone who is actually in the crowd at, ooh, lets say the Pyramid.

Unless you're at the very front of the crowd, chances are you've got a cracking view of the shoulders and stupid hat of the person stood in front of you. Something like this:






Is a flag going to inconvenience you? Possibly, if you're 19 feet tall, the flag could get in your way. But if you're 19 feet tall and stood directly behind a flag, lets' face it, you're not going to be particularly popular at any festival, anywhere, ever.


Perhaps, if you're really lucky, you'll be on someones shoulders, with a slightly better view. But again, you're still unlikely to be more than 9 foot tall and the majority of flags aren't going to block your view any.


And then there's the sensible crowds. You know the ones, they camp out at the back of the field on blankets, or on fold up chairs to soak up the atmosphere. These guys:





They're there to say they've seen whoever the band of the moment is, but they don't care about the act enough to want to get into the middle of things. They don't know the words, they won't be singing along and you'll be lucky to pry them from their chairs and bags of wine and piles of rubbish to get up and have a dance.

They couldn't actually care less if they could see the stage or not.



In fact, the only people inconvenienced by the flags are apparently, BBC cameramen. Who don't shell out for their tickets, who don't have to camp with the foot of the person in the tent next door to them pressing against their head, because the BBC block book all of the hotels within a 10 mile radius of the festival site. Who has had access to showers, a warm bed, running water, flushing toilets and showers.

And this guy is begrudging people who have got three hours sleep, huddled in sleeping bags, who have worn bin-bags and ponchos, who bravely use toilets that don't dare thinking about and most importantly, have paid the best part of £200 for their tickets, the chance to wave a flag around?


Yeah. I don't think so.