Cloud

Also, I remember hearing a few years back that Aberdeen Uni (and possibly RGU too) nominate a club to be the unoffical union, seeing as there isn't one. Liquid has always been a favourite (for some unfathomable reason) but I heard The Tunnels was nominated as the 'alternative' venue. If Moshulu/Warehouse/whatever can catch that gravy train in time for freshers week, that could work out nicely.

If I remeber rightly, Liquid paid off AUSA to be nominated as the 'union' - there was quite a big fuss at the time over it, because they didn't advertise anywhere else. Lousy thing for AUSA to accept, as Liquid ended up getting hundreds of gullible students decending on them that week and people tend to stay quite loyal for a while.

Are you an Aberdeen fan?

Yep, but I was always 100% behind Calderwood. He was responsible for some stupid mistakes, but he was steady and reliable - and had a decent knowledge of the European market. He also took a complete rubbish Aberdeen side into 3rd place last season.

Is there really any excuse for Aberdeen to lose 8-1 on aggregate to a team that finished 4th in the Czech league? McGhee likes his attacking football, but Aberdeen simply isn't suited for that type of football nowadays.

I'll take dull performances that get us 3rd place finishes and semi finals of cups over a disaster any day of the week.

Dear oh dear. If he felt like an idiot after the last game, McGhee must feel like a total bell end now.

Along with all the tossers who wanted Calderwood to go.

Wonder where they'll be when McGhee leads Aberdeen to a dismal 8th place?

The only one I can think of is Stillies, which is near Mount Street, which is notorious for selling stuff past its sell by date.

Notorious for selling booze to underagers too.

How well organised is it though if one "heat" has already taken place (look at the website) before it was advertised on this site - which has got to be the first place you would go if you were looking to advertise to bands in the Aberdeen-area?

o_O

I don't think it's a heat that's taken place, just auditions.

Quite why anyone would waste their time auditioning for a battle of the bands is entirely beyond me.

There are lots of very cool bars and restaurants that aren't featured in the tourist guides.

Pick up the In Your Pocket guide while you're there, they're probably the best guides as they're written from a pretty sarcastic point of view - and they aren't afraid to completely slag off places if they are rubbish.

I know nothing about Krakow, I've never been. But generally speaking, avoid the Rynek - you'll pay a ridiculous amount of money for something that you can get much cheaper elsewhere.

And try a milk bar if you want authentic food

I have a vague memory of this, but can't remember which one. Wasn't Mrs. Findlayson was it?

She was fucking awful, I remeber her leaving the room once to talk to someone, then the door opening. Of course, someone threw a rubber at the door, only to plant Comrade Innes (so named because of his ridiculously communist assemblies) right in the head.

She had absolutely no control though, and was diabolical at French - I remeber one class, she insisted that Chamonix was pronounced 'cham-on-NIX' (pronouncing the x as in English).

Class record for being thrown out stood at 8 seconds, which was a hell of an achivement. I think it was almost obligatory for someone to be thrown out during every class with her, but her classes were bloody awful. I got a 3 in the end, no thanks to her.

Actually, when you think about it, the teachers in Westhill were clearly more insane than the schoolkids.

You're a fair few years older than me, right? It went downhill. Not "insane", just nae very enjoyable.

Yep, in my time (and paranoid's, I'd guess!), the school was fine - but you could start to see the place becoming full of tossers with...let's see, the 1st years of 1999 was where it started to go really wrong - they were absolutely humourless dicks who spent the whole time thinking they were hard because they wore their hats backwards and because they smoked like big tough guys. If the name Eric Jack means anything to you, I'd blame that cunt for most of it. But most of them were just utter spoilt arseholes.

Actually, no, I know what the most insane thing was. Safeway Dave. I still don't know why to this day that they put him on the front door when he got the piss absolutely ripped out of him on a daily basis by practically everyone :/

Westhill Academy wasn't that bad. The spoiled little shits were irritating, but overall it was a non event really.

About the most 'insane' Westhill ever got was threatening to lock 1st years in the big lockers when they first got installed. Oh, and Recomio. Definitely not an insane school, though tormenting Rambo with subtle mockery was always great fun.

But really, all the fun stuff in Westhill happened outside of school.

Quick question if you have - how many sales did you get an hour?

Garlic Mushrooms On Toast

It's delicious. As I said earlier, you can easily swap the bacon for some chopped up bits of bell pepper, it works pretty well.

It sounds wonderful, I'm going to give it a try on Sunday, thanks!

I've got a great Nick Nairn recipe at home for massive stuffed mushrooms on toast that makes a really filling starter or a main course depending on portion size. Just swap the bacon in the recipe for chopped peppers and it's good to go. Could post it tonight..

Please do, it's impossible to get decent ones here.

Lance Armstrong mentioned him on his Twitter feed today.

Terrible news, but hopefully he'll take heart from LA and beat it.

Not since the days when they all had rottweilers called Tyson.

Put

I'm sorry to bring it up, but Rottweilers are fashionable in Poland among the nouveaux riche. Twats.

a sainsbury security guard is not a civil servant, he/ she is an employee of a private company. you are not obliged to show him your id.

i'd ask him a. why he wants it, b.ask his name and position in the company, c. under what instructions/ pcompany procedures is he asking for it... finally i might tell him/ her politely to fuck off.... (ie i wouldn't surrender it to him, and buy my booze else where... their loss of custom)

not enough people in the uk know their rights.... it is your responsibility to know yours. pretty much only customs officials, immagration and the police can demand to see your id...

I'd personally have asked him to call a manager and proceeded to ask the manager just what the fuck he was playing at by letting his jobsworth demand ID from a customer who was browsing. Chances are that he was operating on his own without being told to do it - and chances are that he would've been told to go home.

If it's company policy, then you walk out and go to Asda instead. I certainly wouldn't waste my time shopping somewhere where people were demanding ID for merely browsing.

Always works if you point out how much you could potentially spend and how you've been put off spending it in that particular store by the actions of some idiot. But give an idiot a uniform and the power goes to their heads - even if the 'power' is about as limp wristed as it gets.

Likewise, people are stupid enough to submit to a search by a security guard on the way out of supermarkets/stores. You're under absolutely no obligation to agree - and any security guard stupid enough to lay a finger on you would open up the supermarket to a very easy unlawful arrest claim.

Drug dealers,junkies and neds give Staffies a bad name.

Has there ever been a dog that says 'chav' more than a staffie?

We should also make the point that Red Battle changed the terms and conditions throughout each stage of the competition, to favour the bands who scammed the most money out of their fans.

But the MD says they didn't...

We have also never changed the terms throughout the comp! Most of you never bothered to even read the terms, or our info page, or the letter we send you with the tickets.

One thing I would like to mention - we were completely wrong in saying that bands must bring 50 people to the national final in order to qualify for judges vote. This wasn't fair and we removed this, and consequently made a loss on the national final. However, 1500 people still showed up and we had a great day.

Caught red handed.

I'm also curious to know how they managed to get 1500 people into a 1200 capacity venue?

You can still buy the big re-usable ones for about 9p each, then just chuck them in the the bin when you get home to prove your point. That's what I do.

If anyone actually believes that Tesco are cutting down on bags for environmental reasons and not to save cash, I'll be amazed...

Good post, Cloud. I think he'll probably check back to chart the progress of this thread.

More than likely. I wasn't going to say anything, but his threats of litigation really do deserve treated with the contempt that they deserve. It's always the line brought out with people with absolutely no experience of the legal system - and anyone who has even a passing interest in law knows that the threats are absolutely hollow. It's one thing when a company like Microsoft or the BPI threaten you - because they've got the money to drag you through the courts until you submit from how much it's costing you. But 'Redland' don't have the money to do it - and I doubt they could afford to even bring such a case to court in the first place.

Even obtaining the personal details of people posting to this site would surely cost quite a bit of money in obtaining the relevant court order - and what would they get except details of IP addresses and publicly viewable information? Then you'd be looking at a court order to force the ISP to reveal who '212.22.35.215' is - which again wouldn't be cheap, as the ISP would fight any such order to avoid setting a precedent.

Quite frankly, throwing around threats of litigation is a guaranteed way for your business to fail. Would anyone on here really do business with someone who would threaten you with the courts if you didn't do exactly as he wanted?

I've just had a look at the terms and conditions on the website, and several things stand out for me.

If you cancel any gig for any reason within 14 days of the date of the gig you will be billed for the amount of 50 tickets multiplied by the ticket price.

You do not have to sign any contracts when playing Red Battle, but you agree to these terms and any others we set before you in writing by playing and applying for Red Battle.

We reserve the right to withdraw any prizes from any band with whom we cannot reach an agreement on the specifics of any prize, this includes lack of contact from the band.

d.) you will be paid 1 per ticket sold, once you have sold a minimum of 50 tickets;

e.) you will receive rider, once you have sold a minimum of 50 tickets;

Why do I have the feeling that these terms and conditions were ripped off from the Red Stripe BOTB that had similarly dodgy terms?

We came across this forum on advice from someone looking after our interests. Although we have been advised to raise a claim for defamation, I thought I would attempt to address some of the issues raised here and see if we can get them ironed out first.

I wouldn't go down that route if I was you. There's enough people on this forum with relevant knowledge and experience - along with relevant connections. Raising any claim could end up ruining you as a person - and I think most people on here would pull very strongly behind the owner of the site if someone attempted such a thing.

My names Sam - I'm the M.D of Redland. I have absolutely no problem addressing every point you've made and also making our finances transparent so that you can see how they work.

Total income = 80,670

Venue hire avarages out to 350 for first round per venue, 450 for second round per venue and 500 for the regional finals per venue, + 2000 for the national final. All plus vat = 36,895.

All @ 12p per ticket + vat = 4,903.98

As the MD, perhaps you might want to explain why you were paying VAT when you clearly should have registered for VAT? If you're at all familiar with VAT regulations, you'll be aware that you should have registered and charged VAT on those ticket prices. Certainly I hope you've done so now.

For our local shows (shows that aren't Red Battle or dont have prizes as well), we require bands to sell 30 tickets to get paid. 30 measly tickets! That brings is 120, 30 of which is given to the band, 70 of which goes to the venue and 20 of which goes to us.

What kind of venues are you using that give you such a poor deal?

People dont seem to realise that this isn't actually a bad deal. Promoters have to pay for the venue! So what about getting a gig with just the venue itself? Aren't the venues the ones who would then take your door money AND the money made on the bar? Did you know that venues work on 8 per head for drinks? So if they have 300 people into the venue they make around 2,400 and then pay each band 30 or something? And we're the ones who are ripping people off?

This is where it's painfully obvious that you have absolutely no experience of Aberdeen - don't give us the bleeding heart story when ten minutes research would tell you that venue hire charges are *very* reasonable in this city. Things might be like that from where you're from - but they're certainly not like that here.

Here's an idea... go and open your own venue, start your own promotion company, create your own event. See how hard it is to make money or be stable in this industry and then come back and complain.

Again, you might be wise to investigate this city and this website a bit more before makng such comments. Many people here have put on gigs or worked/managed venues - you're certainly no better than most people on here.

Referencing the other thread, did anyone actually watch this?

It's actually rather well done, though it clearly shows him to be what he is. But there is a subtle point made throughout - his right to protest *was* curtailed by putting him in a pen far away from the tourists and the people that he was protesting about. For that reason, anyone with an interest in the rights of the individual should consider watching it.

Anyone watched this?

aye, I remember when it worked really well when you did gigs! seem to remember some shambolic gigs at moshulu!?

Let's see...

Both Captain Everything and Adequate 7 did well enough there to pay everyone something and pay the venue hire, as far as I remeber. They weren't roaring successes, but to pay the headline band what they wanted, feed them and give some support bands a chance of playing Moshulu (10ew for instance couldn't get a gig there at the time!) meant no-one left unhappy.

I remeber only one complete failure that was the definition of 'shambolic' and 'complete disaster', and that wasn't at Moshulu.

(oh, last gig I was involved in, it did 330 through the door in Drummonds before we had to close the door and about 50 people were turned away...)

Could be tricky work if you've never done it before?

Not if you've got common sense.

It really isn't hard to send a few e-mails, find a venue and find some support bands along with advertising the gig.

How does where he's living right now stop him from being a rude Aberdonian? I'm pretty sure he's from Aberdeen originally. Not that i'm trying to claim him for you lot or anything.

Yep, still an Aberdonian for all practical purposes. My permanent address is still Aberdeen, I still vote in Aberdeen and generally meet all the criteria, even down to birthplace and city of residence for most of my life.