We are not to blame!

[j-j-j-j-joe!]

Everyone goes on about how it's all the 16 year olds who cause all the trouble, especially on the Sunday night, but i take issue with this. Me and my friends, all of who are about 16 or 17 had our tent slashed open by the 20-somethings next to us, and I don't think we were alone.

From what I saw, it was mainly people in their twenties, who seemed to appear for Dizzee and Blink then vanish afterwards.

[Welshyyy]

I agree with you..

we had a little fire going and some little bits of wood went over to the people next to us..

and when i come back from blink (my mate taking his bird to the drop of point) they wasn't back.. then when they walked back (mate still away) they said 'their so f*cking c*nts that burnt that f*cking wood, if their still f*cking here tomorrow i'll burn their tent down, f*cking tw*ts'

they didnt realise i was in the tent till after and these people was in their 20/30's.. all the 16/17 year olds around us was normal. no trouble at all.. hence why we packed up sunday night and went home..

[Johnno]

Age has nothing to do with it, a c**t is a c**t regardless of the year they were born in. Sorry to hear you had your tent slashed .

[t8yman]

there are knobheads of all ages. statistically there probably are more 16-17 year olds that cause bother, but thats only because the vast majority of people there are in that age bracket.

[Role Model]

Yeah for the amount of youngish people acting up, you had just as many older people being as bad. Although at Reading I thought the atmosphere on the whole seemed less prickish and more mature than last year, until the sunday, where it seemed the idiots had all turned up and there was a definite shift.

[Jaybles]

there are knobheads of all ages. statistically there probably are more 16-17 year olds that cause bother, but thats only because the vast majority of people there are in that age bracket.

[PurpleFire]

I noticed its people aged 23 - 27 mainly blokes in a group just trying to be young and act cool and be rebels!!! They are trying to regain their youth but at other peoples expence! Also depends on campiste! Green was fine no much trouble going on with tents and fires and people being idiots but mates did have bag pinched from tent whilst sleeping in it on the saturday all money gone!

I did wanna cam in Blue but when we arrived on friday i was automaticly put off by the sight of it and had a nice time in green apart from the thieft!!

[lharris92]

i was in red, nothing really happened and i packed up and left on the sunday night. there were a few idiots i saw when leaving but thats expected for one reason or another

[johnmcga]

I live near the Reading site so don't camp there, but most of the people I saw acting like w*nkers in the arena certainly weren't teenagers.

Top marks for being a twat go to the guy I saw in the main stage crowd last night, clearing a space around him by basically spraying a piss fountain about and flicking Vs at people. He was, I'd guess, mid to late twenties. I don't want to get too graphic here, but it was nasty.

In all I definitely thought the mian stage area felt a bit edgier last night. Frankly it seemed to be the beered-up-on-day-tickets crowd behind it more than anything else.

(Speaking as a pretty-much-past-it-for-Reading 29 year old, all the teenagers I bumped into, spoke to or generally saw were friendly and just up for a good time. I don't really buy the teenage hooligans at Reading thing.)

[liam]

26 year old who had his 9th year this year. This was the first festival I noticed an improvement in terms of behaviour over the weekend. This was also the first year I left on the Sunday night to avoid it and will do the same next year.

Security didn't tolerate any shit, which was great. Some 19ish year olds camping near us were confronted by security for throwing missiles; the 19 year olds thought it was innocent but things like that make problems escalate. There were much many more POlice Officers than last year which really made a difference.

I agree that not all the people who caused problems were teenagers, but as someone said before there are more people in that age bracket that go than older people. This is also the first year I felt old and couldn't keep up with everyone else!!!! But still had a brilliant time

[Scoobyben]

We had our gazebo stolen and found the charred remnants of it on the way out

Though we made up for the price of it by salvaging a 6 man tent that people had left

[micawber]

There are a lot of festival snobs, for want of a better expression, who love to have a pop at R&L because of the young demographic. To be honest, it feels a lot like jealousy to me. They have had their opportunity to enjoy their youth and probably regret that it's gone.

I'd echo some of the sentiments above. The 15-19 year olds are just being 15-19 year olds, having fun with their friends. I didn't meet a single one that caused me any concern or offense. It was the mid-20's who were more likely (not all, nor a majority!) to be anti-social and obnoxious, trying to pretend that they were 15-19 again but able to do it better than the real thing.

As an old git (no longer trying to relive his childhood, but just trying to eke out a few more years of fun), I thoroughly enjoyed another fantastic festival.

[sjp_121]

At Leeds we camped on the border between red C and Blue C

It was fine, we had no problem on the last night at all, its just we did get theifs on two nights. One stole £15 of my friend... and then the next one stole all our alcohol that we had left when we went to the arena.

Around us, we had 3 groups of 16/17 year old's and they all packed up Sunday morning and left Sunday night... and our tents where the only 2 tents left in a field of rubbish...was a bit odd to wake up to that in all honesty.

[D-Low]

We caught some guy coming out of one of our group's tents. Police got him and found about 20 mobile phones and a few ipods in his bag.

Apart from that it was pretty fine.

[joelovesleeds!]

Police got him and found about 20 mobile phones and a few ipods in his bag.

[ska_4_life]

Me and my mate have been to Reading festival the past 8 years.

Looking around the festival now, and it was like being in a muddy topshop. And I bet all the twats who were causing trouble were wearing topshop clothing. It makes me sick when compared to the good ol' days.

[therefused]

my mate had his tent, his whole tent with everything in it on thursday night. i guess someone turned up tot he festival with nothing, and decided that tent and clothes would do. apart from that, everything else seemed fine in green. a few fires this morning with gas canisters being chucked around in brown and red but thats all (reading, btw)

[adam1234]

Camped in brown at leeds and no trouble where i was except for a tent of lads who went to check if any1 was in my tent but a stern look did the job saw him jump on a couple of other tents but they went bed early luckily.definatly worth camping in brown and walking a bit further to the arena.Will never camp anywhere else now

[Budweiser]

Worst thing i saw was this f**king dickhead using his chair as batten literally pushing everyone out of his way near the NME tent for 303H! He nearly knocked out some girls, so i said to him "wtf are you doing" which he replied "Get the f**k out my way then" in one of the angriest voices you'll encounter. This guy was about 40 years old, fat and obviously had a chode because he was shorter than my waist. It's just the way he pushed everyone.. really pissed me off, so violent, i really wanted to push my jaw through his fat face.

[loscfestivals]

Camped in Brown at Leeds, we were kind of dreading it as we knew that would be all that was left at the time we were lookingt o get there but it was great.

Loads of space and no idiots. People actually looked out for other people's stuff as there were a couple of dodgy people hanging around as well.

I think my days of being in Yellow/white/red are long gone now, had problems the last 2 years with people basically trashing our tents and gazebo whether by accident falling on tents etc or on purpose like the clowns next to us last year who were about 30 but went round trashing tents and taking the pegs out of them??? It is a little bit further to walk but we didn't have any bother at all and could just get on with enjoying ourselves without some morons ruining it

[rexclark]

Like has been said, you get arseholes of all ages. People need to grow up. Breaking peoples stuff is not cool and throwing stuff on fires is definately not cool.

The organisers and staff do there best but we're still a long way from stopping these dickheads trying to ruin everything.

[choadus]

I feel sorry for any one who camped in purple at Reading, we went through it sunday night to be engulfed in a swarm (litterally over 1000 people) all chanting "angry mob" and mindlessl running through people's tents and smashing everything in order to get to the next fire they saw before burning it.

Every festival has this to some extent, but this was simply insane! I think the age is a problem, as most people there looked (even at a push) 16, so I guess it's all like "first time away from home, lets get high and pissed and trash stuff". Shame really.

One Mong even told me in a very certain fashion he couldnt wait to "torch the place".

Also met a delightful chap who decided it'd be a good move to piss on my mate in a Set on friday night, needless to say he went home with a broken nose.

I had a great time at Reading but doubt I'll be back purely because of the number of chavs and idiots who attend it. sooooo many twats in the Mosh pits, idiots on the campsites, antisocial people who seem to lack the "festival vibe". It's a real shame as the music and organisation of the festival was top notch!

I've never been to a festival where pykies decide it's a good idea to destroy our brand new gazebo for fun and dump rubbish in our tent. Let alone another one of our group who had his chair nicked from the tent. Obviously you get crime at festivals but it just seemed petty.

The people I met my age (22) all seemed sound and were most definately as peeved as we were by the foolish children that attend this festival. I say make it 18+ only like Bestival this year and be done with the sillyness. Download can do it and has similar bands, so it is clearly the demographic age group that is causing the problems...

[eoJ]

Another 16 year old who isn't a total c**t here. I stayed up all night on Sunday to make sure my tent didn't get burned/slashed/whatever. As my friends had either left or were sleeping, I did go round and watch the fires, but from a decent distance, and not chanting or throwing stuff on them, or any of that shit. I laughed when idiots got arrested though.

I did have one pair of girls (around my age) who were giving me horrifically dirty looks for standing relatively near their tent, (but not giving all the people who obviously tent-burning c**ts them) and later on, when the security had put it out, started telling me to f**k off, etc. Tbh, they sounded like a couple of spoilt brats.

I won't probably be attending next year though, too many c**ts. On Friday, I got £20 nicked. On Saturday, I got my phone nicked. On Monday, I was waiting at the drop off point, left my stuff for five minutes, well within view of a steward (and by that time there were only about 5 groups there, and there was no traffic to direct, so he wasn't exactly overloaded...) When I came back, all my stuff had gone, which was a pretty expensive tent, and a bright pink rucksack containing a good few hundred quids worth of clothes, money, etc.

I was at Glasto this year as well, as well as Guilfest, and didn't experience anything like that. Bit of a thumbs down for me, personally.

EDIT: P.S. forgot to mention the full cup of piss that hit me in the main arena.

Edited September 1, 2010 by eoJ

[choadus]

jesus dude you really did get a rough deal this year! All I can say for the future is to keep valuables on you at all times and never leave anything valuable in your tent.

I dont see what makes people feel that lobbing piss is a good idea, its disgusting! Some tit lobbed a bag of human crap at Limp Bizkit, I mean just why?!?!?!

[j-j-j-j-joe!]

I feel sorry for any one who camped in purple at Reading, we went through it sunday night to be engulfed in a swarm (litterally over 1000 people) all chanting "angry mob" and mindlessl running through people's tents and smashing everything in order to get to the next fire they saw before burning it.

Every festival has this to some extent, but this was simply insane! I think the age is a problem, as most people there looked (even at a push) 16, so I guess it's all like "first time away from home, lets get high and pissed and trash stuff". Shame really.

One Mong even told me in a very certain fashion he couldnt wait to "torch the place".

Also met a delightful chap who decided it'd be a good move to piss on my mate in a Set on friday night, needless to say he went home with a broken nose.

I had a great time at Reading but doubt I'll be back purely because of the number of chavs and idiots who attend it. sooooo many twats in the Mosh pits, idiots on the campsites, antisocial people who seem to lack the "festival vibe". It's a real shame as the music and organisation of the festival was top notch!

I've never been to a festival where pykies decide it's a good idea to destroy our brand new gazebo for fun and dump rubbish in our tent. Let alone another one of our group who had his chair nicked from the tent. Obviously you get crime at festivals but it just seemed petty.

The people I met my age (22) all seemed sound and were most definately as peeved as we were by the foolish children that attend this festival. I say make it 18+ only like Bestival this year and be done with the sillyness. Download can do it and has similar bands, so it is clearly the demographic age group that is causing the problems...