Electric Picnic 2021 - Cancelled :( **No Ticket Sales / Requests **

No mention whatsoever of 3k jobs for the community.

The Irish Times in 2017 assessed EP as contributing €36m to the Irish economy, €16 of that directly to Stradbally. Given the steadily increased capacity the figure for the town iis surely above €20m per annum.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/electric-picnic-contributed-36m-to-ireland-s-economy-1.3016462

Not to be sniffed at and something the local councillors seem startlingly unaware of. I understand their duty of care to the local community but their pronouncements on crowd sizes at previous festivals, the outdoors nature of the event and and the financial boon to thee area displayed an utter lack of research on the festival. That carelessness or laziness is not conducive to good political representation for locals.

He played a sold out gig in Mindfield a few years ago. I messaged the These Charming Men lads to see if they had anything coming up in Dublin. They're slated for October 2nd in Whelan's apparently. That would be the spot for a meet up if things are up and running by then.

Was in London over the weekend, saw Shanti Celeste indoors at a club on Thursday and then Floating Points outdoors at a festival on Saturday. Needed self-declared antigen tests for both. Everything is pretty much back to normal over there. There's absolutely zero reasons why EP shouldn't go ahead. Even if there was a Covid outbreak on site the odds of anyone getting seriously sick if they're fully vaccinated are minimal. As stupid as Borris' freedom day sounded at the time I'm actually thinking that it's the right thing to do. It is either now or never to fully open. Looks like the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales are coming to the same conclusions as well.

Why should central government have squashed this months ago? For all you know the roadmap might show a return to live outdoor events by the end of September. Indeed, if on the off chance the Government follows Scotland's lead as they previously intimated, that's exactly what will happen. (I'm not by any means saying they will of course.) Laois Coco could have granted the license subject to health conditions at the time being met.

I stayed in the town in 2019 for the first time. Between accommodation, food, coffee and goods I spend €420 in Stradbally itself. Most festival goers don't but packed pubs, cafes and shops show that many do including a high percentage of the staff and artists. If the attendees spent a third of what I did the take for the town would be €9.8m.

How much are the Cosby family being paid for the site? How many ad-hoc B&Bs are available and houses rented out alongside the usual accommodation?

The owner of the large Napper Tandy's pub (two indoor bars and a large garden for GAA matches) told me their take for festival week (not only the three main days but staff and crew for several days beforehand) is equal to three months normal taking.

Add in taxis, buses, locals selling stuff on stalls, local contractors employed, electricians and other tradespeople benefitting. And I can't confirm this but wouldn't Stradbally Council get some cash for the inconvenience?

For a full breakdown you'd have to contact the Irish Times but €16m not a huge stretch with 70,000 visitors and 25,000 plus staff and artists in the area. Hence I imagine a fair bit of unhappiness on the part of many Stradbally and Laois locals right now.

So central government basically comes out and says it's not going to happen, then three weeks later potentially issues guidance that allows similar events to happen? This was entirely down to the council and they made the wrong decision and it seems like the penny is dropping now. It wasn't their call to make on health grounds and they've put themselves unnecessarily in the firing line. They could have granted the license and let it run to Government to have the final call.

Phrases like 'this thing is not done yet' are just truisms at this stage. This thing is never done, it's going to become endemic. This is more or less as safe/good as it gets. We'll never have higher vaccination cover than now.

So who's in the lineup this year, Chems, Liam Gallagher and Coronas are definitely in there, who else?

I suppose some of this will be unchanged too apart from the American acts.

Sweden the anti-vaxxers/conspiracy crew example of choice comparison. A bad one. And I don't mean that as a personal dig. It's just regularly used as an example of how to do things differently and was an abject failure hence the King's intervention to change policy and the ongoing mess over there.

They had 43% greater deaths than Ireland (1,436 per million to 1,009), a shocking figure for a country that is 6.5 times greater in size than us (450m sq km to 70m sq km) with just over double the population. The smaller population density should have protected them as it did neighbours Finland, Denmark and Norway. Sweden had 3.5 times the death rate of Denmark (439 deaths pm), 9.5 times that of Norway (147 pm) and 8 times that of Finland (177 pm). Sweden is not a good comparison. Sweden's idiot population killed their population and now there are several regional lockdowns dotted around the country.

The UK had double the death rate of Ireland (1,911 per million to 1,009) and the British figures are greatly underestimated, probably closer to three times given the excess death (year to year) figures. The tories hid deaths by not counting any community deaths at first and not doing tests on all the dead. Thus people who died in care homes, home residences and even NHS staff or care workers in the community weren't counted unless they died in hospital. Whatever our mistakes on this side of the sea we handled things greatly better than the British. And continue to handle things better.

The initial failure to protect nursing homes was a catastrophe. Xmas was a mess. There was much dithering. But overall, given what the government, NPHET, NIAC and the HSE had to do to combat an entirely unique situation they have done very well. And in comparison to Sweden and the UK they have done phenomenally well.

Those useless pricks will have their summer holidays before anything is done anyway, it think it'll be too late.

Im genuinely surprised there hasnt been more of a backlash against this being cancelled.

For long enough we all heard about protecting the elderly and vunerable, and the frontline workers, and then the importance of vaccinations which young people have answered.

With croke park allowing 40k in its a double standard whats happening.

I hope the powers that be get some cop on and fast.

in fairness, the match thing is a false comparison