I just thought to myself does anyone on here actually post about anything other than Speed or not Speed - Good or Bad organisation. Well if you do feel free to post it here . Please no Whingers (although i can talk really), but there are plenty of other places to do that and NOT HERE !!!!!!!

If there is one thing I hate it's happy people....I was born to moan (least thats what I tell the mrs)...lets face it.......it was rubbish could be so much better, appauling, miserable and oh the speed they were going, stupid, dangerous, barbaric and foolish but worse still the attitude of the police malicious, offensive, money grabbing and wicked. As for the idiot, plonker, vauxhall driving.....tw@t who blocked the poorly organised, deshevilled excuse for a car park run by yellow bibbed.... ....

Point taken! ...........mind action was BRILLIANT!

i honestly thought the organisation was very good... cant get anywhere without a ticket that we all had to pay for...

wanna bet?

not that i seen antway buddy...

nope, not many ants in wales this time of year.

If you mean you didnt see many people without tickets? Thats because you were in the ticket only areas. That kind of makes sense dont you think.

[Edited by johnfelstead - 11/15/2003 1:00:35 AM]

Point well made John!

We saw loads of people wandering all over the stages, coming in on quad bikes, scramblers, off road vehicles etc. I'd stake my mortgage on most of those being without tickets!

Chris

What they've got to improve is parking. If they are going to allow people to park overnight then this needs better organisation. Parking guys should be there overnight as well. Many of the problems we saw were due to daft parking. A bit of organisation would not have gone amiss. Perhaps they should also consider separate areas off the stages for overnight parking?

And please get rid of the morons with fireworks!! I really like them being set off 10 ft from my head - not. Funnily enough I went to the rally to watch the cars not to get 2nd degree burns. The prat who was standing near us at Resolfen who thought it was a great idea to set off bangers just as people were walking past - sunshine you don't know how close you were to being flattened by my Met Police TSG mate!!

Chris

i tmay all be irrelevent now anyway.... judgeing by the reaction from the FIA about the situation with the south wales police......any views on that,...?

what images/smilies/mad.gif a miserableimages/smilies/mad.gif idea for a topic. If we cant have a good moan about how things aren't like the good old days :(then we might as well pack it in now:( If the organisers let off official fireworks we could all enjoy them - but I left early on one stage last year coz a d*ck head was letting off too many fireworksimages/smilies/mad.gif If the rally will be held on a weekend with twenty other local sports taking place then course there'll be traffic and policing chaos. See, it's good to moan:D oops, gotta go, think I've popped a blood vessel;)

I would honestly say that the traffic is not as bad now as it was back in the 80's during the Grp B era. It was horrendous then with literally miles of queues to get into the stages.

Chip

There were thousands of people on stage without tickets Chris, i didnt see one of them standing in a dangerous position. In a lot of ways it was like the pre spectator pen RAC's where you would see 2 or 3 people together, scatered over the entire length of the stage.

Some places where the spectator pens were much more open, you would find lots of people without tickets chose to stand in these areas too, because they had good viewing and you werent 10 deap fighting for a glimpse.

The reality is there is nothing the organisors can do to stop the locals getting their OS maps out and going for a hike, or ride on their quads. There is nothing they can do to stop the local farmers opening their fields for car parking and charging £10 a car, just like in the old days. The organisors deliberately remove the stage details from the programms to stop this, but as they use the same stages every year, plus the same stages events like the Red Dragon use, it's not rocket science to work out where you need to go.

I saw nothing but responsible spectating from those who chose to hike into stage, the marshals didnt have a hard time of it telling these people where to stand either. The safety cars didnt have any problems with where people stood either, or if they did they stopped and sugested people move to a diferent location, which they did. There was no mention of stopping the stage to these people because they were out of the pens, if that policy was taken every stage would have been cancelled. To me it seems common sense prevailed and the organisors should be commended for that.

I met plenty of people in non oficial places on stage, amongst them Luis Moya and David Lapworth during shakedown, they watched from a spectator prohibited area, just like hundreds of others did. Were they in a safe area, absolutely.

Maybe the more logical aproach to this rally, is to have spectator areas for those who want them, because there is obviously a demand for that type of hand holding for newbies or the corporate clients, and the aceptance that hardened spectators will go and do what they always have, get the OS maps out and do some hiking. That certainly was the reality of this years rally from what i saw. From one of the points i spectated on, i could see walters arena in the distance, it looked very empty compared to last year, epsecially for the second run through.

On a totally seperate note, what was the idea behind that masive marque near the Rally HQ, Start area. That was an apauling design of building for a rally. It had solid walls allong its full length so you couldnt see what was going on during the periods the cars were being readied for the start plus parked up post super special etc. That was very spectator unfriendly! They should take a leaf out of the monte carlo, where scrutineering is open to viewing with waste high bariers, non of this solid wall rubish or 10 foot high 1970's football spectator control fencing Rally GB used this year.

John, to be fair, the scrutineering was open to the public with waist high barriers seperating the public and scrutineering..

Agreed regarding the overnight parc fermes though..

Paul..

I managed to get to 3 stages (Resolfen & Rheola twice) and didnt buy any tickets, never have bought any and never will. There are a myriad of ways to get into the mountains and its impossible for the organisers to prevent people getting in for free.

If anyone would like a few hints to get into the Rheola and Resolfen stages next year for nothing let me know ;)

Thats good to hear Paul. Shame the rest of the event didnt follow suit as most species dont get down in time to catch the cars in scrutineering.

John,

I have to disagree with you on the fencing at parc ferme..... although the marquee was a bad idea, the fencing was the same as it has been for several years, and is a necessity to ensure the security of the vehicles in Parc Ferme, as well as to stop teams from being to gain access to the vehicles whilst in parc ferme, as only the drivers and nav's are meant to have access. This is difficult enough to enforce even with the fencing (trust me I was there as a marshal).

If they do have to use the marquee in future, it would be nice to have windows in the side walls, like there were at either end... rather than everyone fighting to look through the fire escape doors!

[Edited by Senior Marshal - 11/16/2003 4:43:54 PM]

OK, point taken on the fencing. Maybe an idea would be to have had some waist high bariers for the start that were inside the main fencing, that way you could talk with the drivers etc without it looking like a prison visit. Then once the event has started you restrict access to outside that main fencing and becomes a pure parke ferme area.

I must say the sight of people cramming around the doors to the marque made it look very much a them and us afair, very poor PR.

Well we bought our tickets, but nobody at any of the stages so much as looked at them, so I guess we could have bought one between us and taken in a car full!

From a girly point of view the only good thing I can say about the pens is that there were loo's, but think I'd rather cross my legs and get in a better spot!!!!

HEY WHY DON'T YOU ALL LOOK AT THE POST HEADING BEFORE YOU POST YOUR MESSAGE. I KNOW THAT I'VE HAD MY MOANS ON OTHER THREADS BUT THEY WERE THE RIGHT THREADS AND NOT ONE THAT STATES QUITE CLEARLY IN THE HEADING ( NON SPEED & SLAG OFF THE WALES RALLY GB ORGANISATION THREAD )

Jonny - if you wanna live in a place where people don't have freedom of speech, move to china..... people who have posted 'moans' in here are only replying to what previous posts in this thread have said...... you can't reply to something in this thread by posting in a different one...... or am I not understanding the theory of a message board.

Just chill out a bit!!!!!! ;) :D

Fair point Senior Marshal but i just thought thast maybe people would just like to talk about the recent events and not just whinge and moan but obviously thats not the case as this thread aswell has been taken over by the Whinging brigade so you just carry on don't mind me.

Ok Jonny_5. I went to Margam Saturday, and cheered Mildred on, standing in a warm comfortable spot, good marshals - and a chance to pay respects to the old mini. Sunday, stood by the winner's enclosure - next to some norwegians. Nearly had Petter land on my head, Saw Tommi and Mcrae for the first time ever outside their cars.....had good facilities, bought some nice WalesRally GB merchandise - got to Cardiff as makkinen was leaving and blew my airhorn at Gwyndaf, Tony Jardine, and Neil Burgess.........went home with some regrets about not getting autographs or being able to do more speccying this year (one bit of tarmac aint enough!)-but FANTASTIC MEMORIES:) Still that doesn't mean that it's all sweetness (sweetlamb even:D) and light - and you have to accept that we all have pretty reasonable expectations for RallyGB delivering the goods....have a look at the other threads....and you'll see why it's all hit off like it has:D

Well there we go then i guess I lasted for 67 posts. Enoughs enough I'm off to see if i can find any more sence on other message boards and leave all you whingers to carry on

Cheers

Jonny__5

:confused:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mind boggles. :D

Oh err soooorreeeeeeeyyyyy!!! Hey just like all good conversations starts off as one thing ends up someplace else, will concider myself in the naughty book your honour! Would'nt life be lovely if we had nothing to moan about.

On a different note entirely, were any forum members in O'Neils in Bridgend fri or sat night? Not sure if i've spelt that right was a little inebriated at the time! Quite a few rally logo's around but did'nt see any smarties!

If you want a non moany place - go to the Smarties Community on MSN - we've gat a fair few WRGB regulars on ther now, and everyone is getting along well with each other. (And we don't tollerate excessive whinging!!)

Theres plenty of pictures to look at, and you can chat 'real time' with other members using the chatroom or MSN Messenger:

http://groups.msn.com/WRGBSmartiesCommunity

Welsh police camera vans are my favorite things.mmmmmmmmmmmmm