We have received an email from Cleanevent, the company we read news about and made reference to in our previous posting, and that clears things up. As I correctly guessed the story had two sides…

Here is the email:

“Dear Sir/Madam,

A number of inaccurate stories have appeared in the media, and you have made reference on your website to the accommodation and working conditions of our staff at the Oxegen festival in Ireland. I wanted to write to you personally to clarify the facts.

Cleanevent UK brought 34 staff to the Oxegen festival, and informed all staff in advance of the accommodation arrangements. Our staff did not sleep on stable floors, but were in a clean, sanitised and refurbished stable block with heating, natural light, hot showers, and a 24 hour restaurant serving hot food with a recreation area. In fact, our shower facilities were good enough to be used by some of the performers at the festival.

I want to make it absolutely clear that every member of staff had a bed, and although there was a slight delay in delivery – just by one hour, each staff member had their own camp bed or air mattress.

The 3 staff members who felt dissatisfied with the accommodation were provided with free transport back to the UK.

Cleanevent take our responsibility to our staff very seriously, and we feel that the accommodation provided during the Oxegen festival was as good as, if not better than that provided at events such as Glastonbury, where contracted staff often sleep in tents.

We request that you publish a clarification on your website at the earliest possible convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Gibbons

Chief Executive Officer”

When I think about it, if living conditions were OK for 31 staff, how come they were not for just 3?! Isn’t that another example of the “complaints culture” that sweeps Britain? I guess it came from the States after a “bright” Yank successfully sued McDonalds for serving hot coffee and failing to inform consumers that COFFEE WAS HOT?!?!?!? What did he expect?!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 20:53 and is filed under News Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.