Reading Roars!

According to Thames Valley Police, there were 27% fewer crimes at this year’s Reading Festival than in 2004. There were 436 reported crimes overall, listed as the following:

There were 83 arrests made, however, compared with 63 in 2004.

Click here to read the press release.

Dave Grohl of legendary band The Foo Fighters has hailed the Reading Festival as the world’s best:

Glastonbury is for smelly hippies, V is for the clean people, the f****** yuppies. The Reading festival is for dirty f****** rockers who come out to have a good time. Take it from your Uncle Dave I’ve been looking forward to this for a very long time.

Rock on, dude!

Click to read the NME article and Channel 4 write-up.

Train operating companies First Great Western and First Great Western Link are providing extra seats on 13 local rail services. The important improvements to morning and afternoon peak-time services are said to be a response to customer feedback.

In addition, a High Speed Train will replace the First Great Western Link 06.45 from Oxford to Paddington from late September, and four more Turbo trains have been redeployed by First Great Western Link across the Thames Valley.

Click here to read the press release.

Ask Jeeves UK has launched a new (beta) Map service, powered by digital map data provider NAVTEQ.

The user can enter a Street Address or a Town, County or Postcode.

A map of your chosen location is displayed on your screen. You can zoom in at Street, Town, County, Region and Country levels (there are 10 in total).

Interestingly, you can ask for directions, too. As this is Reading Festival weekend, I asked for directions from Bath Road to Richfield Avenue. The resulting map featured the advised route highlighted in purple. A set of directions are displayed beneath. This map is, of course, printable!

Click here to use this new service.

Guardian Media Group (GMG) Radio has increased its shareholding in Reading 107 FM to 60.3% from 37.8%. The other shareholder is the Goodhead Group plc, controlled by Reading Football Club Chair John Madejski.

John Myers, GMG Radio Chief Executive, stated:

We were one of the original shareholders in Reading 107 FM and are proud of its achievement to date so it makes sense to increase our stake to a level where we can now offer further management support. There are no plans to change the station’s name or format. We aim instead to increase the level of local output and invest in marketing in order to grow the audience further.

Click here to read the GMG Radio press release.

Off to Reading Festival? Reading Borough Council have put together a dozen tips on ensuring that you have a good time, such as

Reading has excellent rail links with the rest of the UK so we would strongly recommend festival-goers beat the traffic jams by using the trains.

Good luck with the trains.

The Council’s tips can be seen by clicking here.