Mark E. Spliff

Whooooooooooossssshhhhhhhh.

Very good point mate. I was sitting in the front row of a Thora Hird concert when she turned on my redneck friend and criticised his 'Make America Great Again' baseball cap and Trump tee-shirt. I couldn't believe how racist she is towards the American people.

If you're too lazy to just type a few words into Google, then why do you think your view on an issue deserves to be listened to? In this case, you'd have found all the major newspapers and TV channels confirming that Glastonbury did indeed pull the Corbyn film, along with posts on this forum from me, complaining about it. The screening which you claim to have attended wasn't put on by the festival in the Pilton Palais, as planned: it was shown in the Speakers' Forum by Reel News as a protest against the festival's decision. And no - nobody on this thread is claiming Glastonbury has a pro-Israel booking policy. We're just saying the festival has been cowardly in collapsing under politically-motivated pressure because it's afraid of drawing false accusations of antisemitism. If you'd watched the Corbyn film, you'd understand the distinction between the two. And talking of people being too lazy to find out... Where you stand on the Paul Currie issue depends on what you know about what happened. Although I wasn't there, it's always worth digging deeper when people make claims of the 'we felt unsafe' variety. The risk with that sort of vague accusation is that it can become a free ticket to shut down voices you don't agree with. Like the rest of you, I wasn't present at Paul Currie's gig in Soho, but the link posted by CaledonianGonzo above includes an eye-witness account which I'd say looks very genuine - i.e. full of specific detail and not demonising the people involved. Again - I wasn't there, but in terms of evidence, this account must carry as much weight as the ones the Mail/Telegraph/etc. have been focusing on - i.e. 'this artsy comedy crowd all behaved like beasts and we felt unsafe.' Very few people will bother to look at that link, so I've cut and pasted it: "I was there on Saturday night. Will be forthcoming with my bias and say that I love Paul Currie and his act. I've seen him about five times over the last decade.In this show, Schtoom, he doesn't say a single word during the hour.The bit with the Palestine flag came towards the end of the show. He pulls out the Ukrainian flag from his prop suit case, to cheers from the audience. And then a Palestinian flag to further cheers. I can't remember what the song being played in the background was but it was something up standing up and not staying silent. He them mimes sitting down in front of the tv clicking through the channels at which the point the music switches off. He then mimed gestures to the effect of 'that's you that is', 'makes you think', and 'mind blown.' I know I don't need to explain how comedy works on this forum but it's clearly a bit about how people will display support through slogans but do nothing and forget about it in their day to day life.If you've seen him before you'll know he essentially acts a like conductor for the audience, getting us to ooh and aah and applause and whoop and boo.At the end, he urges everyone into a standing ovation using this tactic. Some people in the front row didn't stand, which is fair enough. He asked them why they didn't, if they didn't enjoy the show. I guess this could be considered goading, but it's what he's been doing all night. For example, pointing at people and miming their blank expressions and folded arms and asking them to smile and laugh. Or it could be genuine ask for feedback, you know like most comics do at the end of a gig in a "did you enjoy the show" sort of way.Now I didn't hear what was said, obviously the audience isn't miced up. But it was something a long the lines of that they did until he showed the Palestinian flag, or they didn't and especially after he showed the flag.Paul was a bit confused and rattled by it, as was the audience. He wasn't sure if they were being sarcastic or not so he asked them to explain. Again, I didn't hear the explanation. But it did make him angry.That's when he told them that if they didn't like they can get the f**k out of his show. And for anyone who didn't like it to also get out. A group of people did.As they were leaving, Paul said they had no idea what they were on about. Paul grew up in Belfast, he understands terrorism and bombing. He's lived through the troubles. Clear emphasis on 'lived' - if there wasn't a ceasefire, he wouldn't here.I think one other audience member may have also shouted f**k off. But it definitely wasn't 200 people shouting get out. Or free Palestine. People at the back of the room wouldn't have even known entirely what had happened.I think the audience was a bit confused, I was on row C (though Downstairs at Soho Is set up like cabaret so it's round tables rather than theatre seating). We weren't sure if it was or wasn't a bit. But when he spoke about NI people cheered for him. When he chanted ceasefire now, some of the audience also did.Also important to say that he condemn Hamas and say he hates terrorism, all terrorism.He was angry. Of course his is. He's showing solidarity for Palestinian artists, performers and clowns. That we wouldn't have enjoyed his performance if there wasn't a ceasefire because he literally wouldn't have been here.Also important to say that not once did he say anything about Jewish people or Israel. All he did was show the Palestine flag, and the Ukrainian flag, to mock people who say they care about a cause but do nothing. To be honest, he was mocking me.He asked to call it what it was. A genocide.What's really tedious about this is that it takes a quick look at his Instagram to see where his stance lies. I can't imagine paying upwards of £15 to see anyone without looking them up first, and especially to sit on the front row. But maybe that's just me.This has nothing to do with Soho. Paul has done this show for the three or four day run without incident.We left soon after so I didn't stay at the bar at the end, not sure if anything happened there.I wouldn't usually post here but I think it's so important to actually explain what happened, and the context of the actual joke that caused all this. Rather than people on twitter piling on something they don't know anything about.It's a pretty wild experience to have been part of an audience that is getting all this attention. Really clear to see how all this hate and misinformation spreads.Also, it's majestic to see that many of the people who are piling on, and one of the Twitter accounts that first posted about this is, are online Terfs. Tells you everything you need to know really.Paul Currie is sweet clown and must be protected at all costs."

This isn't Glastonbury's first rodeo, when it comes to buckling in the face of right-wing pressure and kicking out the good guys. When it scheduled a screening of a film exposing the lies behind the anti-semitism claims against Corbyn, it provoked a right-wing backlash in the Daily Mail etc. claiming that the film was antisemitic. Glastonbury caved in and pulled the film from last year's festival. Rather than posting dizzy comments about how you just don't know what to think about this nasty complicated stuff, you now have the opportunity to do better and find out for yourself. The film has been made freely available, so you can look at it and decide whether the Daily Mail & co. were right to call it antisemitic, and whether Glastonbury were moral cowards for pulling it:

This is a really important issue. The world is looking in disgust at a state which is currently killing women and children by the tens of thousands and weaponising the term 'antisemitism' to try to silence any principled criticism of it. It's incredibly depressing to see how effective this tactic has been - the world has been cowed in its criticism of Israel's barbarous acts for fear of being branded antisemite. Even on this forum, you can see the tactic working: the cowards that spend their lives in the political discussion section have long been falling over themselves to brand anyone who asks 'surely we can criticise the actions of a state without being called racist?' as racists. It's not just Paul Currie - there are many highly-principled, decent people who've been taken down by these false claims of antisemitism. One of the most outrageous is the Guardian's political cartoonist, Steve Bell, who for many years has been an outspoken critic of tyrants and butcherers, and someone who no sane person would ever accuse of racism. Yet, when the heat was applied, The Guardian backed down and sacked him. I'll support any pressure on Glastonbury to rethink this cowardly and wrong decision. It's tempting to just duck out of this debate for fear of also being called racist. The following video, which I've linked to before on here, explains why keeping quiet about this issue might give you an easy life, but is, in fact, just displaying cowardice in the face of the real right-wing bigots:

Thanks - good to get a definite answer direct from the cow's mouth. I reckon there'd be enough fans to make it work but it would be a risk: unlike someone like Mik Artistik, his stuff is so deadpan that anyone who didn't already know it would probably pop their head in, think it was a serious talk about farming and move on. Many years ago, I was literally the only person watching a reasonably well-known hip hop band playing in the Greenpeace field (in the large stage they have/had in a tent, with tiered seating.) That was pretty excruciating and I wouldn't wish it on Mr Partridge.

I'm ashamed it's taken me a month to notice someone has mentioned The Beef And Dairy Network on here. (I only spotted it after I did a Google search on Benjamin Partridge.) Anyhoo... yes: a Beef and Dairy Network event at Glastonbury would be a beautiful meeting of leylines. I get the impression that Ben wouldn't be particularly enthusiastic about staying in a tent for a week, but I'm sure that if he did, there'd be a respectable amount of support including from fans of 3 bean salad, You hear a lot of bollocks about how Glastonbury has lost its edge, but it's still there if you're prepared to go looking for it. It's whilst the corporate-sponsored headliners are keeping the masses occupied that you can still escape and find the true spirit of Glastonbury - e.g. last year, my special moment was watching John Hegley in the Poetry&Words tent, and the same goes for the music: e.g. in 2017, feeling part of the legendary dub of The Scientist in The Cave, rather than being at the back of the Tik Tok crowds for Radiohead/Sheeran/Foo Fighters.

There has always been a lot of bollocks spoken about this on here. Exhibit 1: 'the water table...' This has got f**k all to do with a muddy Glastonbury - it's the level at which the ground is completely saturated which, in the UK, is typically 100 metres underground. (If the muddy puddles in 2007 etc. were the water table poking above the ground, it would have been a truly apocalyptic situation for the farm and the festival-goers, and not just the miseryfest that it was.) Exhibit 2: 'the drainage.' This is just a set of localised infrastructure to get lots of water away from particular areas. If it works well, the only effect it will have is reducing the huge lakes that build up in a few specific areas. Drainage won't stop the mud, because soil will always become mud if you pour water on it and churn it up with vehicles and wellies, whether there's drainage nearby or not. It's not complicated. If the ground is still wet and slushy whilst the site is being built or the punters are on site, then it will be churned into mud. As we've seen with previous muddy Glastonburys, it only takes two or three days of the right sort of weather (sun/heat/wind/low humidity) for even the most waterlogged ground to dry out. This surface drying is a quick effect of the weather, but there's also a slower, constant drainage effect as the moisture works its way slowly down through the soil and eventually finds its way to the ground water. This drainage of the deeper soil levels has got nothing to do with plants using up the moisture, as has been suggested elsewhere on here - it's just down to gravity and the permeability of the ground. The only determinant of whether we get a muddy one is how wet the ground is in a very short window leading up to the ground being disturbed by vehicles and wellies. If, as you're wondering, we continue with the levels of rain we've had for the rest of the year right up to the start of the festival, then it will be very muddy indeed. However, it's more likely that as we move into summer, the rainfall levels will reduce sharply. There is always the possibility that we get unlucky, e.g. a spell of heavy rain in the week before/during the festival, in which case we'll have a mudbath. You need to check the forecasts mid June to decide whether to worry about that though. Edit: The British Geological Survey website shows that, from the nearest wells to the festival site, the water table is between 30 and 60 metres deep in the area.

A pretty depressing thread all round, but the positive I'm taking from it is that at least @clarketeshowed some balls. It's surprising how few will do the right thing in the face of a sniggering clique, desperate to impress internet strangers by joining in the newbie abuse.

I've had a few experiences of the sort that people often put in the 'paranormal' category. One was an object falling off a shelf, that really shouldn't have. The others were a few instances of thinking about a particular person for no apparent reason, and subsequently discovering they had died at that time. However, I don't believe in the paranormal. The object-falling-off-shelf would have simply been a normal physical effect in the environment, which I (to this day) was simply unaware of. Me failing to notice something is far more probable than any paranormal explanation. If I were to put the thinking-about-the-dying instances down to the paranormal, that would just be me succumbing to 'confirmation bias.' We all think about people in our lives thousands of times per day and it's statistically likely that, very occasionally, this will coincide with that person dying or being involved in an accident etc. When it happens, this has massive shock value, however we never remember the many millions of times we think of someone who doesn't happen to die. I, too, listed to 'Uncanny' as well as 'The Battersea Poltergeist. I absolutely despised both of them as I see them as dishonest clickbait - his 'seeing both sides' of the story is a con: he doesn't believe this stuff any more than I do. People love to watch stuff about ghosts and the paranormal, but we've already got all the explanations we need for the weird stuff that goes on. In some anecdotal cases, like my object-falling-off-shelf example, we might not know the full explanation for what happened, but we always know that it's immeasurably more likely that it was down to a non-supernatural explanation, than the laws of physics stopped working. Whenever claims of the paranormal are put to a rigorous test, they always fail. It's a bit dated, but if you look at 'James Randi' on YouTube, you'll see him absolutely destroying charlatans like Uri Geller, by applying a mixture of his ex-magician insider knowledge and a bit of scientific rigor. I do think there are things of wonder in the universe - e.g. I don't think humanity will ever figure out the 'subjectivity' aspect of consciousness - how can you connect a bunch of atoms together in such a way that they become aware? And there are fundamental aspects of cosmology and physics which will probably never be cracked by science - infinite universe? multiverse? etc. But the 'supernatural' stuff which will inevitably make Danny Robins his fortune, is a load of nonsense and he knows it.

Whilst I'm just as dubious about the idea of exclusive away-from-the-oiks glamping experiences, I'm really not a fan of this guy's take on it. He's doing something which you see in the right wing press and echo-chambers a lot: i.e. conflating the entitled twattish behaviour of one part of the Glastonbury-going demographic with the genuine concern for the environment/social justice/etc. of a very different part of that demographic. When you pretend it's all one group, you can then start pronouncing judgement on them all as being hypocritical, entitled, virtue signallers. It's a great way to pull the rug out from people who're actually trying to make some small contribution to the world, and it's well-understood and weaponised by the right: think about how our tabloids invite us to sneer at the hypocrisy of these green lefties each year by showing photos of the campsite wreckage left behind by scumbags who, in reality, have never claimed any green credentials and see festivals as any other coked-up night out.

This is the second time this week you've flagged this up, so I'll respond, however I think my austere forum presence over the years means there's only a very small group of my nemeses who'd be at all interested - I've never been a forum 'character.' My 'Toxic Avenger' sock-puppet account got blown by Neil years ago on its very first outing as I didn't bother trying to hide IP addresses or block/delete cookies etc. He called me out publicly but, unusually, didn't delete either of my accounts, which was a reflection on Stu - the bloke I'd set it up to annoy. This did also leave the 'Toxic Avenger' available to later annoy a certain 'km9' after he swooped in with a 'downvote the lefty' move, without actually commenting on whatever political handbag battle was being waged. But in the spirit of apologising for old forum crimes: sorry. Prior to the forum removing user rep 'badge of shame' from users' posts, downvoting could be a reliable source of fun: without fail, the users who gave out downvotes would also be the ones who'd be nailing themselves to crosses if someone dared give them one. Halcyon days.

I won't give you the full list, but one thing that would be nice would be clueless cowards not jumping onto every passing tabloid-supported bandwagon to win a forum popularity contest at the expense of genuine progressive politics:

I feel a bit guilty now. Stevie spends his entire life on this forum, and here's me setting him challenges that require him to prolong his isolation from humanity trying to come back with a pithy one-liner, regardless of whether it makes any sense or is consistent with any stance he's taken previously. So have this one on me Stevie:

Thanks for the reminder - that's a great example of you throwing around insinuations of anti-Semitism in order to brown-nose Neil. For those that don't remember, here's what was said, verbatim: