White. And RESOLUTELY middle class. Working class kids can't afford Glasto.
Worse, Radio 4 and Nick Robinson's now daily Glasto orgasm.
Can't understand why ANYONE would want to go...
Yours, a survivor of real festivals. Tents? Maybe a few - but what's wrong with a bin liner ? Showers? What? Loos that work? What? ATMs? Mummy and Daddy? What?
Great piece Ed. Also I see "post-Protestant" and "the book has a very Calvinist idea of people either being saved or damned" here and I like where all this is headed. :D
What's really uncanny valley to me as an American seeing British people bemoan the "whiteness" of things is that it's all obviously a ridiculous American import. This sludge sort of makes sense in the USA (but is still, mind you, totally fucking stupid) since we're only 60% white or 70% non-Hispanic white or 65% white-identified bodies in white spaces, or whatever, but the UK is like 85% white, 90% white outside of London, and 95%+ white outside of the handful of biggest cities, yes? And that last datapoint notwithstanding, I've already seen Brits importing America's inane "the countryside is too white" thing for the English countryside. Specifically, Black Lives Matter UK (which really shouldn't even exist; bobbies are not slaughtering black people) has complained about it.
Unfamiliar with this Lenny Henry chap but I looked him up and he's going to be playing a... wait for it... black hobbit in some woke Tolkien raping on Amazon for purposes of "representation." OK, that's enough of this stuff for one day I think. Anyway great piece per the usual!
In the comments to NS Lyon's substack yesterday, a reader recommended a new substack by Ron Henderson, a PhD student at Cambridge who came out of a broken foster family in the US (what a journey!). One of his other substack articles was about how luxury beliefs are new forms of status symbols: https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for
Worth glancing over. There's certainly some truth to the argument that beliefs have replaced status goods as distinction marks highlighting a privileged group. And I will say I've long observed that while liberal white guilt seeks atonement, it also simultaneously highlights the privileges of the said group of people, so there is an element of amour propre hidden within liberal white guilt, aka a subtle, even unconscious, smugness in being privileged enough to need to atone for it. After all, wealthy liberal whites are quite selective in where they feel guilty for their privileges, for example, rarely around poor white people....
Your mention of 'birdwatchers' is very painful for me, as being one I can remember the time when the field was literally just a 'hobby' (nothing demeaning about that) with a related 'academic' area ('ornithology'). To me birdwatching was a purely aesthetic pleasure (naturally I was in favour of preserving aesthetically-pleasing things in the kind of pleasant envrironments in which they occurred, but this was only rarely a matter of 'the political' (understandable legislated conservation of birding areas etc.)).
I have recently effectively quit an online forum simply because now all discussions are loaded with ''GlastoMan' and all of the associated prejudices of the type. The same pattern of self-righteous anger and refusal even to just listen to dissenting arguments is now the norm. People who fly or drive 400 miles from S England to see one rare bird will lecture people about 'emissions' and 'global warming', entirely unaware of their hypocrisy (sacrifice seems to be exclusively for others).
White. And RESOLUTELY middle class. Working class kids can't afford Glasto.
Worse, Radio 4 and Nick Robinson's now daily Glasto orgasm.
Can't understand why ANYONE would want to go...
Yours, a survivor of real festivals. Tents? Maybe a few - but what's wrong with a bin liner ? Showers? What? Loos that work? What? ATMs? Mummy and Daddy? What?
'eff off.
https://www.mdmarchive.co.uk/artefact/4588/BICKERSHAW_FESTIVAL_PHOTOGRAPH_1972
Great piece Ed. Also I see "post-Protestant" and "the book has a very Calvinist idea of people either being saved or damned" here and I like where all this is headed. :D
What's really uncanny valley to me as an American seeing British people bemoan the "whiteness" of things is that it's all obviously a ridiculous American import. This sludge sort of makes sense in the USA (but is still, mind you, totally fucking stupid) since we're only 60% white or 70% non-Hispanic white or 65% white-identified bodies in white spaces, or whatever, but the UK is like 85% white, 90% white outside of London, and 95%+ white outside of the handful of biggest cities, yes? And that last datapoint notwithstanding, I've already seen Brits importing America's inane "the countryside is too white" thing for the English countryside. Specifically, Black Lives Matter UK (which really shouldn't even exist; bobbies are not slaughtering black people) has complained about it.
Unfamiliar with this Lenny Henry chap but I looked him up and he's going to be playing a... wait for it... black hobbit in some woke Tolkien raping on Amazon for purposes of "representation." OK, that's enough of this stuff for one day I think. Anyway great piece per the usual!
In the comments to NS Lyon's substack yesterday, a reader recommended a new substack by Ron Henderson, a PhD student at Cambridge who came out of a broken foster family in the US (what a journey!). One of his other substack articles was about how luxury beliefs are new forms of status symbols: https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for
Worth glancing over. There's certainly some truth to the argument that beliefs have replaced status goods as distinction marks highlighting a privileged group. And I will say I've long observed that while liberal white guilt seeks atonement, it also simultaneously highlights the privileges of the said group of people, so there is an element of amour propre hidden within liberal white guilt, aka a subtle, even unconscious, smugness in being privileged enough to need to atone for it. After all, wealthy liberal whites are quite selective in where they feel guilty for their privileges, for example, rarely around poor white people....
Your mention of 'birdwatchers' is very painful for me, as being one I can remember the time when the field was literally just a 'hobby' (nothing demeaning about that) with a related 'academic' area ('ornithology'). To me birdwatching was a purely aesthetic pleasure (naturally I was in favour of preserving aesthetically-pleasing things in the kind of pleasant envrironments in which they occurred, but this was only rarely a matter of 'the political' (understandable legislated conservation of birding areas etc.)).
I have recently effectively quit an online forum simply because now all discussions are loaded with ''GlastoMan' and all of the associated prejudices of the type. The same pattern of self-righteous anger and refusal even to just listen to dissenting arguments is now the norm. People who fly or drive 400 miles from S England to see one rare bird will lecture people about 'emissions' and 'global warming', entirely unaware of their hypocrisy (sacrifice seems to be exclusively for others).
Another great article, Ed. Nothing to add, really. Just grateful for the insights, which are many.
We need to talk about hillwalking. If no one has written that one yet I’d be surprised.