Press musings have suggested it's due to the mud (always mentioned in articles by people who've never fucking been).
Other theories are that it's lost its young audience because of the ticket-buying facilities favouring those with high speed internet connections and it's only the middle aged people going now. Or announcing Jay-Z as the headliner put off the middle aged people and only the young people are coming.
That twat of an NME editor weighed in, proving he's never been beyond the Babylonian parts of the festival by saying 'the coverage is so comprehensive that people can watch the festival at home on telly'. Munting around Lost Vagueness ripped to the tits on all kinds at 4am, at home on the telly? Yeah right.
Others posit the far more plausible point that there are loads more festivals now and their tickets went on sale earlier.
Still, there could be other factors helping the downturn. Who the hell can have been encouraged by this advert in The Guardian? It strikes me as a ruse to discourage punters and so ease the squeeze on the tickets. What other reason could there be?
What designer said 'I know, a radiating pyramid' and had a colleague look rapt and encouraging instead of slamming their face into the desk?
That quote; who believes in the literal Holy Grail or an actual individual historical figure of King Arthur? From that small band, who believes in them both? From them, what proportion think they're both buried at Glastonbury? It's just a random jumble of new-age gobbledegook from someone you've never heard of.
Beyond that, it clearly refers to Glastonbury the place, whereas the festival's a few miles down the road, closer to Shepton Mallet. Mind you, if they can confuse Glastonbury with Jerusalem then their sense of geography is fucked already.
But really though, consider how many people have had how much of an astonishing time at Glastonbury down the years. If you can't find a decent quote about Glastonbury Festival then you just haven't looked. Nobody could have done an advert this shit unless they were trying to.
10 comments:
Leaving everything else aside, it looks so old-fashioned. If I hadn't seen the '2008' on it, I'd have assumed it was a poster from maybe 1986, like a muddled mixture of Keith Haring and Sol Lewitt influences. it makes me think 'yuppie' anyway.
I've been thinking of going to Glastonbury again after a hiatus of 7 years or so. But the ridiculous faff of the ticketing system has completely put me off. You need a credit card to order. I've gotten rid of all mine, and my Irish debit-card isn't acceptable to their ordering system.
Oh go on Jim...come to glasto one last time, I'll be there
Annwen x
I'll definitely come to Glasto one last time Annwen, but sadly it won't be this year. Quite aside from anything else, I'm not sure it'd be wise to spend a week munted in the west country a month before my thesis deadline.
But I've not stood blissed-out in front of the Pyramid Stage for the last time. Don't worry about that.
I hope all's groovy with thee.
I'm working there again this year, I have no idea how anyone copes with the ticket madness.
Can anyone offer a lift from Leeds?
"It's just a random jumble of new-age gobbledegook from someone you've never heard of..."
haha! Really out done themselves with that poster. Terri-bule.
Greetings from Leeds. Was digging what you said about the impossibility of living to a set of morals or codes in reference to being vegan. I was vegan for 3 years, it's in no way impossible. However, time spent travelling Europe and the U.K made convience a factor (e.g. not having the option to cook all the time). The decision, as you said, should be down to the individual soul.
G.
x
Graham,
i'm not entirely comfortable with the implications in saying that the choice not to eat animals should be down to the individual.
There's something a little 'each to their own', that as long as you're doing what you can justify to yourself nobody should criticise you. It is clearly not a tenable philosophy.
What I do think is that people understand that we all do many bad things - we all lie occasionally, we consume resources frivolously, etc. But in these things there is a matter of scale. If we tell a small lie now and again it's not the same as being Tony Blair in the run up to the Iraq War.
Yet with eating animals, there's often an 'all or nothing' attitude, as if eating one Dairy Milk means you've broken your vow and are damned to vegan hell for all eternity to burn in a lake of flaming tofu.
Whatever reason we have to disapprove of eating animals - our health, their welfare, the resources expended to make them - it's obvious that reducing use means less damage. So a vegan who has the occasional haloumi salad is doing less harm than a vegetarian.
As you rightly say, when you're not in control of what food's available to you, your choices change. But the more control you have, the less excuse you have. and there is no reason for any of us resident in the UK to be eating animals.
and as it is a demonstrably damaging activity with no excuse, I don't feel that I should treat it as morally equivalent to not doing it.
"i'm not entirely comfortable with the implications in saying that the choice not to eat animals should be down to the individual."
Who should decide then? The state?
Your argument seems to sway back and forth between the rational and the emotional.
"it's obvious that reducing use means less damage."
Not necessary so at all. What about the damage caused from over producing GM based Soya that often inevitably takes the place of the meat? The deforestation this causes?
What I am opposed to is the same kind of moral judgements being made of those who chose to eat meat, by those who chose to base their diet on vegetables or meat-alternatives (not always). There is scope within an omnivore diet to be ethical to the same degree as "Ethical Vegans".
"So a vegan who has the occasional haloumi salad is doing less harm than a vegetarian."
Again, it's a matter of context. I see your logic to this argument but it's clearly not true in every instance. It all sounds very much like the U.N and their "producer/consumer" philosophy.
"… and there is no reason for any of us resident in the UK to be eating animals."
What are your views on locally sourced food? I don't mean the trendy, hot topic "sustainability" mantra (which isn't anything at all what it might appear). But one could argue that purchasing food from say, a local farmers market, is just as "ethical" as a strict vegan who has a large part of their diet based imported soya, grown with GM seeds, sprayed with the correct pesticides from the correct pharmaceutical companies and fully endorsed with aggressive economic tactics, via the WTO.
If it boils down to an emotional argument that you really just think it's just plain wrong, then that’s fine. But that is, as you well know, a personal belief, the same as a religious belief in the afterlife is. When you attempt to apply it to the entire nation, it becomes a like a religious dogma - which I think you were trying to distance yourself from with the "one-off treat" idea.
G
x
Who should decide then? The state?
As I hoped I'd made clear, what I was talking about was the implication in the phrasing, that all diets are a personal matter and that nobody should judge you for it.
"it's obvious that reducing use means less damage."
Not necessary so at all.
Point taken. I was generalising. By and large, animal products take more land and consume more energy than plant foods.
What about the damage caused from over producing GM based Soya that often inevitably takes the place of the meat?
The overwhelming majority of soya production is for animal feed. So-called British beef is commonly cows fed here on the GM soya grown on deforested amazon that you speak of.
Were humans to consume the soya directly instead of feeding it to animals who shit most of it out, we'd need a small fraction of present soya production.
If we are discounting animal autonomy and talking about resource consumption and land use, you are right that there can be many things in an omnivorous diet that are as ethical as vegan stuff, and conversely there are high food-miles, highly processed vegan foods that overconsume.
The consumption of animal products - like food miles, or local sourcing - is no guarantee of being a better moral choice. But, as a rough guide, it works.
Certainly, I'm willing to bet that the average omnivore's damage far exceeds the average vegan's, and that the ethical, sustainable omnivores you speak of eat a lot less animal procucts than the average, and that those people are a small fraction of a percent of the total, so their behaviour is not really what we're talking about when we speak of presnt impacts.
To the person with the smallholding who has a pig eating their food waste, I say well done. To the vast queues of punters at the supermarket checkout with their piles of burgers, I say something else entirely.
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