Things you hate IV

I'd have no trouble doing that if pushed. Ever seen Me myself and Irene?

The d*ckhead neighbours used to have a dog, a large loud one obviously, and I once saw it taking a dump in the shared access at the back of our street and asked them why they didn't bother picking it up. Their reply? We leave it for the foxes to eat!

I have a hundred plus stories about them.

 

Glastonbury.

I don't think anyone there wasn't a grade A ***** or a massive middle class glasto stereotype. "Yayaya we just had to catch Elton on Sunday ya, it was so mad, Isobel had such amazing sunglasses ya. People were passing out from sunstroke, it was like sooo hooot".

The flags are ********, all random made up nonsense.

I stuck Leftfield on iPlayer last night and it's was all people my age with bucket hats who still think they are 20 and in touch.

 

Paging @a19tgg...

 

I feel so sorry for the young people today. Glastonbury used to be a proper festival where half the people had got in without paying and there was little regulation to say the least. It was a proper expression of youth culture. Wild and free.

These days, the boomers have taken it over. Like everything else. Look at the old fossil acts from 40 or 50 years ago they put on now. Tuneless, voice-long-gone Paul McCartney, from 60 years ago the Rollling Stones. "People try to put us down! Talkin' 'bout ma generation!" Oh yeah wow dig it daddy-o. This year Sir Elton John, who although obviously a great man and a huge talent, is not exactly the cutting edge of youth sounds. "Wooo! Elton! Woo! Play Benny and the Jets Elton! Woo!"

Imagine if the generation before ours had done that to us. Imagine if they'd shown up en-masse and taken over the 1970s or 1980s Glastonbury.

"Woooo! Gracie! Woo! Play White cliffs Gracie! Woo!"

"Let's have a bit of Charleston! Woo! Charleston! Charleston!"


"Boiled beef and carrots Harry! Play boiled beef and carrots! Woo!"


Fackin' boomers. I'm ashamed to be associated with this generation.

 

The sooner they all die off, the better. Sorry Clive, but you're acceptable collateral damage.

 

100%. But he can have the memorial bench of his choice. Can't say fairer than that to a boomer.

 

In front of the pyramid stage. For the old fogies who can’t stand though the whole concert ?

 

Anything that involves crowds, camping, street food, queuing for a pee, Jo Whiley and pensioners wearing leather trousers

 

Sounds like @The undeniable truth ‘s recent “significant” birthday party.

 

Apart from 'crowds'

 

It was. Only close friends though. You just missed the cut.

 

Don't rule them out. Vorders is only 4 years off

 

The headteacher at my son’s school can be a nightmare for droaning on and adding needless minutes to any given evening.

My boy goes up to senior school in September, first meeting for introductions and some PowerPoint presentations went stunningly smoothly.

Everyone said their bit, clear and informative stuff followed by the head wrapping things up with a well dismantled Q&A and finishing bang on the hour mark. I nearly gave the f**kers a standing bloody ovation

 

Clearly going to be an unpopular opinion here but Glastonbury is one of the greatest weekends of the year. Sadly I've not been able to go for a few years now because it pushes up against my biggest work project of the year and I'm getting too old and knackered to go from one to the other.

So many people judge it by what they watch on TV, or by the headliners. That's like judging the entire sport of football by watching the Champions League final which, I think we'd probably all agree, is misleading and foolish and ignores multiple sub-genres that do not puncture the mainstream.

If you've been and didn't like it, fair enough, that's also a valid opinion. But the festival, the music, the food, the drinks, the quirky little corners of the site, the people, the creativity, the energy, the positivity, the sense of a shared experience is – in my opinion – one of the things of which Britain can be genuinely proud.

Yes, it's a bit middle class. It's too white. It's more expensive than it was (but still terrific value) and there are plenty of bell-ends. But in a crowd of 200,000 there's going to be the odd whopper.

Edit: In summary, whenever I see someone whining about how they hate Glastonbury, I just think of The Day to Day Sketch where Chris Morris interviews the woman who's curated a celebrity jam making festival. "What's so good about that?" he asks. "I think it's very worthwhile. Sebastian Coe made some jam this year," she says. "I HATE SEBASTIAN COE!" he says.

 

Was typing my reply and then thankfully you already replied and covered most of the points I was going to say anyway.

There are over 100 stages of varying size, and thousands of acts performing over a weekend. Of course the big names like Elton get the headlines, but it’s literally three acts on the Pyramid every year. There is plenty for everyone there, young and old. This year for example someone called Wizkid headlined the second biggest stage against AM, not my bag, but that’s very much an act for young people, and that’s just one stage.

The tickets a a free fall all, nobody has an advantage (other than cost if you can’t afford £350 for the ticket of course) The reason it skews much older than other festivals is simply that it’s so good. Nobody wants to go to say, Reading Festival, much past being a teenager, but people of all ages want to go to Glastonbury every single year because it’s the best experience most people can have during the year.

Yes you get some bellends, and yes you get a lot of middle class people there showing it off on Instagram, but I think that’s more of a shift in how society behaves as a whole rather than a Glasto thing. 15/20 years ago these types of people didn’t want to go to festivals, but then festivals in general blew up and became a normal thing to do for people who wouldn’t never have considered it, that isn’t specific to just Glastonbury. And how long has Instagram been around in the grand scheme of things and the need for people to show off their great lives? That’s not a Glastonbury thing either.

Generally speaking I always find people far nicer at Glastonbury than anywhere else.

You also often see this idea that it’s now too commercial and it’s ‘sold out’ this really isn’t true, there are a few carefully selected commercial partners like the Guardian and the BBC, then this year Vodafone provided the infrastructure for the phone masts, but this is a condition of their licence so why would they pay the huge cost to have it all installed when they can get Vodafone to pay them to do it for them? The food stalls are all independent, no chains, there no commercial branding anywhere, the on-site co-op isn’t even called co-op. The only ‘branding’ you see is for their three charity partners, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Wateraid and they give them £1m each from every festival.

The other major thing that sets it apart, and would actually also help make the festival cheaper for young people compared to other major festivals is that there is no ‘arena’. You can bring as much booze with you as you can carry and take it anywhere in the festival, you need to buy a drink from a bar all weekend if you don’t want to. Although it’s now an absolute behemoth of a thing, it’s just not really a commercial enterprise at all, I’m sure the organisers do well out of it, but the focus is putting on the best show possible for people and to help their charities.

Imagine how much extra they could make by banning people bringing booze in, or how much money they could make by allowing fast food chains in, or having each stage sponsored?

I have genuinely had some of the best times of my life there and created some of the best memories, the term ‘adult Disneyland’ is not far off the mark. I would say to anyone, don’t be put off my the general Instagram culture that pervades society now anyway, and the small snippets you see in the media, there is honestly something for everyone there of any age.

 

What contains the largest percentage of plastic?

1) The headware?
2) The trousers?
3) The model?

 

And each, very much to their own. I don't want Glasto to not exist. I just don't want to hear about it. In fact, we may pretty much agree, that live television coverage of live rock music festivals is a bit pointless. Watching a live band is not about how they deliver their songs in a better way than the endlessly produced studio recording we already own. It's about the experience and the connection of being there.

Watching Arctic Monkeys on television do a 4/10 version of Arabella is a waste of everyone's time IMO.

I'd also love to go to a Chris Morris festival.

 

I used to hate Vorders. In fact, my wife once screwed up an interview, as the boss brought up Carol V and my wife's instant reaction was 'yeah I can't stand her!' only for the interviewer to say, 'as I was saying, she's my very best friend in the industry.'

Lateley though, her tory bashing on twitter and what appears to be some of the most effective plastic surgery I've ever seen have started to soften me a little.

 

or harden. depends on what we're talking about

 

I wasn't aiming for you! Oh, sorry, you said 'cut.'

 

So her 10 year stint fronting a debt consolidation 'business' is all forgotten now?

 

Well, by me, yes it was to be honest.

 

I think the plastic surgery is meant to have the opposite effect on you.

 

Glastonbury does have a magical feel to it.

It’s also massive. Like a small city, filled with people looking to have fun, hang out with friends and be transported into a different world.

You could spend a whole festival not seeing any music and still have a great time.

But I also see everything negative that others say about it too. It’s all true. It just doesn't feel important when you’re there.

 

She also massively triggers Wendover Horn

 

People who don't want to go are the ones who whine about it. Well there's a surprise!

 

People who went 210,000
People in UK who didn't go >67 Million
I agree with you, those who went must be right

People like different things and that's fine, certain things seem to get proportionally more media coverage than they deserve based on the % of people that are interested.

 

Like, I dunno... er... football, for example?

 

or tennis - the next two weeks will be loaded with it two channels every day

 

Same as Glastonbury - anything the BBC has access to (not much) they will make the absolute most of.

 

I get Wimbledon, it's a big deal, but back to back Eastbourne or whatever its been this week? Fugg me! It's a real comedown after Bargain Hunt.

 

In fairness Glastonbury is probably 10x oversubscribed maybe more. The ticket sales are an absolute bloodbath. They had 2.5m active registrations last time they confirmed it a few years back (you have to register to buy a ticket). So it’s not just the people there that want to go, there are significantly more people not there that want to go, than are actually there.

Elton also got 7.6m live viewers, so there is clearly an interest, an interest significantly bigger than just those actually there.

 

People who can’t operate simple technology like self scan machines at the supermarket or choosing a payment method at a fuel pump, they’re not f**king hard!!

Yes there is an unexpected item in the bagging area because you’ve dumped your sports direct bag for life in there.

 

Use by dates on milk bottle tops. Surely in 2023 there should be a way of printing the date clearly in big text instead of pressing it into the foil. Are we supposed to take an impression of it like a mini brass rubbing?