Off-topic: cops cancel Big Green Gathering. Bastards
I know this is off topic, so feel free to skip, but I'm really pissed off. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of spending the summer touring various festivals, promoting sustainable transport. We did Glastonbury in the pouring rain, which was hard work, but we also did the Big Green Gathering, a genuinely awesome little festival tucked away in deepest Cider country.
The local bobbies have always had it in for the festival: it didn't take place last year because of ridiculous security requirements and made a loss the year before after shelling out to turn the festival site into Fort Knox. This year they went one better and sought an injunction against the landowners, which would have been heard today. Bear in mind that the event starts on Wednesday, and that the cops have known about the legal threat for at least three weeks, and you start to get an idea of what's going on.
Let's make one thing clear: bastards at the council are claiming it was cancelled for safety reasons. Bollocks. The security company, many of whom are ex-coppers with a 'special relationship' with the fuzz, were up to something, demanding loads of cash up front from the cash-strapped festival organisers and then calling the cops to say that no one would be keeping the hippies in line even though their extravagant cheque was in the post.
Anyway, this great little festival won't take place this year, which financially screws over a bunch of nice people who've spent all their meager pennies on beer for the Last Chance Saloon as well as some nice random hippy families who had it booked as their one summer holiday. I hope the tossers at Mendip Council are happy with themselves, but they're already on holiday in Malaga anyway. Grrrrr.
If you are as agrieved as I, why not email Suzanne McCutcheon, arch-partypooper at Mendip Council, to suggest that we use her back garden for a knees-up instead?
