Guest Post: Glastonbury

Maybe he is just pissed off that he didn't get tickets and a former Lady Bear did, but TB hasn't been able to escape chatter about Glastonbury today. Yes the Boss is playing, and yes TB has wanted to see Brucie strut his stuff for a decade, but apparently there are other reasons to hate Glastonbury other than not having tickets.

Continuing

Liberal Vision

's crusade against Oxfam, their Director of Development Sara Scarlett explains why any libertarian should avoid this hub of statist evil:

Ok, I’ll admit it. Festivals that involve camping are generally not my thing. I woke up at the last one I went to with the stench of vomit so acute with sharp alcoholic top notes that I could not move without retching.

But I will gladly forsake hot showers and a comfortable bed and endure dodgy loos and questionable personal hygiene for a good dose of rock.

I love rock. I LOVE rock. I love my rock music like this child loves colouring:

Rock music is society’s release valve. Rock is for raw emoting, rock should be angry and sexual –and political. Rock has always been political.

Glastonbury officially describes itself as a “contemporary performing arts” festival rather than a rock festival which is just as well as in my humble opinion rock should be impulsively anarchist and anti-establishment in its expression. Glasto, in collaboration with Oxfam, instead promotes a very one-sided ideology, endorsing heavy increases in government and a program of bien pensant “ethical” guidelines.

How can an event thought of as a rock festival be even remotely anti-establishment when pushing for bigger government and an array of lifestyle rules? The festival is affiliated with an organisation that calls for more state, more establishment in spite of the plight that overbearing governments continue to inflict on the poorest people on the planet.

Overt anti-liberal ideas are everywhere at Glastonbury. A few years ago children were innocently ambling around wearing "Fair trade not free trade" t-shirts, seemingly turned into walking adverts OPPOSING the means by which 400 million people escaped poverty in China. Yet apparently this is not as good a means of beating poverty as quasi-hippyish middle class kids buying Fairtrade coffee. Fairtrade products are

promoted heavily

at Glastonbury, and in fact on the festival’s information page it clearly states that:

“All tea, coffee and sugar sold by traders must be fair-trade.”

That sounds like a diktat to me; yet this is little surprise, as Oxfam is a major shareholder in Fairtrade products, owning 10 per cent of the leading Fairtrade brand Cafedirect. Oxfam heavily promotes these products and rarely acknowledging this vested interest.

Oxfam is a massive multinational organisation, heavily funded by many governments. Oxfam GB was granted over £80m by governments in 2007 alone, an increase of 14 per cent on the previous year, while the EU increased its funding by 16 per cent.

It is therefore unsurprising that Oxfam lobbies for increased government aid - much of this aid money funds their organisations. And where aid goes straight to other governments, this is then often passed on to groups like Oxfam - assuming it doesn't instead get siphoned into Swiss bank accounts.

From 2002-2008 the “Left Field” tent was a feature of the festival and pushed extreme socialist ideals, rarely providing genuine debate but instead giving an open mic to the likes of George Galloway and Tony Benn. Although

discontinued in 2009

Geoff Martin, the man who has been responsible for running the tent at Glastonbury stated: “the Left Field idea, blending popular culture with social justice campaigning, will live on whatever happens.”

In league with Oxfam and run by a wealthy land-owning nepotist (who previously ran for parliament as a Labour candidate) Glasto is a place no self-respecting libertarian should be seen dead. Aside from the enforced socialist economics and heavy promotion of statist ideals it’s bad for rock. Glastonbury doesn’t want Anarchy in the UK, it wants the People’s Republic of the UK. And no amount of contrived mud-sliding photos should convince us otherwise.