'At Electric Picnic it's hard to see the virtue signalling inside the tents because of the tents abandoned outside'
'For all the sustainable energy on stage, there's always people off it who lack energy of any sort to pack up properly once it's all over
Welcome to Electric Picnic - the festival where it's hard to see all the virtue signalling inside the tents because of all the tents abandoned outside.
I've never been to Electric Picnic, mainly because I'm not the type of person who would spend money to watch Mary McAleese record a podcast or talk about bridges.
My favourite way of standing in a field is to be on my own, perhaps leaning on a gate, not hearing people talking about a stage that's powered by sustainable energy.
Because for all the sustainable energy on stage, there's always people off it who lack energy of any sort to pack up properly once it's all over.
And - having patted themselves on the back for a couple of days about how their hummus is organic, and coffee is fair trade - they'll wake up with a headache.
Then they'll decide not to be environmentally woke for the ten minutes they walk away, leaving a tent behind them. When they get home they can start being environmental again.
It wasn't always like that. When they bought the tent they had visions of posing outside it - the women thinking they're Kate Moss, the men probably focusing on growing beards.
But they'll know - despite being environmentally happy to everyone who'll listen to their concerns about Ukraine, if that's still fashionable - that they'll buy the cheap supermarket one.
They know the tent love won't last. They know, despite constant hand wringing about petrol or whatever, and icebergs, that the time will come when the sight of the tent will disgust them.
They know they'll waddle away from it, at that point giving up the Kate Moss and beard thing for another year, and that's fine because the main stage is powered by sustainable energy, right?
It is in its falafel-filled boll*x. I camp a lot. I bought a good tent 20 years ago and I still have it because I'm not an a******e. But even in the places I pitch it, usually the places geographically as far away from festivals as possible, I see crap others left behind.
They pitch tents at Electric Picnic because they see other people doing it. They talk about what they're doing to save the whales because other people are talking about it.
Then they'll walk away from their mess because - oh look, there's a big queue at the coffee van, and the beans didn't harm anyone far away. Yaay. F**k the tent, flat white for me please.
What we're dealing with here are people who are incapable of igniting a disposable barbeque because they're the types that would buy a disposable barbecue.
And it gets to me that disposable barbecues must be among the least disposed of items of all time. It's a misnomer, like 'unselfish hippie' or 'brilliant hipster band' or 'mindfulness'.
When the push of the tentpole comes to the shove of the flysheet, people aren't mindful. Virtue signalling can wait until there's a phone signal.
Meanwhile, Electric Picnic has banned single use vapes. Will that make a difference? I wouldn't hold my breath.
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