On Blackheath.

"On Blackheath", the yuppie food and music festival that old time rock entrepreneur Harvey Goldsmith is  supposed to be showcasing on, well, Blackheath actually, is generating outrage in the places that you would expect it to. The outrage is well deserved of course. The heath itself straddles the border between  the boroughs of Greenwich and Lewisham both have high levels of deprivation and high demand for food banks so putting on a Food Festival with tickets priced at what some families are budgeting for a months food seems, well, a bit insensitive. I don't know why I don't feel more angry about this. Perhaps I have just grown to expect this kind of shit in a London that has a greater disparity of wealth now then at any time since Queen Victoria. And then there is the whole thing about festivals anyway. When I was young and foolish I thought that Woodstock had something to do with "the revolution". I don't know where I got that idea from. It was of course nothing but another way of creating a profit. There's no denying that many bands do aspire to a radical agenda, try to connect with their fans and all of that good stuff. Harvey Goldsmith has spent his whole working life dealing with such naiveties. "Oh yeah. Right on man. Power To The People. Sign here". I don't doubt for a moment that if the festival goes ahead there will be no shortage of the half-baked who are willing to pay good money for a cross between Glastonbury and the Ideal Home Exhibition. Perhaps it's the totally ludicrous nature of the project, but  my contempt is well on the sniggering side of anger.