Glastonbury Sells Out For Good

Big business corporations and regulations have sanitised Glastonbury Festival and transformed the once genuinely counter-culture tribal gathering it into an event that provides mainstream, middle of the road "family entertainment', the Daily Mirror complained this week.

"Corporate Britain has taken over Glastonbury," the British tabloid stormed, "Making it safe and comfortable for middle-aged Range Rover drivers out for the weekend, hoping to recapture a youth they probably never had in the first place."

The Mirror's tirade reflected comments made in a feature the Guardian last year, which talked of Glastonbury's "embourgeoisement' and its increasingly homogenous patrons.

"The ranks of people carriers in the car park, the 14feet high steel fence and CCTV cameras allow the mean-spirited to suggest the festival is now about as alternative as the Chelsea Flower Show," the Guardian sneered.

"As has been remarked often enough, Glastonbury has joined "the season' - the informal summer timetable of high-profile events such as Ascot and Glyndebourne - hence the arrival of "Glyndestonbury", bringing together the SUVs and highbrow picnic flavour of one musical event with the mud and fashionable fringe of the other."
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