Fun police @ Music Festival. Full of rules!

[Exhippy]

Me and my family (UK) have been going to a few weekend music festivals for years now and I’m starting to feel a bit irked by all of their rules.

This year we’ve received endless updates prior to arriving at the festivals about new rules concerning a full glitter ban, all the food vendors will be plant based food only (massive bummer), keep cups only or if you forget these and want to buy a drink on site you must buy one of their £10 keep cups £30 for whole family!

And so on.

Last year, DH finally found a stand that was selling canned drinks and bought one as he was really thirsty, only to be told that they had just noticed the drink was made by the Coca Cola company and that he would not be allowed to sell it. They said they’d take it back and destroy it! 🙄

What happened to the sensibilities of old school hippies- just go with the flow, let your hair down and try your best but mainly have fun- chill out?

Everyone seems so militant now.

This new breed of hippy may as well be evangelical Christians!

Yes that is exactly what happened.
we didn’t question it because by that time we were on our 5th food place in search of a simple drink and were incredulous.
No cash allowed either.

Which one is this?

I hope the rules including clearing up ... looking at festival sites after the festival has ended I am absolutely shocked at the amount of litter, discarded tents and worse left behind.

So do that. No one is forcing you to attend festivals, which are ultimately and always have been an economic exercise. Perhaps when you were younger and more naive you were obvious to that.
No one that really ties into your OP though.
First you’re a lazy consumerist who just wants coke and now you get high off mountains?

What a load of bollocks. Nothing wrong with glitter, and I would be insisting on a full refund if it was all plant based. I wouldn’t be putting up with that bullshit.

🤣sure

There is something wrong with glitter - it is just very small plastic litter. It gets into the soil, water and food chain.

The staff clean up. The rubbosh doesn't get left there forever, just for one day whilst it is cleared up. The tents are donated from many festivals.

I don't agree with leaving tents behind, but the images you see in the Daily Mail are just designed to provoke outrage.

The plant based thing is great in theory unless you're someone with severe food intolerances like my husband, for whom meat and dairy are actually some of the safest food groups and vegan stuff is a complete minefield. If that's not advertised at the time of booking I agree that's a big problem!

Shambala has been meat and fish free since 2016 soo…

I went to the Lincoln folk festival in 1971, the lineup was spectacular, James Taylor, Ralph McKellen, Byrds, Sandy Denny etc. It was the biggest folk festival ever held. I remember lying on the ground looking up at the stars, waiting for James Taylor to perform. Tickets were £2 for the day. Sounds like heaven, those were the days!

Well actually we could have done with the fun police, as the night got chilly, some idiots pulled the wooden toilet shacks down and built a bonfire...............

Typo obviously Ralph Mctell. 🙄

I hear this a lot on MN, but IME the kind of vegan street food you get at festivals tends to be perfectly normal food cooked from scratch, as seen in home kitchens around the world: vegetable biryani, falafel wraps, Korean fried tofu, sweet potato katsu curry, black bean and plantain arepas etc etc .

Give or take some fake cheese on pizzas (yuk) I can't remember the last time I saw any of these mythical hyper-processed vegan foods at a food stall.

I think plastic glitter should be outright banned.

Reusable cups only sounds sensible.

Lots of events are aiming to be plastic free and I think that's wholly laudable

Vegan catering should have been mentioned at sign up, but I can't get that worked up about it because it won't harm anyone to do without animal products for a few days (if this is however medically unsuitable because of eg allergies then you need to get on to the organisers asap for permission to bring your own food)

I hope they are also promoting the use of public transport if feasible, otherwise car-sharing

What’s fun about putting tiny shiny pieces of plastic into an animal’s bloodstream ?

You've never been on the train going past the reading festival site when everyone clears off then. It looks like a landfill site.

And then it gets cleaned up.

That’s a shame, there are some amazing burger stands at festivals! Mmm

It gets cleaned up. It doesn't get left forever.

You said the DM pics were to provoke outrage, implying that they made it look far worse than the reality. But the reality is that it looks like a landfill site, and the waste, single use tents, vast clean up is the antithesis of sustainable. Whether or not it gets cleaned up afterwards is irrelevant.

So you like to immerse yourself in the natural world, but don’t actually want to do anything to preserve it? You don’t sound terribly bright, to be honest.

To be fair I totally get this. I will only really go to a handful of smaller ones now - I used to love big ones but hate the thought now.

Do you think household consumption in the average UK street is sustainable? Or what gets thrown away from pubs?

The fact it goes on the floor then in a bin doesn't make it inherently less sustainable.

As I said I don't agree with tents being thrown away, but it's such a dot compared to e.g. fashion waste.

It's just outrage because of the photo.

My young adults go to festivals often, and have for years. They haven't complained.

Name it, @Exhippy , like a few of us have already asked.