DAMP SQUIB AS PUNKS PULL PLUG
THE American band Green Day are not from around these parts but it is assumed they and their promoters looked up Scotland on Wikipedia before they arrived.
They cannot have been oblivious to the fact it rains quite a lot here – and, in Glasgow, damn near incessantly.
To that end, plans for an outdoor gig on Tuesday in the city’s Bellahouston Park cannot possibly have failed to factor in the risk of some precipitation. Can they?
And yet, as filthy clouds loomed over head pre-gig, the plug was pulled and 35,000 fans were left disappointed.
‘I’m standing here in my T-shirt,’ said an admittedly damp Ian Craig, 22, from Aberdeen. ‘So much for punk rock.’ Quite. Punk rock, you recall, was that really rather anarchic brand of music which took over from devil-may-care rock ’n’ roll when that became too safe.
At Woodstock in 1969 it bucketed down. Glastonbury is practically about the wellies and rivers of mud.
Bellahouston? Strictly for fair weather punk rockers. TODAY at the G20 in Hamburg Donald Trump plans to buttonhole Theresa May and grill her about Charlie Gard, the desperately ill baby doctors believe has no hope and should be allowed to die. What does he plan to say? ‘Have a heart, Prime Minister?’ Baby Charlie’s tragic case has nothing to do with politics or politicians. And it may be a bit late in the day for Mr President to recast himself as Mother Theresa.