"Being in Mumford & Sons was exhilarating."

[PaulTMA]

Next you'll be saying Stereophonics aren't good

[Twonty Gostelow]

hard to imagine a banjo player could be racist.

You should hear the stuff Steve Martin comes out with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjl80E1SSmM&t=316s

[PlanktonSideburns]

Can't wait for his album with Frank Turner and van morrison

[Kankurette]

Not really familiar with Mumford & Sons but I imagine they permanently dress in longjohns and bowler hats, four of them play the sousaphone and they are trying to bring apartheid to Surrey.

I wish they were that interesting.

[BlodwynPig]

Former sex pest of Barrow John Woodcock finds it "deeply alarming" a banjo player is hounded out of his band for the mere sin of being a right-wing cunt.

https://twitter.com/LordWalney/status/1408124103354167301?s=19

Twitter/CaB ever merging, merging and merging

Change UK - The Independent Gapes
@vicmackieqc
·
25 Jun
Replying to
@LordWalney
That's not what happened, Walnuts

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think the most important moment in their musical career was probably Mark E. Smith yelling "shut them cunts up" then throwing a bottle at them.

[idunnosomename]

yeah i noticed that too and was a bit taken aback, I guess they're just making fun of his lordship though

[Dusty Substance]

I think the most important moment in their musical career was probably Mark E. Smith yelling "shut them cunts up" then throwing a bottle at them.

Ah, good ol' Mark E. Smith. Now there's a man with no right wing opinions in the slightest.

[Kankurette]

And a wife beater.

Mumford and Sons are still garbage though.

[Sebastian Cobb]

So cancelled he's got an article in The Spectator https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-quiet-revolution-for-our-times-may-have-begun

[Pink Gregory]

wish it was a quiet revolution, shut the fuck up WINSTON

[Kankurette]

They make an awful lot of noise for ones so quiet.

[idunnosomename]

I've been amazed by the response to my decision to leave my band, Mumford & Sons. The article in which I explained why has now been read 700,000 times and has been republished by newspapers in the UK, the US and Germany. My main hope in publishing it was to restore my own sense of integrity — eroded, I felt, by an apology I made to an extreme but vociferous internet minority who took great exception to what I considered an innocuous tweet to Andy Ngo, the author of a bestselling book about the radicalised far-left. Just as I never anticipated the angry reaction to my unremarkable tweet, I could never have foreseen that my article about the ensuing fuss would have generated so many messages of gratitude. Gratitude for what? Not for leaving the band — although a few people may be glad. It seems as if, in explaining why I felt I could not carry on, I had articulated something that many people feel in their daily lives: self-censorship. In the current febrile political climate, many of us are just too scared to say what we think.

The messages came from an astonishing array of professions —fellow musicians, doctors, civil servants, actors, painters, politicians, think-tankers, comedians, vicars, teachers, students, beauty queens, lawyers, mothers, charity workers, cannabis activists, journalists, entrepreneurs. I found many of them very moving. I'm especially struck by how these represent the moderate free-thinking middle-ground. Not extremists. A theme that crops up again and again in these emails is a fear that speaking 'the truth' could prove too costly. So people stay quiet. They have rent or mortgages to pay. Their careers have taken decades to build up. They are accountable to colleagues who depend on them in turn to maintain their lives and their responsibilities. There are kids to care for. Some recount being alienated by their friends for holding incorrect opinions. Others explain how they keep quiet at work, or nod along when things don't seem quite right. Others describe being bullied for wrong-think.

The comedian Ricky Gervais said recently: 'Whoever you are, if you can't be bought you're the richest person in the world... There's something to be said for being proud of one's integrity.' I am fortunate to be able to walk away when my integrity is compromised. For most people life is far, far more complex. It is noble to prioritise those other hugely important aspects of our lives: family, friendships, careers. But the sacrifice of keeping schtum also comes at a price. What starts as a niggling feeling can build up inside. An elastic band slowly stretched will eventually either warp out of shape or snap back to position. Perhaps our consciences do something similar.

I think of Vaclav Havel, the playwright turned dissident turned Czechoslovakian president who wrote The Power of the Powerless in 1978, describing life in the Soviet era. He used the example of the greengrocer who places the slogan 'Workers of the world, unite!' in his shopfront: 'If he were to refuse, there could be trouble... He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life "in harmony with society".' The grocer has much to lose should he dissent from the ideological norms of the day. However, the moment he stops putting up the slogan and 'rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game, he discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity'.

Havel's words speak to an alarming degree to the situation in the liberal democratic West of today. I don't imagine we will experience a social convulsion as dramatic as Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution of 1989, at least not any time soon. But how will these pent-up feelings which so many share manifest themselves? Havel's writings suggest two possible ways forward. Either the system continues to tighten into a 'dreadful Orwellian vision of a world of absolute manipulation', or the 'independent life of society including the "dissident movements" will slowly but surely become a social phenomenon of growing importance... influencing the general situation'. Let's hope it is the second of these. A restoration of honest, good-faith dialogue and the widespread recognition that we are all fallen and fallible would go a long way towards restoring the freedom to think and speak. It may be premature to say this, but on the evidence of the reaction to my piece, a quiet Colour Revolution for our times may have already begun. And I hope more and more people will find the courage to speak the truth as they see it, and that it will be less and less costly to do so.

lol melt. go hug your fucking money you rich talentless anus

[Ferris]

In a way, being the son of hedge fund manager (net worth £600m+) and born a de facto multi multi millionaire and getting online criticism for your "legitimate concerns" about the potential silencing of fascists on twitter is indeed like living behind the Iron Curtain.

Thank you, whatever your name is, for your insight. Humbling stuff.

[Sebastian Cobb]

If we're living behind the Iron Curtain now does that mean we're getting district heating and trolleybuses?

[Ferris]

If we're living behind the Iron Curtain now does that mean we're getting district heating and trolleybuses?

As long as no one tries to redistribute his inherited generational wealth, I doubt he would know or care.

[BlodwynPig]

As long as no one tries to redistribute his inherited generational wealth, I doubt he would know or care.

BTW, are there trolleybuses in Halifax?

[Ferris]

BTW, are there trolleybuses in Halifax?

An odd question, but there was a streetcar system into the late '20s I believe. Interestingly, some of the larger tracks were excavated and removed a few weeks back as part of the new downtown regeneration spending, and a "rapid bus" system is being implemented to do largely the same thing and expected to be online by 2026 if memory serves.

[Kankurette]

Yes, people calling you a cunt on Twitter is exactly the same as life in a dictatorship. You trust fund twat.