This photograph was taken and is owned by Tash (Alan Lodge).

I had to doctor it. It seems apt.


.. solidarity

You are like some crackpot religousd cult with your stupid obsession over stonehenge a totally useless bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere. You ought to call yourselves The Starshine People or something. Morons!

Nice edit!

Certainly for some people in is a religious or spiritual experience, and good for them. For a lot of others its a reason to get together with 20,000 people for a party. Maybe you should try it some time - take some friends and booze, enjoy yourself.

A cult maybe, but it is certainly infinitely less bizarre than obsessing over expensive lumps of variously moulded toxic plastic, overpaid idols without much brains, toxic burgers, Friends instead of friends, and so on.

A cult of spirit is preferable to a mass cult of the toxic and stupid.

Hmmm.. Filth maybe..

>lumps of variously moulded toxic plastic

you know what ? (and i dont mean to troll here) but i cant help reflect on that when i look at picture number 14.

Wayhay... Its solstice time... lets get down to this historic monument and just discard our litter/bags/plastic soda bottles all round it.

We're all very "right-on" round here...but some of us cant even take our f**king litter home .

Not very impressive.

Hello Disgusted,

I can't entirely disagree with you on that one. I didn't go this year, but I went a couple of years back for a couple of years in a row, and the plastic filth was largely cleaned up (i think), but amongst the up & comings their is a filthy disrespect for nature alomgside a false romantisation of it (proven by the levels of filth left over).

Certainly here in Bristol the filth left after the Ashton Court festival is disgusting, and people do whinge that it's no-longer a free festival, but that's partly because of the cleaners they now need to hire, and of course, that they pay means that many people feel they have a paid up right to strew their filth everywhere.

A classic self-fullfilling narcissistic prophecy. Apart from that it's still a lot less disgusting than te muck the average household churns out on a daily basis. Myself included but I'm trying to improve ;o)

Hey 'sunshine hater' - didn't you make the same comments last year?

Anyway the point is moron, that it's slightly more than an obsession with a "bunch of rocks". It's also more than 'just a party' - the right to gather is a pretty important one which has come under attack in this country decade after decade from successive different (but not that different :) governments.

Gatherings like this are social occaisions and important communication points. I often meet old frinds that I haven't seen for months, catch up, meet new people, hear about amazing new projects or campaigns etc - and yeah, sure, have a great party.

The convoy people who were attacked almost 20yrs ago in the battle of the beanfield were part of the tens of thousands who had been gathering each year for the Peoples' Free Festival of Albion (at Stonehenge) - the point being that the festival, the gathering, was the main thing, and not stonehenge itself (check the old pictures out to see 70,000 people on nearby land, and stonehenge itself with only a couple of hundred around it). Since then the repression against gatherings and travelling lifestyles in part created stonehenge as the symbolic focus representing the attacks on freedom in this country, as well as a focus for the alternative visions. It is of course also of spiritual significance, and maybe more these days with environmental devestation and climate change all on the increase, and if you can't dig that, well fell a bit sorry for you mate, at least don't have a go at others when they express such views.

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Re: disgusted of tunbridge wells / farquar's point:

"Wayhay... Its solstice time... lets get down to this historic monument and just discard our litter/bags/plastic soda bottles all round it. We're all very "right-on" round here...but some of us cant even take our f**king litter home. Not very impressive."

It is certainly an important point. And one worth understanding. The scene you see in the pics has had 20,000 people there all night and all morning... Twenty Thousand! In this context the litter you see in the pic ain't that bad (compare and contrast to city centres or festivals like the cannabis festie in london etc). Also understand that what you see comes from a field with no rubbish points or recycling facilities, accept some at the exit of the field - so there's no where to deposit rubbish, until you leave.

Also, and this is the most important point, the pic 14 you refer to is a picture _during_ the solstice celebration. What you don't see is the hoardes of litter pickers, official and unofficial, from peace stewards to english heritage marshalls to 'ordinary punters' who collect the bagged and unbagged leftovers throughout the morning - so that by the time people leave the area is clean -(for example check out the black and white picture of inside the stone circle from 2003 at  http://tashcamuk.fotopages.com/?entry=4037 to see just how spotless people leave the place).

grumble grumble grumble... some people are never happy :-)

Well done Tash for the free info and pics

Message to the knob Starshine People hater
What have you done with your life probably just sit there and moan. Well my cult friend of moaning take some time out and look at Tash`s webpage you might lean some think then when you done that hit Google and search cult you might lean even more before you open your mouth