Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
AN ENTIRE summer has been cancelled. It’s heartbreaking but the only redeeming feature is the fact that everyone — or at the very least everyone who has access to a computer and a level of technical knowledge beyond that of a bemused triceratops — can be at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival.
I heartily recommend you log in and watch, wherever you are and whatever the weather is like and whether or not you like festivals, camping, mud, stubbornly convex toilet facilities, stoned hippies, welcoming pools of sick and random people asking if you want to buy horse tranquilliser, etc.
I know most of that doesn’t happen at Tolpuddle — it’s just my memories of 40 years of festival experiences rolled together for your amusement.
STEVE JOHNSON speaks to London singer/songwriter MADDY CARTY
The Bard does Bearded Theory, and lodges a complaint about bandnames
Two inspring books — that’s your New Year’s musing from me on January 2 2026
Fiery words from the Bard in Blackpool and Edinburgh, and Evidence Based Punk Rock from The Protest Family


