A wholly entertaining dispute has erupted between organisers of Scotland’s T in The Park festival and local wildlife enthusiasts. The event’s future is threatened by a pair of nesting ospreys nearby to proposed site, Strathallan Castle. The protected species has incited fives upon tens of protestors to host a vigilante-style stakeout on the castle’s grounds. Fans of “Scottish Oxegen”, as the festival is more affectionately termed here, will know in May if it will go ahead.T organiser Geoff Ellis has warned that no other site will suitably house the event if Strathallan is ruled out.
Unfortunately, the festival’s former location of 18 years has already incurred massive damage to its environment in the form of an underlying oil pipeline, and fears of what 85,000 heaving, drunken youths could do to it have necessitated relocation. All other sites have been ruled out on grounds of their being “the North”.
Ellis insists that his company, DF Concerts, is “not just planning to get away with things” (this comes one week after the group used a cherry picker, balloons and a Scottish flag to “naturally” shoo the ospreys away).
It is for this reason that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) accused DF of being unprofessional. That said, this is the same RSPB whose “Giving Nature a Home” slogan is equal parts discouraging and redundant, and the same RSPB which insists that “no major outdoor event could co-exist with wildlife” – an argument grafted directly from Joe Duffy’s phoneline in the wake of The Garth Brooks Episode, which ultimately resulted in 100,000 cowboy hats having to be re-released back into the wild.
