‘Mass wuther' protest as giant wind farm threatens Brontë moors
An annual event billed as 'The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever' is taking place on Sunday, July 27, on Penistone Hill, above the village where Emily Brontë lived with her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, two centuries ago.
Known as a 'mass wuther', it will feature more than 500 people dressed in red dresses and flowing black wigs simultaneously performing the musical legend Kate Bush's ethereal choreography from the video for her 1978 debut hit Wuthering Heights.
Although a mass wuther has taken place in various global locations including Melbourne, Berlin and Paris since 2013, it is the first time it has been held in the Brontë country that inspired it.
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Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Punk provocateurs Kneecap and Fontaines DC play it safe as crowd still attempts death chant
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BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Kate Bush fans' Wuthering Heights dance tribute on Brontë moors
Red dresses and extravagant dance moves are likely to be the order of the day later this month on the moors above Haworth in joint celebration of writer Emily Brontë and singer Kate is known as The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever is held on 27 July each year, and sees thousands of people across the world recreate the video to Bush's 1978 song Wuthering Heights, inspired by the Brontë novel of the same name. This year's West Yorkshire tribute will be held on moorland on Penistone Hill, not far from the famous Brontë sister's home in Clare Shaw, a writer who lives near Haworth, said 500 tickets for the "Mass Wuther" event were snapped up "within hours". Ms Shaw said she wanted not only to celebrate Bush and Brontë's cultural heritage, but also to raise awareness of a campaign to protect Top Withens - believed to be Brontë's inspiration for the Wuthering Heights farmhouse - and the surrounding moors from a planned windfarm development. Ms Shaw said wearing a red dress for the event, as Bush did in the video for her classic song, was non-negotiable, meanwhile participants were encouraged to learn the dance moves in explained that the project was co-hosted by Happy Valley Pride, the Calder Valley LGBTQ+ celebration. "There's a really strong element of of celebrating LGBTQ+ as part of the event, which fits perfectly with Kate Bush because she was always a gay icon, even in the days when that wasn't the thing to be," she Shaw said the event would also tie in with a project called Wondering Heights, created for Bradford's City of Culture celebrations, and would fuse Brontë's literary heritage with Bush's pop classic. Created by artist Lucy Barker, the project was described as a "mass dance meditation for everybody", including dance workshops running between 5 and 23 July inspired by the Wuthering Heights routine. Ms Barker and Ms Shaw said they had been working together to make sure as many people as possible who wanted to join in with the "Mass Wuther" were able to. Ms Shaw said: "The project is part of Bradford 2025, and is about making the moor more accessible, but also making dance accessible."So, people who might not be able to attend the event - either because they can't get a ticket or because they have caring responsibilities or mobility restrictions - can take part in different ways."Ms Shaw said she had long been a Kate Bush fan, but added that supporting the campaign against the proposed wind farm was "the driving force" for the "Mass Wuther". The wind farm development is planned for land on Walshaw Moor, near Hebden Bridge - about four miles (6km) from Top Withens. Ms Shaw said: "I've been really heavily involved in the campaign against the wind farm, which I never thought I would find myself saying."I'm absolutely a proponent of green energy, but green energy has to mean green energy. "If you look at a wind farm on a blanket bog, that is a habitat for a multitude of really important creatures, on deep peat, it's not green energy - it's an energy factory located in a really important ecological and cultural site."Calderdale Energy Park, behind the proposals, has said it would apply for permission to build 41 turbines on Walshaw company's first consultation on the project ended on 10 June. Christian Egal, project director, said it could power up to 250,000 homes, cutting annual CO2 emissions by up to 350,000 Egal said: "We are committed to shaping the project by engaging with local people and our first stage of consultation has already received more than 1,000 individual responses."This feedback, alongside detailed technical and environmental assessments, will be critical to shaping the scheme's final design that is sensitive to its moorland location." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
The Sun
2 days ago
- The Sun
I worked at the BBC for years and I know exactly why they let Bob Vylan's antisemitic rant on air – and how to fix it
ALL week, people have been asking why on Earth someone at the BBC didn't just pull the plug from the wall when that silly man at Glastonbury started chanting about how he wanted everyone in the Israeli Defence Force to be dead. It was a pretty amazing spectacle, if I'm honest, because all those Tarquins and Arabellas in the crowd joined in. Even though I'm willing to bet 90 per cent of them had absolutely no clue what the IDF is. 3 But what's even more amazing is that the footage remained on the BBC iPlayer for a full five hours after the event. Now I want to say from the outset that I don't really care about what people say at music festivals. It's been going on for years. From the anti-Vietnam War hippies in the Seventies through various anti- establishment punks and right up to the mass genuflecting at Glastonbury in 2017 when Jeremy Corbyn popped up on stage to talk about the 'commentariat'. This is all quite normal. The crowds at these festivals are young and idealistic and they chant and they weep . . . and then they grow up and buy a people carrier and no harm's done. But people watching at home are not young and idealistic. Or stoned. And they've already got the people carrier. So when the BBC broadcast a man saying he wanted to kill everyone in the IDF, it was a bit of a shock. You know it. And I know it. And yet somehow, the BBC didn't know it. Why? Alarm bells ringing We know, and they must know too, that these days you can go to prison for a long time for sending an offensive tweet. See Lucy Connolly for details about that. So you'd think that if a man on stage was calling for the death of 169,000 Jewish conscripts, it might set the alarm bells ringing in the BBC's well-manned operations centre. But it didn't. Fury as Glastonbury crowd chants 'death to the IDF' during Bob Vylan set aired live on BBC I think the problem is instinct. 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Well, sorry to spoil the story with a dollop of truth but the fact is that Jaguar has actually stopped making cars altogether as it prepares for the new range of electric motors that are coming along soon. Obviously, I'm sad Jaguar has decided to go down this path and you probably are too. But the fact is that in America, which is the company's biggest market, 75million people voted for the uber-woke Kamala Harris. That's an awful lot of people who think internal combustion is the devil's work. MPs NOT ALL BIRD BRAINS I HAD it in my mind that all Labour MPs are bitter and twisted class warriors whose sole aim in life is to make things miserable for people who want to work hard and have some fun afterwards. So this week, when the Labour MP for Bishop Auckland – a chap called Sam Rushworth – got to his feet during a debate on grouse shooting, I was expecting a load of communist codswallop. I was in for a surprise. The proposal for a ban had come from a group called Wild Justice, who had argued that the cost would be economically insignificant. But good old Sam said that if you work in the grouse shooting industry as a beater or gamekeeper or a caterer, that's your job. And to you, that's not economically insignificant at all. I'm delighted to say Wild Justice's petition was thrown out. THERE'S been a bit of a brouhaha over plans to replace the historical figures on our bank notes with people who are more representative of the times in which we live. Poetesses with penises. That sort of thing. Who cares? Cash is only used these days for buying and inhaling drugs. And frankly, I find it quite amusing to think that when Jane Austen has been axed from our tenners, the nation's coke enthusiasts will be snorting their fix through the curled up face of, I dunno, Diane Abbott.
