Latest news with #anti-British
Scotsman
21-07-2025
- Health
- Scotsman
Readers' Letters: Sack NHS Fife Board in wake of Sandy Peggie case
So far as the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal goes, NHS Fife keeps digging deeper, says reader Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Just what planet do First Minister John Swinney and Health Secretary Neil Gray occupy when they express confidence in the Board of NHS Fife? A Board that has currently spent in excess of £250,000 on an employment tribunal involving a nurse and a transgender doctor and a board that, even during an investigation, has the gall and, indeed, stupidity to issue a public statement attacking a lawyer for the nurse Sandie Peggie and the charity Sex Matters. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This action was a disgraceful misjudgment and it is now without question that the Board should be removed. If Mr Swinney had a backbone he would at least remove the Chief Executive Carol Potter currently enjoying an overinflated salary of around £150,000. The public and the defence of the public purse deserve nothing less. Nurse Sandie Peggie was suspended from her role by NHS Fife last year after complaining about sharing a changing room with transgender doctor Beth Upton (Picture: Jeff) Richard Allison, Edinburgh Peculiar protest The weekend march in Edinburgh for Gaza was yet another display of anti-Israeli, anti-British "dislike". There were the usual Palestinian flags on display but also of Iran and Scotland. This is an interesting mix. Iran wants to destroy Palestinians, under Hamas, want a genocide of Israelis and Jews to say nothing of gays and the Saltire is from those seeking the break-up of the UK. The common denominator here is for far-reaching changes. This begs relevant questions. Would the elimination of Israel, creating a Hamas run Palestinian state (no placards asked for regime change), an Iranian takeover of the Middle East or even Scottish independence actually make things better? Be careful what you wish for. Gerald Edwards, Glasgow Challenge Trump Every day our ears are assaulted by listening to the insincere words of the Israeli Government; 'Israel is investigating… (yet another slaughter of innocents'), or 'Israel expresses deep sorrow…' (in respect of the killings in Gaza's only Catholic Church, an action criticised by Italy's right wing Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni). Evidence is overwhelming over 18 months of Benjamin Netanyahu's hateful aggression in Gaza, the West Bank and beyond. Experts, even a former Israeli Prime Minister, describe Israeli (and US) plans to create a 'humanitarian city' in South Gaza as nothing other than a concentration camp. Driving Palestinians from their homeland, massacring endless thousands of innocents, clearly pursuing ethnic cleansing and working with Trump to take over Gaza as a development project; these obscene actions are akin to the pogroms of earlier times that were so terrible for the Jews. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Starmer and other world leaders leave Netanyahu to carry on with his obscene plans. Their moral compass has lost direction. The people know better than the politicians what is right and wrong. It's time to challenge Donald Trump and Netanyahu. Time, when Trump visits the UK, to challenge him on his support for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the land-grabbing in the West Bank. Andrew Turnbull, Perth Bad old days A Lewis (Letters, 19 July) is, of course, right. Joyce McMillan consistently reaches for the in-words in the world of Champagne socialists, like 'reactionary and neoliberalism', without having a clue what they mean. Like him I am not sure I do. In her column (Perspective, 18 July) she writes 'Margaret Thatcher is now understood not to have fundamentally revived the UK economy, but she had contempt towards the universal values on which the post-war generation tried to found a rule-based order'. I am old enough to remember the zenith of Joyce's dream world in the late Seventies when the trains were on strike, as were the car workers, steel workers, miners and even gravediggers, so bodies were piling up in mortuaries. We couldn't make cars which got beyond the door of the car showroom without falling apart. Ford stood for 'Fix Or Repair Daily'. It was a true Nirvana, about which only Joyce McMillan could dream, and certainly not the vision of Clement Attlee or Aneurin Bevan, who would have turned in their graves. But pace Joyce! The bit you would really have liked is yet to come. We soaked the rich. The top rate on unearned income was 98 per cent and on earned income it was 85 per cent. Along came Margaret Thatcher and over the next ten years the UK became a successful economy once again. We made cars that worked. We had some of the fastest-growing companies in the OECD and the top tax rates dropped to 40 per cent, resulting in the top 20 per cent of taxpayers paying 10 per cent more than they did under the earlier high rates. Perhaps the only sadness was the decline of the economies in the Channel Islands. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Those are the facts, except for those like Joyce McMillan, who would rewrite history. Mark Tennant, London Cutting through One can always rely on Alexander McKay to not let pesky facts get in the way of blaming everything on the evil SNP – his latest being that its love of red tape meant it could never succeed in 'completing' a 'network of tunnels' like the Faroes connecting the islands in the archipelago (Letters, 18 July). What Alex forgot to notice when he googled his latest factoid was, it's a mere four tunnels. There are 17 major islands in the Faroes, meaning fewer than half are interconnected (let's not even start on the 779 minor islands). The oldest tunnel, Vágatunnilin, predates the SNP taking power, there's only one new inter-island tunnel planned – to link Sandoy to Suðuroy – that won't be ready until 2035 at the earliest, and none of them would have happened without massive Danish funding – explaining the eyewatering £40.50 it costs to use the seven-mile long Sandoy tunnel, to pay the costs off, shades of the Skye Toll Bridge fiasco. Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire Write to The Scotsman
Bangkok Post
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Bangkok Post
Written in blood
In 2015, Joe Freeman and Aung Naing Soe noticed the prominent status of poetry in Myanmar politics. At the time, both journalists heard that Maung Saungkha, a 23-year-old poet, posted a poem about having a tattoo of an unnamed president on his penis on Facebook. Saungkha, however, was charged for defaming former president Thein Sein under telecommunication law, serving a six-month jail term. "It was eye-opening into the world of Myanmar's poetry playing such an outsized role," said Freeman, a journalist-turned-researcher for Amnesty International, in an event to mark the launch of their book titled Frontline Poets: The Literary Rebels Taking On Myanmar's Military at The Fort in Bangkok last month. The whole project took around three years. In the wake of the military coup on Feb 1, 2021, poets have been taking up guns in the battlefield. A month after an end to civilian rule, those from the Myanmar Poets Union showed three-finger salutes in Yangon. When the earthquake hit Myanmar early this year, poets helped deliver humanitarian aid. It inspired two authors to examine why they are doing so. "They are on the frontline of every single economic, political or social crisis, going back to the start of anti-British uprisings," said Freeman "This trend continues up until the present day, with many poets resisting the military coup." The book focused on five figures who "embody different versions of frontline poets" before and after the military coup. After finding himself in hot water over his critical poem, Saungkha continued fighting for freedom of expression. In early 2018, he founded an activist organisation called Athan. Following the military takeover, he started his own armed group called the Bamar People's Liberation Army (BPLA). Still, he believes in his identity as a poet. In the same way, K Za Win, a protest leader and poet, was killed in a demonstration on March 3, 2021. "Had he lived, he would have joined the armed group," said Freeman. Shortly after the military coup, he started to post a short poem on Facebook, which has since become an anthem to the protest movement. "Though I have different views than you, I'll lay down my life for you all," it reads. "It is almost revolutionary in itself because Myanmar is such a fractured place. People live in different places and represent different groups. He is someone who is coming out of this to make a sacrifice for all," he said. Freeman cited examples of his works that more or less chronicle real-time events. On Feb 23, 2021, he uploaded a poem titled About The Skulls in response to delayed international expression of concern over violence against protesters. He also urged those who were indecisive to join the movement. On March 2, 2021, he stressed the importance of solidarity. The next day he was killed. Women and LGBTI individuals have also joined the battlefield. As a member of the LGBTI community, Yoe Aunt Min has been constantly marginalised. She started writing poetry in middle school. In 2015, she joined a protest march in support of educational reform that K Za Win took part in. As a student activist, she coordinated protests within a week of the military coup. As the situation intensified, security forces fired on protesters in Monywa, including K Za Win. It led Yoe Aunt Min to join the BPLA to restore democracy and equality. Young recruits received gruelling military training at its camp, where she wrote poems in her downtime. A lengthy piece, titled A Deserter Goes To War, reflects her mental state during the battle. "That is the longest poem in the book. When we put materials together, we thought people didn't want to read a long poem," Freeman reflected. "But it is our most favourite poem because it speaks to something else. It is the kind of poem that isn't necessarily about a fiery war, but about people trying to hold on to their humanity, despite what is happening to them. "I think you will be surprised to find many poems are very intimate and personal. That is because it's human beings who wants to go back to their life. "They don't want to fight, but be with their friends, write poetry and go to a reading. I think this is a way for them to hold on to who they are, processing what they are going through in real time. "Yoe herself is on the frontline. Not long ago, she was in a house where an airstrike was 50 feet away. She is still writing poems that are extremely personal and intimate." Meanwhile, Lynn Khar and A Mon are living in exile following a military attack on Lay Kay Kaw village, a new settlement near the border of Thailand, in December 2021. In a visceral poem titled The Radio Of Dead People, Lynn Khar expresses his anger at unchecked military brutality. A Mon, who lost A Sai K to an airstrike, drew inspiration from his late friend's jade earring to compose a poem titled What Have You Left. "Myanmar is not always on the front page of the newspaper," Aung, currently based in the US, said. "I think these stories can help raise public awareness." Some are fighting on the frontline. Others are fleeing to other countries, including Thailand, for different reasons. Aung said, however, "it is very impossible for us to settle" here due to visa and paperwork issues. He used to visit many cities, but following the military coup, Thailand is the most practical option.
The Irish Sun
08-07-2025
- Politics
- The Irish Sun
‘Irish America's always been part of conflict in Northern Ireland', says member of US group which denied helping the IRA
THE history of an Irish- American organisation that defied British exile orders and were accused of aiding the IRA has been revealed in a new tell-all RTE documentary. NORAID: Irish 5 NORAID: Irish America and the IRA will air on RTE Credit: MMXIV Up and Away Media Ltd & RTE 5 John McDonagh said Irish America was always part of the conflict in Northern Ireland Credit: MMXIV Up and Away Media Ltd & RTE NORAID has denied helping the IRA, with the group's publicity director in 2025 claiming the accusations are false. The focus of the volunteer group, officially named the Irish Northern Aid Committee, was liberating the six Ulster counties given to the It was formed in 1969 by Michael Flannery following growing unrest in NORAID organised fundraising events, protests, made anti-British merchandise and produced its own newspaper, The Irish People, in a New York bodega. READ MORE IN IRISH NEWS The group raised almost half a million dollars for the cause and saw a surge in membership after the death of Bobby Sands from hunger strike in 1981 in a Northern Irish Taxi driver and NORAID member John McDonagh tells how the Big Apple was 'always a hub for Irish republicanism'. He said: 'Irish America's always been part of conflict, from the 1800s on. It would have been very unusual that we weren't part of the conflict, us being part of it was natural, it had been going on for hundreds of years — so why would it stop?' McDonagh recounts how he and other members of NORAID rented a Times Square billboard to send Christmas wishes to Irish prisoners of war in 1983 — the day after an IRA petrol bomb attack outside Harrods department store killed six people. Most read in Irish News In the same year, American lawyer and then-director of NORAID, Martin Galvin, was banned from speaking at large scale internment rallies in Northern Ireland after he was slapped with an exclusion order from the British government. But the following year, Galvin felt compelled to speak at a Belfast rally in open defiance of the order. Watch shocking moment IRA's Martin McGuinness sets off a car bomb He was revealed to adoring crowds by then- Royal Ulster Constabularies fired rubber bullets as the screaming crowd dispersed, leading to the death of one man, Sean Downes. Galvin reveals in newly shown footage that he escaped by hiding in the attic of a nearby female NORAID supporter. 'MAKING SITUATION WORSE' Although the heads of NORAID firmly denied any involvement with the IRA over the years, the group drew strong criticism from politicians and the public alike. While members who travelled home to their roots were welcomed in Northern Ireland, the Republic was more hostile. Archive footage of critics shows some claiming that the presence of the group was 'making the whole situation worse'. And then-Taoiseach Charles Haughey condemned the group for allegedly assisting the IRA in a 'campaign of violence'. Episode one of NORAID: Irish America & The IRA, will stream on RTE One and RTE Player tomorrow at 9.35pm with episode two following on July 16. 5 Irish expats living in Manhattan formed the Irish Northern Aid Committee Credit: RTE Press Office Issue 5 The group drew huge support after the death of Bobby Sands on hunger strike in 1983 Credit: PA:Press Association 5 Then-Taoiseach Charles Haughey condemned the group for allegedly assisting the IRA Credit: Photocall Ireland
New Statesman
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Stop taking Glastonbury so seriously
Illustration by André Carrilho Worthy Farm in Somerset, where Glastonbury Festival has been held 39 times, is 25 miles away from the sea. But once a year it is thronged by seagulls: this is an annual chips-in-styrofoam mecca for the scavenger birds – an event as unmissable for them as it is for the ageing-millennial liberals who populate the site, squatting on the fun that was once the preserve of the young. Parsing the 210,000-strong crowd at the festival is a process of subtle distinction, such as: who is 35 and who is 38? And, does this person live in Stoke Newington or Finsbury Park? Do they work at Deloitte or at a respectable grade in the civil service? Glastonbury in 2025 is where the professional class come to listen to Busta Rhymes (doyen of the 1990s) perform 'Break Ya Neck', with right-hand man, Spliff Star, and pretend the culture hasn't left them behind. Even though of course it has. It is not totally homogenous: there are the elites literally at the peripheries, their clean and catered camps looming from on-high over the grounds (metaphor alert!); and there are attendees on the more feral end of the spectrum (who would think, may I ask, to pitch their tent one metre downstream of the busiest bathrooms on the grounds?). But in its total average, the Glastonbury crowd leans towards the staid, stable and rote. When Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, turned down a chance to debate a Green Party leadership hopeful he said his team feared that Glastonbury would not be safe for him. This is fair – if he is afraid of seagulls or management consultants. I was surprised, nonetheless, by the level of political noise the festival generated this year, from this most un-radical of crowds: a man with a straw boater and a collapsible camping chair – a friend for Tice, perhaps? – sat politely in front of me as Kneecap exploded on to the West Holts Stage on the Saturday afternoon. One member of the Belfast rap trio, Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence in May, accused of brandishing a Hezbollah flag at a 2024 gig. There were questions about whether the festival should cancel the set entirely; the BBC did not air it live for fear the group would say something on stage that contravened its guidelines and standards ('kill David Attenborough', perhaps). Before the festival had even started, Kneecap – with its anti-British posture and radical Irish republicanism – became the story. And then the trio were overtaken when the previously irrelevant rap duo Bob Vylan led the crowd in chants of 'death, death to the IDF'. Everyone – Wes Streeting, Glastonbury itself – was 'appalled', the BBC terribly sorry for broadcasting it; the world rather worried that these rappers had finally been the ones to radicalise the farmer's-market liberals around the festival. But as I watched Kneecap in the baking heat and saw exactly what I was expecting to (Palestine flags and Irish tricolours everywhere) and heard exactly what I was expecting to (Deloitte account managers joining in with 'Free Palestine' and 'Fuck Keir Starmer' chants) I was struck by the powerlessness of it all. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe This is transient, ephemeral politics. In 2017 Jeremy Corbyn was the main character of Glastonbury, and when his electoral platform totally fell apart, all of a sudden no one at the festival was singing 'Oh, Jeremy Corbyn' anymore. Brexit was the great affront to the Glasto-class at the festival in 2016, and I spotted not one EU flag over the entire week in 2025; the very lonely Ukraine flag I saw looked almost out of date. There is no idée fixe of Glastonbury, but instead the politic du jour. It is hard to blame the millennial consultants and civil servants for rifling through a Rolodex of causes at such a clip. They came of age in the financial crisis and have been politically impotent since; things they don't like (the 2011 Liberal Democrat betrayal, Osborne austerity, Brexit, 'Boris Johnson') keep happening to them. In a country where politics itself is no longer very political and culture feels stuck – Rod Stewart (80) shared a stage on the Sunday with Ronnie Wood (78) and Lulu (76) – all that's left is these end-of-June howls of outrage from staffers at the Big 5. There was a time when liberal Britain could group together to stop the things it did not like, such as the slave trade or Mary Whitehouse. Or redirect the national trajectory: abolishing the death penalty and legalising abortion. They can't anymore. And so here they are with me in Somerset, eating cheese toasties, worrying about seagulls and raging against a non-specified, shapeshifting machine. The ambient Remainer-ism of the past decade of Glastonbury has been traded for this slightly edgier cause, with spikier standard bearers (Kneecap, Bob Vylan). But the sense of a non-committal, window-dressing politik is the same. To fly a Palestine flag in front of the Other Stage during Franz Ferdinand's set is to say: yes, I am a Glastonbury Goer. Just as was the case with open borders in 2018 (prime-time bullshit, by the way, in a camp that has border walls resembling Trump's). But to interrogate the hard politics or even the logic of it all is to misunderstand the project. There are too many drugs to do for that. The worst place to have an ear infection is 41,000 feet over the Atlantic in Delta economy class. The second worst place to have an ear infection is during country/hip-hop crossover event Shaboozey's performance of 'Bar Song (Tipsy)' on Sunday afternoon. It was – like the set by rock band Terrorvision, the crowd at the Information Stage when the independent MP Zarah Sultana appeared, and the 'sound bath' I suffered through at the, er, Healing Fields – extraordinarily loud. But not merely content with the audial invasion, Glastonbury Festival endeavours to assault you with wall of visual noise too: 'PASTA,' a sign screams at me; 'REDUCE, REUSE [and, plot twist], RESPECT' rolls across a TV screen; a posh woman with a hat like I have never seen before (steampunk meets pheasant massacre) walks past; the firework budget alone for the five days I suspect could feed a medium-sized Cambodian town for a year; the lights at the Levels Stage, designed for the ecstasy brain, are too frenetic for the sober one. I understand why these 'Sensory Calm' tents have cropped up everywhere: the one next door to the Kneecap performance got more use than usual. By Sunday the drugs had nearly run out; the politics – already predictable – were exhausting; the atmosphere was increasingly antsy. Deloitte awaited the revellers, they had just remembered. The site smelled like pickled sewage and everyone was taking the last of their ketamine. But, after a three-week cleanup job, the only evidence left of this, all the noise and all the mess, will be the famous Pyramid Stage. The rest – the pheasant-graveyard hat, the man in the boater, the PASTA vendors, the pair camping one metre downstream of the toilets, the elites at the top of the hill – will be gone from Worthy Farm for another year, almost as though nothing happened. And the seagulls will flee, like the ravens leaving the tower of London, to declare a new political lodestar for the Glastonbury class. All of it fair weather, all of it temporary. [See more: Jeff Bezos's Venetian wedding was a pageant of bad taste] Related
Scottish Sun
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Bob Vylan's bizarre rise to fame…from making music on Playstation to sick ‘kill the Queen' rant & vile fan threats
WITH their vile chants of 'death, death to the IDF' at Glastonbury this weekend, punk-rap duo Bob Vylan left thousands of music fans across the country appalled. The stunt - referring to the killing of the Israel Defence Forces - has been slammed as 'appalling hate speech' by the Prime Minister that risked 'inciting violence'. 8 Bob Vylan sparked fury at Glastonbury with their 'death to the IDF' chant Credit: PA 8 Frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster is yet to apologise for his actions Credit: Instagram 8 Bob Vylan played before Irish group Kneecap Credit: Alamy Comprised of Ipswich-born frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster, who performs as Bobby Vylan, and Londoner drummer Bobbie Vylan, the band now face calls for them to be arrested and prosecuted. Arguably festival organisers - and the BBC - should have seen this coming from a band who relish controversy, claim to be 'too extreme' to be signed by any record label and have lyrics including 'kill the f***ing Queen'. Such is the level of violence and hatred in their lyrics that they have been considered "too extreme" for the band to be officially signed by a major record label, so they trade under their own, which is called Ghost Theatre. This meant they hand-delivered albums to record stores personally and booked their own shows before landing success and touring with Biffy Clyro and Offspring, and performing at Reading and Leeds festivals in 2021. 'Everyone is here bigging up Atlantic, bigging up Warner - f*** that! Big us up, because we did it without a major label budget,' Pascal said in 2022. Anti-monarchy, anti-British and pro-Palestine, Bob Vylan has proudly declared in the past how "trying to wind people up" is one of the few ways to 'derive enjoyment from living in this country'. 'If I can just say a thing and you'll get upset then that feels like a small victory and I'll print it on a T-shirt and wear that T-shirt every day,' Pascal told Tribune Magazine in 2022. In the wake of their Glastonbury set, which has received widespread condemnation including from Emily Eavis, who claimed it "very much crossed a line", Pascal shared a smirking snap of himself captioned: 'While zionists are crying on socials, I've just had late night (vegan) ice cream.' Since forming in 2017, Bob Vylan - who perform under stage names to maintain privacy in the face of what they call a "surveillance state" - has revelled in stirring up anger with controversial messaging and lyrics, and even threatened violence against their own fans. Pascal - who previously performed as 'Nee-Hi' in grime group Ear 2 Da Street in his early teens - has claimed he was inspired by his 'boring' childhood in Ipswich. Reggae star with VERY famous dad set to perform at festival 'better than Glastonbury' 8 Pascal used to perform as 'Nee-Hi' while he was a grime artist in his teens Credit: Youtube/@Guestlistdotnet 8 The rapper has anti-monarchy, anti-British and anti-government lyrics Credit: Facebook He began creating music on the Playstation game Music 2000, while living on a diet of "typical oven dinners" like 'chicken kievs and potato waffles'. Around a decade ago he went vegan. Pascal characterises his angry, resentful lyrics as "a reflection of the anger from systemic mistreatment", according to The Guardian, with the struggles of being a black man in Europe a recurring theme in the band's repertoire. He claimed he was seven years old when he was first called the N-word and described the violence his "bredrin were surrounded by" as a teenager. In We Live Here, Pascal rapped: 'Neighbours called me 'n*****', told me 'go back to my own country'; Said since we arrived, this place has got so ugly; But this is my f***ing country and it's never been f***ing lovely.' He also claimed to suffer at the hands of a cruel landlord when he was a young dad - 'a baby with a baby' - stuck living in dangerous housing conditions. 'It was cold, it was damp, the windows were not double glazed, there was mould,' he told The Guardian. 'The extractor fan caught fire when we were not home and there was a fire in the flat. Came home and whole place was black; everything smelled like smoke. 'And the landlord couldn't give a f***. My partner got pneumonia during the pregnancy because of it. And he just didn't care.' Vile 'kill the Queen' chants Pascal raps there is 'nothing great' about Great Britain in the 2024 track Makes Me Violent, and sickeningly called for the late Queen's death in the band's 2020 release England's Ending. The vile lyrics read: 'This country's in dire need of a f***ing spanking, mate; Look it over, get the f***ing dinosaurs out; Yeah, and kill the f***ing Queen; She killed Diana, we don't love her anyway.' Their anti-monarchy stance is also evident on the track Reign, where Pascal raps: 'Got a message for the thieves in the palace, we want the jewels back." The band - who do not cite Jewish singer-songwriter Bob Dylan as a musical influence - is also known for leading 'f*** the government' chants at gigs and regularly taking pops at politicians and public figures. Lyrics include: 'let's go dig up Maggie's grave and ask her where that milk went' - in reference to ex-PM Margaret Thatcher's decision to end free school milk for kids over seven back in 1971. The band has also cited the cost of living crisis and escalating London rent prices, including in track GYAG with the words: 'Landlord just raised your rent, better get yourself a gun.' Threatening fans 8 Bob Vylan at the NME Awards in 2022 Credit: Getty At times the band's vitriol has spilled over during performances with fans becoming the target. In 2021 gig-goer Sarah Corbett claimed she was verbally abused by Pascal and feared retribution in a petty row over an ice cube. She told the Norwich Evening News: 'We were all having fun on the dance floor. I'd put an ice cube down my friend's top for a laugh. "Another girl then threw it at her friend, but it missed and landed at his feet. At that point he stopped the gig and demanded to know who had thrown it.' Sarah took the flack for the incident and Pascal, who was wielding a baseball bat, lashed out at her and later refused to apologise. 'He started abusing me through the microphone,' she recalled. 'As I tried to leave, one of his fans tried to grab me by the throat." Onlooker Mark Evans backed-up her claims, calling it a 'horrible, bizarre rant… all over an ice cube' that led him to conclude the musician's 'credibility has gone'. [Pascal] started abusing me through the microphone... As I tried to leave, one of his fans tried to grab me by the throat Sarah Corbett, former fan Pascal previously threatened to beat up a heckler at a Manchester gig in an expletive-laden rant, with a clip recently re-posted on X. In it the singer yelled: 'I'd have you on your arse in no time you f***ing t**t. 'But I tell you what buy a ticket to the show at The Ritz and I'll f***ing meet you outside side and punch you outside you d***head.' The band has also channelled frustration toward other musicians for not jumping on their activist bandwagon - particularly when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Pascal told NME in 2023: 'It's a cowardly f***ing thing. So f*** IDLES, f*** Sleaford Mods. 'And f*** every single one of those f***ing apolitical bands that don't want to f***ing speak up when there's something a little bit iffy, a little bit touchy, a little bit sensitive [because they have] got a f***ing bulls*** album to sell. 'F*** that. We can't f***ing respect that at all. F*** them.' But their recent Glastonbury stunt could prove a step too far. US website The Daily Caller reported that Donald Trump's administration is now looking into visas obtained by Bob Vylan for a 16-date tour of North America. 'The US government will not issue visas to any foreigner who supports terrorists,' a senior State Department official said, suggesting it could be revoked. Glastonbury Festival organisers have also distanced themselves from the band, insisting the event was 'no place… for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence'. But Bob Vylan remains unapologetic; today Pascal shared footage regarding the Palestine conflict and called for more action, claiming it is 'incredibly important' to inspire future generations of activists in spite of the 'suffocation of adult life'. 'Let them see us marching in the streets, campaigning on ground level, organising online and shouting about it on any and every stage that we are offered,' he wrote. 8 Pascal waving a Palestinian flag at Glastonbury Credit: PA 8 The rapper has been an outspoken supporter of Palestine for years Credit: Instgram/bobbyvylan
