Although your many pages of Glastonbury coverage in G2 on Monday didn’t entirely overlook criticism of the event, they were predominantly positive. But for many of your readers, the prospect of attending an event costing hundreds of pounds is as remote as that of attending one costing thousands; yet while your coverage of an example of the latter, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop festival, has been – rightly – mocking, you’re much more respectful of Glastonbury, though some of the expensive “alternatives” marketed there are just as ridiculous as those at Goop. The image I take of Glastonbury from your coverage is of a meeting place for mainly rich people with a sense of entitlement. When you add in that many of them travel there by car, almost all carry technical gizmos that only exist on the back of environmental and human degradation in the third world, and the event’s massive consumption and waste of single-use resources, it’s clear that – in the face of the stark crises facing our planet – Glastonbury is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Brief pauses to cheer on David Attenborough and Extinction Rebellion don’t invalidate that balance sheet.
Albert Beale
London
• I for one really enjoyed your Glastonbury coverage (Letters, 2 July). And I’ve watched lots of it on the BBC. My biggest regret, at 67, is that I’ve never been to Glastonbury, but I did go to the Isle of Wight festival in 1969.
Pam Fraser
Cumnor, Oxfordshire
• In the wake of Stormzy’s incredible performance at Glastonbury this year, I was struck watching it back by the juxtaposition of this working-class black man from Croydon, rapping about the plight of the underprivileged, and the sea of white, middle-class spectators watching him. We talk a lot about Oxford and Cambridge’s problems with diversity, but while these places are still white-centric, at least action is increasingly being taken to open their doors to the underprivileged. We hear none of the same outcry over the white dominion that still exists at festivals like Glastonbury. With tickets at £250 each, it seems unlikely this pattern is set to change.
Sam Kail-Dyke
Wedmore, Somerset
• I wondered this year (as other years) about what happens to the other inhabitants of the festival site – birds, mammals, bats, insects, reptiles – during this invasion by thousands of humans and a huge volume of noise (The greenest Glastonbury ever?, G2, 1 July)
Judy Gahagan
London
