LAWKS! It’s the Next Announcement Thread 2022!

[JoeyT]

The one positive is the more time which passes between announcements now just means they have to do them more regularly as we get closer to the end of May.

We're going to be getting close to 3 a week which isn't a bad thing!

[stuie]

9 minutes ago, Florian Saucer Attack said:

Still no announcement. I'm not one to jump to wild conclusions but I think it's safe to say Glastonbury has been CANCELLED again!

 

[Gnomicide]

6 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

The one positive is the more time which passes between announcements now just means they have to do them more regularly as we get closer to the end of May.

We're going to be getting close to 3 a week which isn't a bad thing!

Or the later we get the full line-up.

[incident]

1 minute ago, Gnomicide said:

Or the later we get the full line-up.

Or they've just decided to do fewer areas so there's more excitement for the full lineup.

[Hutchmaster]

2 minutes ago, Gnomicide said:

Or the later we get the full line-up.

[JoeyT]

5 minutes ago, Gnomicide said:

Or the later we get the full line-up.

[rubick]

They wouldn't do that after two years of waiting. W-would they...?

[FuzzyDunlop]

1 hour ago, Supernintendo Chalmers said:

 

[BigMarv]

It’s my playlists I feel sorry for

[Gnomicide]

16 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

[the wonderwhy]

Interesting interview with Emily in the Times to keep you all busy: 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/emily-eavis-i-organise-glastonbury-but-cant-get-two-ukrainian-refugees-to-worthy-farm-2lhpzc7kg?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=glastonbury&utm_medium=branded_social

[David_303]

13 minutes ago, the wonderwhy said:

Interesting interview with Emily in the Times to keep you all busy: 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/emily-eavis-i-organise-glastonbury-but-cant-get-two-ukrainian-refugees-to-worthy-farm-2lhpzc7kg?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=glastonbury&utm_medium=branded_social

Can you cut and paste the article. Because paywall.

[the wonderwhy]

Just now, David_303 said:

Can you cut and paste the article. Because paywall.

Huh that's weird its not paywalled for me. 

West Pennard Primary School sits framed by the gigantic yew tree of St Nicholas’ church next door – its tower a 1482 slab of serenity surrounded by daffodils and rolling Somerset hills. This is England at its most idyllic – the stuff of picnics, poetry and misty-eyed expat longing. The birdsong is only interrupted by the odd lowing cow or the sound of children chanting nursery rhymes in the playground.

Mr Wheat is the headmaster of West Pennard – there’s a half-eaten chocolate cornflake nest on his desk (“I’ve already eaten the Mini Eggs, I’m afraid. Too delicious”), and all the talk in the corridors, from the children, is of the forthcoming Easter bonnet-making session. If you wanted to paint a picture of serene, untouched English rural life – much the same now as it was a century ago – give or take a Cadbury’s Mini Egg, it’s here. Good old, unchanging, constant England.

Except, as Mr Wheat explains, there is a second story – one of regular new arrivals – interwoven with the fabric of this place.

“In the war, there were lots of children evacuated here. My receptionist, who came here in the Sixties, would be able to tell you about lots of the evacuees who came here and stayed. Old members of the community now.” He gestures out of the window, to the hamlets, and farmhouses. “And then, in 2003, when I was a very young teacher, I was working in a school in Frome when a bomb went off at the international school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and we evacuated a lot of British expats and international school students to the tiniest village – Upton Noble. That year, we went from 20 children to 38 in my class. Some of the locals were still coming to school by horse – and then suddenly we had these kids from the other side of the world arriving that summer. It was…” he pauses, clearly remembering, “wonderful.

“And now…” he continues, “and now, we’re absolutely ready to do it again.”

On his chest, he wears the tiny blue and yellow ribbon of Ukraine – “A pupil’s been making them and giving the money to a refugee charity. A very successful business!” Everyone in the school seems to be wearing them. On the wall, the pupils – in their careful, primary-school handwriting – have written their prayers: “I prayed for Youcrane.” “Dear God, thank you that we are not at war, and please look after Ukraine’s people and the people in Russia who don’t want a war.” “Look after them as you look after us.” “Please help the war.” One outlier has prayed for improved results for their favourite football team – but overall, the sentiments are redoubtably Christian and outward-looking.

West Pennard School has been preparing for a month now to welcome Ukrainian refugees whom those in the local community have volunteered to sponsor. One of those sponsors is Emily Eavis – co-runner of the Glastonbury Festival and former pupil of this school. She has offered to host Veronika and her nine-year-old son at her farm, and has been zooming the family in Kyiv regularly. She has arranged a school place for Veronika’s son at West Pennard – he will be in the same class as one of her children. “Everyone’s so excited to have them get here.”

Veronika and her son at home in Kyiv

MIKHAIL PALINCHAK

This feature was supposed, initially, to be seeing how these refugees were settling in – see how the massive public outpouring of offers for housing, jobs, schooling and refuge for those fleeing the war was now working out in this tiny, idyllic village.

However, after an increasingly fraught month of government and civil service chaos, and catastrophic visa delays, this is now a tour where, everywhere I go, there is a notable, aching, frankly enraging absence. There should be Ukrainian women and children here – here, right now, standing in this playground, looking out across the fields to Glastonbury Tor. Starting the long, slow business of recovering from the Russian invasion; rebuilding their lives here, where so many have offered genuine, practical help and love. Boris Johnson has praised British “generosity” to refugees. There should be tens of thousands of these new arrivals all over the country – gradually settling into the communities who’ve signed up to greet them.

 

 

 

But, instead, there is… nothing. No one’s here. No one’s coming.

——————————

Emily Eavis stands in the middle of a meeting room at the Glastonbury Festival offices at Worthy Farm – both her family home and home to the biggest arts festival in the world. After a two-year hiatus due to Covid, the festival is back on – and with 70 days to go until the gates open and more than 200,000 people start streaming across these fields, today’s schedule involves both a Gold Level security meeting (“Planning for terrorist attacks, riots – you know, the usual”) and approving a line of vintage Glastonbury T-shirts to be put back into production.

“This one’s so Eighties, and pink,” Eavis says cheerfully, pointing to one on a mannequin. “Gen Z are going to love it.”

The building is both full of countless awards for the festival and signed photographs from artists who’ve headlined here. The one from the Rolling Stones has the message from Keith Richards: “You were right – it was a great day.” Interspersed with all the paraphernalia and global acclaim for the festival are several certificates from local agricultural fairs – to remind us that this is still, even as the festival comes and goes, a working farm in the middle of a close-knit rural community.

As soon as refugees started fleeing Ukraine, Emily Eavis applied to host a family here at the farm.

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“We are the dream really, in terms of being able to offer accommodation and work as well – either on the farm or at the festival,” Eavis says, sitting down in a back room. The family’s labrador, Clover, wags in agreement from under a desk. “But we’ve just come up against lots and lots of brick walls.”

Across Britain, tens of thousands of people are in the same position as Eavis. They have offered to take in a family, filled in all the forms, prepared their spare rooms, gathered together communities to provide all the help refugees will need when they get here – and then, nothing.

Eavis, however, is unlike most who’ve offered to host, in that she is unusually used to dealing with administrative roadblocks. The festival is, after all, a temporary city the size of Oxford – with its own hospital, water supply, security and permanent staff. It’s hosted, among millions of others, Prince Harry, Beyoncé and the Dalai Lama – so it’s a safe pair of hands, admin-wise. At first, Eavis thought it would simply be a matter of being more determined.

“I contacted the local authorities, our MP, charities, the government. I’ve called the Home Office. I can’t tell you how many letters I’ve written, saying, ‘Come on, speed this up. Make this happen.’ I’ve spoken to pretty much every organisation that works with refugees. We’ve even got people working here with long experience of this kind of thing – Steve, who runs the Common [one of the fields at Glastonbury], looks after a refugee kitchen in Calais, so he’s got loads of contacts.”

The festival has a long history of helping refugees – aside from their massive annual donation to charity, every year they donate thousands of abandoned tents to refugee camps, and freight over all their unused infrastructure to charities: “Stuff like 2,000 buckets; brooms – practical stuff like that.” However, despite all this experience and contacts, none of Eavis’s communications have worked: “We always end up at the same point.”

Which is? “We’re waiting for the visas, and no one knows how long they’ll take.”

Initially, Eavis – like many people with a platform who’ve applied to host refugees – didn’t intend to make public her commitment.

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“I totally understand people getting annoyed about ‘virtue signalling’…” She stops. Earlier, we were discussing people we know – the lead singer of a big British band; a very famous writer; an actor – who’ve all offered to host refugees, but have not spoken about it publicly, as they don’t want to be accused of disclosing it for “the wrong reasons”. Virtue-signalling. Most people see their offers of help as a very private matter. Eavis too was initially very reluctant.

“We don’t want to look like we’re doing more than anyone else, you know?” she says eventually. “Tens of thousands of people in this country want to house refugees. It’s just obvious the process is flawed – and so, because we have a public platform, we need to speak about that. We need to talk about the fact this isn’t working. It isn’t working. I want to go [to the government], ‘Do you need help?’ We’ve got such a good team [at Glastonbury], maybe we could help here in the West Country. We could draft people in. We’re good at admin here! Frankly, though,” Eavis says, finally looking frustrated, “you just want to say, ‘Drop the visas.’ That’s the problem. No other country has them. It’s just totally unnecessary. It’s log-jammed the whole system; there’s no movement. My MP this morning said they’d only let one person into his constituency, in Wells. One. We know it’s an easy decision to make – it only ever takes one person to decide to scrap them. Just – scrap the visas.”

It’s only the visas that are preventing Veronika and her son from being here right now, drinking tea with us. Earlier in the week, bunk beds were delivered to the farm, for Veronika’s son, “so he can have a mate from school sleep over, if he wants”. Eavis’s husband, Nick – a former chef – has been researching Ukrainian cookery. “Because it’s always comforting to have something that tastes like home, right?” They’ve even booked a place on the school bus, so Veronika’s son will be picked up and dropped off every day. Everything is in place – except the people they’re waiting for.

We go and look at where Veronika and her family will be staying – a self-contained annexe to the main farmhouse, nicknamed “Boxes”.

“I keep having to explain, we’re not actually making them sleep in a box! We call it ‘Boxes’ because it used to be the old dairy, and people would sit on boxes to milk the cows.”

Boxes sits in the shade of a huge willow tree. It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and music room, full of every instrument under the sun. Many of Glastonbury’s headliners have stayed here. Eavis lists a few worldwide names she doesn’t want in print, before ending with, “And David Bowie. You can say he slept here. He’d be into Veronika being here now.”

We look at Boxes. It looks lovely. But so… empty.

——————————

A few weeks earlier, as part of her effort to home a Ukrainian family, Eavis took part in a Zoom meeting with Krish Kandiah, head of the Sanctuary Foundation, a collection of charities that specialise in placing refugees with host homes in the UK. Previously, Sanctuary has worked to rehome both Syrian and Afghan refugees, and is in regular government meetings – giving advice on how to manage both sudden influxes of those needing help and the communities who’ve offered to host them. Before the government opened its Homes for Ukraine initiative, Sanctuary was the biggest organisation trying to co-ordinate the Ukrainian exodus to the UK. It has experienced exactly the same problems as Eavis.

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“We’ve had 31,000 individuals, families and communities signing up to us – WhatsApp groups, schools, universities. So far, out of those 31,000 offers, we’ve had fewer than 50 Ukrainians actually get their visas and arrive here. Fewer than 50.”

Kandiah sighs. He’s the epitome of diplomacy. “The metaphor I like to use is of a tanker. Until recently, to be blunt, the immigration system in this country was designed in a way to stop as many immigrants as possible. Now, of course, we’re suddenly trying to get as many over as possible – but that’s a big tanker to turn around in a short amount of time.”

Would it not just be best to scrap the need for visas? No other country is insisting on them. “Well, we’ve heard the number of visas is increasing – and, indeed, if we’re being cup-half-full, a lot of Ukrainians we’re talking to are glad the visas mean there’s some kind of safeguarding in place. We’ve all seen the stories about unsavoury people on Facebook contacting Ukrainian women and making unsafe and abusive offers.”

At the moment, Sanctuary is trying to be on the front foot on safety issues. It’s currently organising a pilot scheme whereby whole groups of Ukrainians who know each other are brought over here together – “between 20 and 50 individuals” – and housed within “5 to 10 miles” of each other: “Then, if something dodgy happens, you’ve got mates there to help.”

Kandiah is flying to Poland this week, to try to finalise this test scheme. He’s hoping both the government and local authorities will see the safeguarding benefit of keeping communities together.

“We’re just trying to help the government, in any way we can, come good on its promise of an uncapped humanitarian response,” he says. Then, apologetically, he has to end our phone call – along with organising the trip to Poland, Kandiah has six children, and they’re calling him for his tea. Like Emily Eavis, Mr Wheat and everyone else who has volunteered their homes, this is something he’s trying to fit around his normal life. Because the thought of people being trapped in a country slowly being decimated, simply because of paperwork, is unbearable.

——————————

Like most people, I’ve never spoken to someone whose home town is currently being destroyed by an invading army.

I had thought, just before we FaceTimed Veronika, that she was in Poland, safe, and waiting for her visa to the UK.

As Eavis dials her number, I learn that she is still in Kyiv – with her son and husband. Last night, I’d watched footage from the outskirts of Kyiv, which looks like a hellscape of winter, mud, shattered concrete and lines of burnt-out tanks. It seems unthinkable that a family are still living there, when there is a house waiting for them in Somerset.

Veronika’s face appears on Eavis’s mobile. She’s a mum, with a nine-year-old son, and a job in HR. For a moment, I don’t know what to say. Then I realise: I just want to know everything.

“Hi, Veronika,” I say. “How are you?”

“Not bad,” Veronika says, looking like someone who really knows what “bad” looks like. “It’s better now, I guess. For three days it’s a little bit quieter, no bombs. But we still have sirens, so we need to go to the safe place.”

The “safe place” isn’t a shelter – it’s the entrance to their apartment, where “there are no windows”. Every time the alarm goes off, they stay there – “for 30 minutes now. Before, it was three hours.”

What does your son do when the sirens go off? “He is not nervous because we try to read; he plays some computer games on his mobile. So he’s brave, I guess.”

Veronika has tried to get her family out of Kyiv – looking at both western Ukraine, away from the front lines, and Poland, but “mostly all places to live were not available, even in Poland: even if you want to rent, not to live for free, it will be a problem, because they do not have available places.” Emily Eavis’s offer of accommodation in Somerset is the only solid offer she has.

Veronika applied for UK visas for her, her sister and her son “three weeks ago”, but has heard nothing. She can still do some of her job online – she works for a Ukrainian water company – and spends the rest of her time crocheting toys, “to keep my mind busy”. Her apartment is on the 15th floor. “We hear all the bombs, all the tanks, all these sounds. We see fires.”

Veronika starts talking about what she has been discussing with one of her colleagues, who is from “a small suburb of Kyiv”, and “terrible” things have been happening there. “Russian soldiers killed civil people, children even, animals – they ate dogs. They killed them and ate them. We saw photos – a street and lots of people who are dead. They have been there two or three weeks. It is called Bucha.”

I tell her, gently: we have heard of Bucha. It is headline news around the world. Everyone knows what has happened in Bucha.

“I want everyone to know, I am against this Russian president, for sure, but I don’t know if I am against the Russian people – I know some of them, and they are also against this war, even if they live in Russia,” Veronika says, suddenly very animated. “I don’t want these Russian soldiers to come to Ukraine – because they did very, very bad things to Ukrainian people. Tanks won’t come to Kyiv – because we have great soldiers, they will protect Kyiv for sure. They won’t give Kyiv to any Russian soldiers. But we are afraid of rockets. We are very afraid of Russian rockets. We hope to come to you soon – but we still wait.”

After Eavis and I end the FaceTime with Veronika, we are silent for several minutes. There is something emotionally obscene in saying, “Goodbye,” to someone who will now put their phone down and spend the rest of the day listening out for rockets that might hit their house.

“She says she’s crocheted loads of toys for our children,” Eavis says, finally. “She says she’ll make them for anyone who wants them. She’s horrified about feeling like a burden. She just wants her family to be safe.”

——————————

On the train back to London, I am so full of helpless anxiety and fury that first I go to make a gov.uk petition – to call for the waiving of visas for refugees. I see that not only has a petition been started, but that it has already got the required 100,000 signatures, and was raised as an issue in parliament.

On April 6, it got this response from Priti Patel, the home secretary: “Russian troops are seeking to infiltrate and merge with Ukrainian forces. Extremists are on the ground and in the region too. Given this, and also with Putin’s willingness to do violence on British soil… we cannot suspend any security or biometric checks on people we welcome to our country. We have a collective duty to keep the British people safe, and this approach is based on the strongest security advice.”

So, how are those checks going, then? It’s been over a month now. Ten million Ukrainians have fled their homes, of which Poland has taken in 2.6 million, Romania 709,000, Hungary 434,000, Moldova 415,000, Slovakia 323,000, France 45,000, Italy 91,000, Germany 310,000, and Ireland 21,000.

The official total in the UK, on April 8, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, was just 1,200.

I go on to Twitter, and ask, “Has anyone on here who’s applied to sponsor a Ukrainian refugee actually had them arrive yet?”

Over the next three hours, my “replies” column scrolls on and on, with the same answer, over and over: “No.” “No.” “No.” “No.”

Stig Abell, at Times Radio, has a story of the kind of impossible determination necessary to work with the sclerotic system. “We spoke to a magnificent lady on the radio who drove to the Polish border, met a family, drove them to Berlin, then to Calais, waited several days while the system ground slowly around them – and got them home to Cornwall last week.”

Comedian Sue Perkins, This Is Going to Hurt author Adam Kay, Sky News reporter Samantha Washington – people with the confidence to deal with tough bureaucracy – all replied they were still waiting. Several retired civil servants tweeted to say they would be “delighted” to come out of retirement to “help out” with the paperwork – one of them posting a poll from Rooms for Refugees, which has reported that 83 per cent of its volunteers had heard nothing since they’d officially registered as refugee hosts. “We’d love to help. We know the system.”

There was one particular, worrying response that came up time and time again: that, yes, visas had been issued – but to only one member of a family. The children had visas, but the mothers didn’t – or vice versa. And so, of course, the family could not travel to the UK.

It was such a common response that it was difficult not to conclude that this must be a deliberate tactic: allowing the Home Office to state, factually, that it has issued 40,900 visas – while still stymieing the actual flow of refugees into the country. The British public have signed up to the schemes, prepared their spare rooms, learnt to say “Pryvit” (hello) and “Laskavo prosymo” (welcome), but still, no one is here.

As I write this piece – on April 12 – Boxes still sits empty. West Pennard School waits. Russian forces are gathering in the east of Ukraine. Eavis texts Veronika every day – but there’s still no news about her visa.

[tarw]

1 hour ago, Gnomicide said:

Or the later we get the full line-up.

I only very rarely use the downvote but………….

[Divein]

50 minutes ago, the wonderwhy said:

Interesting interview with Emily in the Times to keep you all busy: 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/emily-eavis-i-organise-glastonbury-but-cant-get-two-ukrainian-refugees-to-worthy-farm-2lhpzc7kg?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=glastonbury&utm_medium=branded_social

The Eavii really are wonderful human beings. 
 

And what else needs to be said about the state of the people in charge of our country. Not one of them could find their arse with both hands. 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

8 minutes ago, Divein said:

The Eavii really are wonderful human beings. 
 

And what else needs to be said about the state of the people in charge of our country. Not one of them could find their arse with both hands. 

I sometimes listen to a bit of Talk Sport in the morning and Simon Jordan regularly uses the phrase “They couldn’t find their arse with both hands and a funnel”

[gfa]

1 hour ago, David_303 said:

Can you cut and paste the article. Because paywall.

If you put the link into the website archive.ph, it removes the paywall and adverts 🙂

https://archive.ph/S0PgK

[Neil]

6 minutes ago, gfa said:

If you put the link into the website archive.ph, it removes the paywall and adverts 🙂

https://archive.ph/S0PgK

Quote

“This one’s so Eighties, and pink,” Eavis says cheerfully, pointing to one on a mannequin. “Gen Z are going to love it.”

i think i know what shirt that is?

[Earth_pig]

1 hour ago, the wonderwhy said:

Huh that's weird its not paywalled for me. 

West Pennard Primary School sits framed by the gigantic yew tree of St Nicholas’ church next door – its tower a 1482 slab of serenity surrounded by daffodils and rolling Somerset hills. This is England at its most idyllic – the stuff of picnics, poetry and misty-eyed expat longing. The birdsong is only interrupted by the odd lowing cow or the sound of children chanting nursery rhymes in the playground.

Mr Wheat is the headmaster of West Pennard – there’s a half-eaten chocolate cornflake nest on his desk (“I’ve already eaten the Mini Eggs, I’m afraid. Too delicious”), and all the talk in the corridors, from the children, is of the forthcoming Easter bonnet-making session. If you wanted to paint a picture of serene, untouched English rural life – much the same now as it was a century ago – give or take a Cadbury’s Mini Egg, it’s here. Good old, unchanging, constant England.

Except, as Mr Wheat explains, there is a second story – one of regular new arrivals – interwoven with the fabric of this place.

“In the war, there were lots of children evacuated here. My receptionist, who came here in the Sixties, would be able to tell you about lots of the evacuees who came here and stayed. Old members of the community now.” He gestures out of the window, to the hamlets, and farmhouses. “And then, in 2003, when I was a very young teacher, I was working in a school in Frome when a bomb went off at the international school in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and we evacuated a lot of British expats and international school students to the tiniest village – Upton Noble. That year, we went from 20 children to 38 in my class. Some of the locals were still coming to school by horse – and then suddenly we had these kids from the other side of the world arriving that summer. It was…” he pauses, clearly remembering, “wonderful.

“And now…” he continues, “and now, we’re absolutely ready to do it again.”

On his chest, he wears the tiny blue and yellow ribbon of Ukraine – “A pupil’s been making them and giving the money to a refugee charity. A very successful business!” Everyone in the school seems to be wearing them. On the wall, the pupils – in their careful, primary-school handwriting – have written their prayers: “I prayed for Youcrane.” “Dear God, thank you that we are not at war, and please look after Ukraine’s people and the people in Russia who don’t want a war.” “Look after them as you look after us.” “Please help the war.” One outlier has prayed for improved results for their favourite football team – but overall, the sentiments are redoubtably Christian and outward-looking.

West Pennard School has been preparing for a month now to welcome Ukrainian refugees whom those in the local community have volunteered to sponsor. One of those sponsors is Emily Eavis – co-runner of the Glastonbury Festival and former pupil of this school. She has offered to host Veronika and her nine-year-old son at her farm, and has been zooming the family in Kyiv regularly. She has arranged a school place for Veronika’s son at West Pennard – he will be in the same class as one of her children. “Everyone’s so excited to have them get here.”

Veronika and her son at home in Kyiv

MIKHAIL PALINCHAK

This feature was supposed, initially, to be seeing how these refugees were settling in – see how the massive public outpouring of offers for housing, jobs, schooling and refuge for those fleeing the war was now working out in this tiny, idyllic village.

However, after an increasingly fraught month of government and civil service chaos, and catastrophic visa delays, this is now a tour where, everywhere I go, there is a notable, aching, frankly enraging absence. There should be Ukrainian women and children here – here, right now, standing in this playground, looking out across the fields to Glastonbury Tor. Starting the long, slow business of recovering from the Russian invasion; rebuilding their lives here, where so many have offered genuine, practical help and love. Boris Johnson has praised British “generosity” to refugees. There should be tens of thousands of these new arrivals all over the country – gradually settling into the communities who’ve signed up to greet them.

 

 

 

But, instead, there is… nothing. No one’s here. No one’s coming.

——————————

Emily Eavis stands in the middle of a meeting room at the Glastonbury Festival offices at Worthy Farm – both her family home and home to the biggest arts festival in the world. After a two-year hiatus due to Covid, the festival is back on – and with 70 days to go until the gates open and more than 200,000 people start streaming across these fields, today’s schedule involves both a Gold Level security meeting (“Planning for terrorist attacks, riots – you know, the usual”) and approving a line of vintage Glastonbury T-shirts to be put back into production.

“This one’s so Eighties, and pink,” Eavis says cheerfully, pointing to one on a mannequin. “Gen Z are going to love it.”

The building is both full of countless awards for the festival and signed photographs from artists who’ve headlined here. The one from the Rolling Stones has the message from Keith Richards: “You were right – it was a great day.” Interspersed with all the paraphernalia and global acclaim for the festival are several certificates from local agricultural fairs – to remind us that this is still, even as the festival comes and goes, a working farm in the middle of a close-knit rural community.

As soon as refugees started fleeing Ukraine, Emily Eavis applied to host a family here at the farm.

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“We are the dream really, in terms of being able to offer accommodation and work as well – either on the farm or at the festival,” Eavis says, sitting down in a back room. The family’s labrador, Clover, wags in agreement from under a desk. “But we’ve just come up against lots and lots of brick walls.”

Across Britain, tens of thousands of people are in the same position as Eavis. They have offered to take in a family, filled in all the forms, prepared their spare rooms, gathered together communities to provide all the help refugees will need when they get here – and then, nothing.

Eavis, however, is unlike most who’ve offered to host, in that she is unusually used to dealing with administrative roadblocks. The festival is, after all, a temporary city the size of Oxford – with its own hospital, water supply, security and permanent staff. It’s hosted, among millions of others, Prince Harry, Beyoncé and the Dalai Lama – so it’s a safe pair of hands, admin-wise. At first, Eavis thought it would simply be a matter of being more determined.

“I contacted the local authorities, our MP, charities, the government. I’ve called the Home Office. I can’t tell you how many letters I’ve written, saying, ‘Come on, speed this up. Make this happen.’ I’ve spoken to pretty much every organisation that works with refugees. We’ve even got people working here with long experience of this kind of thing – Steve, who runs the Common [one of the fields at Glastonbury], looks after a refugee kitchen in Calais, so he’s got loads of contacts.”

The festival has a long history of helping refugees – aside from their massive annual donation to charity, every year they donate thousands of abandoned tents to refugee camps, and freight over all their unused infrastructure to charities: “Stuff like 2,000 buckets; brooms – practical stuff like that.” However, despite all this experience and contacts, none of Eavis’s communications have worked: “We always end up at the same point.”

Which is? “We’re waiting for the visas, and no one knows how long they’ll take.”

Initially, Eavis – like many people with a platform who’ve applied to host refugees – didn’t intend to make public her commitment.

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“I totally understand people getting annoyed about ‘virtue signalling’…” She stops. Earlier, we were discussing people we know – the lead singer of a big British band; a very famous writer; an actor – who’ve all offered to host refugees, but have not spoken about it publicly, as they don’t want to be accused of disclosing it for “the wrong reasons”. Virtue-signalling. Most people see their offers of help as a very private matter. Eavis too was initially very reluctant.

“We don’t want to look like we’re doing more than anyone else, you know?” she says eventually. “Tens of thousands of people in this country want to house refugees. It’s just obvious the process is flawed – and so, because we have a public platform, we need to speak about that. We need to talk about the fact this isn’t working. It isn’t working. I want to go [to the government], ‘Do you need help?’ We’ve got such a good team [at Glastonbury], maybe we could help here in the West Country. We could draft people in. We’re good at admin here! Frankly, though,” Eavis says, finally looking frustrated, “you just want to say, ‘Drop the visas.’ That’s the problem. No other country has them. It’s just totally unnecessary. It’s log-jammed the whole system; there’s no movement. My MP this morning said they’d only let one person into his constituency, in Wells. One. We know it’s an easy decision to make – it only ever takes one person to decide to scrap them. Just – scrap the visas.”

It’s only the visas that are preventing Veronika and her son from being here right now, drinking tea with us. Earlier in the week, bunk beds were delivered to the farm, for Veronika’s son, “so he can have a mate from school sleep over, if he wants”. Eavis’s husband, Nick – a former chef – has been researching Ukrainian cookery. “Because it’s always comforting to have something that tastes like home, right?” They’ve even booked a place on the school bus, so Veronika’s son will be picked up and dropped off every day. Everything is in place – except the people they’re waiting for.

We go and look at where Veronika and her family will be staying – a self-contained annexe to the main farmhouse, nicknamed “Boxes”.

“I keep having to explain, we’re not actually making them sleep in a box! We call it ‘Boxes’ because it used to be the old dairy, and people would sit on boxes to milk the cows.”

Boxes sits in the shade of a huge willow tree. It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and music room, full of every instrument under the sun. Many of Glastonbury’s headliners have stayed here. Eavis lists a few worldwide names she doesn’t want in print, before ending with, “And David Bowie. You can say he slept here. He’d be into Veronika being here now.”

We look at Boxes. It looks lovely. But so… empty.

——————————

A few weeks earlier, as part of her effort to home a Ukrainian family, Eavis took part in a Zoom meeting with Krish Kandiah, head of the Sanctuary Foundation, a collection of charities that specialise in placing refugees with host homes in the UK. Previously, Sanctuary has worked to rehome both Syrian and Afghan refugees, and is in regular government meetings – giving advice on how to manage both sudden influxes of those needing help and the communities who’ve offered to host them. Before the government opened its Homes for Ukraine initiative, Sanctuary was the biggest organisation trying to co-ordinate the Ukrainian exodus to the UK. It has experienced exactly the same problems as Eavis.

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“We’ve had 31,000 individuals, families and communities signing up to us – WhatsApp groups, schools, universities. So far, out of those 31,000 offers, we’ve had fewer than 50 Ukrainians actually get their visas and arrive here. Fewer than 50.”

Kandiah sighs. He’s the epitome of diplomacy. “The metaphor I like to use is of a tanker. Until recently, to be blunt, the immigration system in this country was designed in a way to stop as many immigrants as possible. Now, of course, we’re suddenly trying to get as many over as possible – but that’s a big tanker to turn around in a short amount of time.”

Would it not just be best to scrap the need for visas? No other country is insisting on them. “Well, we’ve heard the number of visas is increasing – and, indeed, if we’re being cup-half-full, a lot of Ukrainians we’re talking to are glad the visas mean there’s some kind of safeguarding in place. We’ve all seen the stories about unsavoury people on Facebook contacting Ukrainian women and making unsafe and abusive offers.”

At the moment, Sanctuary is trying to be on the front foot on safety issues. It’s currently organising a pilot scheme whereby whole groups of Ukrainians who know each other are brought over here together – “between 20 and 50 individuals” – and housed within “5 to 10 miles” of each other: “Then, if something dodgy happens, you’ve got mates there to help.”

Kandiah is flying to Poland this week, to try to finalise this test scheme. He’s hoping both the government and local authorities will see the safeguarding benefit of keeping communities together.

“We’re just trying to help the government, in any way we can, come good on its promise of an uncapped humanitarian response,” he says. Then, apologetically, he has to end our phone call – along with organising the trip to Poland, Kandiah has six children, and they’re calling him for his tea. Like Emily Eavis, Mr Wheat and everyone else who has volunteered their homes, this is something he’s trying to fit around his normal life. Because the thought of people being trapped in a country slowly being decimated, simply because of paperwork, is unbearable.

——————————

Like most people, I’ve never spoken to someone whose home town is currently being destroyed by an invading army.

I had thought, just before we FaceTimed Veronika, that she was in Poland, safe, and waiting for her visa to the UK.

As Eavis dials her number, I learn that she is still in Kyiv – with her son and husband. Last night, I’d watched footage from the outskirts of Kyiv, which looks like a hellscape of winter, mud, shattered concrete and lines of burnt-out tanks. It seems unthinkable that a family are still living there, when there is a house waiting for them in Somerset.

Veronika’s face appears on Eavis’s mobile. She’s a mum, with a nine-year-old son, and a job in HR. For a moment, I don’t know what to say. Then I realise: I just want to know everything.

“Hi, Veronika,” I say. “How are you?”

“Not bad,” Veronika says, looking like someone who really knows what “bad” looks like. “It’s better now, I guess. For three days it’s a little bit quieter, no bombs. But we still have sirens, so we need to go to the safe place.”

The “safe place” isn’t a shelter – it’s the entrance to their apartment, where “there are no windows”. Every time the alarm goes off, they stay there – “for 30 minutes now. Before, it was three hours.”

What does your son do when the sirens go off? “He is not nervous because we try to read; he plays some computer games on his mobile. So he’s brave, I guess.”

Veronika has tried to get her family out of Kyiv – looking at both western Ukraine, away from the front lines, and Poland, but “mostly all places to live were not available, even in Poland: even if you want to rent, not to live for free, it will be a problem, because they do not have available places.” Emily Eavis’s offer of accommodation in Somerset is the only solid offer she has.

Veronika applied for UK visas for her, her sister and her son “three weeks ago”, but has heard nothing. She can still do some of her job online – she works for a Ukrainian water company – and spends the rest of her time crocheting toys, “to keep my mind busy”. Her apartment is on the 15th floor. “We hear all the bombs, all the tanks, all these sounds. We see fires.”

Veronika starts talking about what she has been discussing with one of her colleagues, who is from “a small suburb of Kyiv”, and “terrible” things have been happening there. “Russian soldiers killed civil people, children even, animals – they ate dogs. They killed them and ate them. We saw photos – a street and lots of people who are dead. They have been there two or three weeks. It is called Bucha.”

I tell her, gently: we have heard of Bucha. It is headline news around the world. Everyone knows what has happened in Bucha.

“I want everyone to know, I am against this Russian president, for sure, but I don’t know if I am against the Russian people – I know some of them, and they are also against this war, even if they live in Russia,” Veronika says, suddenly very animated. “I don’t want these Russian soldiers to come to Ukraine – because they did very, very bad things to Ukrainian people. Tanks won’t come to Kyiv – because we have great soldiers, they will protect Kyiv for sure. They won’t give Kyiv to any Russian soldiers. But we are afraid of rockets. We are very afraid of Russian rockets. We hope to come to you soon – but we still wait.”

After Eavis and I end the FaceTime with Veronika, we are silent for several minutes. There is something emotionally obscene in saying, “Goodbye,” to someone who will now put their phone down and spend the rest of the day listening out for rockets that might hit their house.

“She says she’s crocheted loads of toys for our children,” Eavis says, finally. “She says she’ll make them for anyone who wants them. She’s horrified about feeling like a burden. She just wants her family to be safe.”

——————————

On the train back to London, I am so full of helpless anxiety and fury that first I go to make a gov.uk petition – to call for the waiving of visas for refugees. I see that not only has a petition been started, but that it has already got the required 100,000 signatures, and was raised as an issue in parliament.

On April 6, it got this response from Priti Patel, the home secretary: “Russian troops are seeking to infiltrate and merge with Ukrainian forces. Extremists are on the ground and in the region too. Given this, and also with Putin’s willingness to do violence on British soil… we cannot suspend any security or biometric checks on people we welcome to our country. We have a collective duty to keep the British people safe, and this approach is based on the strongest security advice.”

So, how are those checks going, then? It’s been over a month now. Ten million Ukrainians have fled their homes, of which Poland has taken in 2.6 million, Romania 709,000, Hungary 434,000, Moldova 415,000, Slovakia 323,000, France 45,000, Italy 91,000, Germany 310,000, and Ireland 21,000.

The official total in the UK, on April 8, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, was just 1,200.

I go on to Twitter, and ask, “Has anyone on here who’s applied to sponsor a Ukrainian refugee actually had them arrive yet?”

Over the next three hours, my “replies” column scrolls on and on, with the same answer, over and over: “No.” “No.” “No.” “No.”

Stig Abell, at Times Radio, has a story of the kind of impossible determination necessary to work with the sclerotic system. “We spoke to a magnificent lady on the radio who drove to the Polish border, met a family, drove them to Berlin, then to Calais, waited several days while the system ground slowly around them – and got them home to Cornwall last week.”

Comedian Sue Perkins, This Is Going to Hurt author Adam Kay, Sky News reporter Samantha Washington – people with the confidence to deal with tough bureaucracy – all replied they were still waiting. Several retired civil servants tweeted to say they would be “delighted” to come out of retirement to “help out” with the paperwork – one of them posting a poll from Rooms for Refugees, which has reported that 83 per cent of its volunteers had heard nothing since they’d officially registered as refugee hosts. “We’d love to help. We know the system.”

There was one particular, worrying response that came up time and time again: that, yes, visas had been issued – but to only one member of a family. The children had visas, but the mothers didn’t – or vice versa. And so, of course, the family could not travel to the UK.

It was such a common response that it was difficult not to conclude that this must be a deliberate tactic: allowing the Home Office to state, factually, that it has issued 40,900 visas – while still stymieing the actual flow of refugees into the country. The British public have signed up to the schemes, prepared their spare rooms, learnt to say “Pryvit” (hello) and “Laskavo prosymo” (welcome), but still, no one is here.

As I write this piece – on April 12 – Boxes still sits empty. West Pennard School waits. Russian forces are gathering in the east of Ukraine. Eavis texts Veronika every day – but there’s still no news about her visa.

Awful that it's taking so long

 

[Earth_pig]

makes you feel a bit silly being impatient for the stage poster !

[clarkete]

10 minutes ago, Earth_pig said:

Awful that it's taking so long

 

Shameful isn't it 😞 

[Obiginnaw]

7pm or we riot x 

[Beerqueen]

Just now, Obiginnaw said:

7pm or we riot x 

What's wrong with 6 pm?  Or 6.17?

[JoeyT]

The Common have just posted on instagram.

First post since 23rd June 2021.

Going by the fact they’ve just broken cover I’d say they might be about to announce something…

[Earth_pig]

6 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

The Common have just posted on instagram.

First post since 23rd June 2021.

Going by the fact they’ve just broken cover I’d say they might be about to announce something…

Interesting