As if Kingston upon Hull did not have enough problems. Once a thriving fishing port, that industry is long gone; we were the most bomb-damaged place by area of the city in Britain during the Second World War; we are home to what is considered one of the largest and worst municipal housing estates in Europe, Bransholme; we have the third highest rate of teenage pregnancy in England and Wales; our football team, Hull City AFC, are in a race to the bottom of the Championship; dreadful Dame Diana Johnson is one of our most prominent MPs; we are likely to become part of a Net Zero obsessed devolved unitary Hull and East Yorkshire local authority which plans, among other things, to impose heat network zones; and the University of Hull is once again in a dire financial state, threatening job cuts and departmental closures.
On top of all that, Coldplay have announced two dates here in August next year at Craven Park, the home of rugby league team Hull Kingston Rovers. These are the band’s only dates outside of London and quite what we have done to deserve this is not clear. The words I would use to describe the music of Coldplay are probably unprintable – even in an open-minded publication like the Daily Sceptic – but ChatGPT came to the rescue, describing their music as “a blend of thoughtful introspection, anthemic energy and genre-crossing experimentation, designed to evoke both deep emotions and joyful communal experiences”. Despite that, they still seem to sell records and seats at their concerts.
Not content with inflicting their music on us, this tour is also a massive hyperinflated virtue signal regarding one of the band’s pet topics, the ‘climate emergency’. The band “first pledged to cut their carbon footprint in 2019” and told the BBC they would stop touring until they could tour “in a more sustainable way”. Sadly, they seem to have worked out how to do that and they are on the road again this year and next. It is either that or the “conscious uncoupling” of their frontman Chris Martin is proving more expensive than expected.
Coldplay are patrons of Client Earth, an environmental – with the emphasis on ‘mental’ – organisation which is at the “forefront of changing the way the planet’s resources are governed” and which claims: “Rising carbon emissions are accelerating climate change. Our forests are disappearing. The air we breathe and the oceans we depend on are polluted. Vulnerable plants and animals are under threat.” All palpable nonsense as readers of the Daily Sceptic will know.
The Wembley concerts, but not the Hull ones, will be powered entirely by solar, wind and kinetic energy and a satellite stage at each of the London shows will be powered fully “by the audience via kinetic flooring and power bikes”. Satellite stages, or B-stages, are used by several bands as a means for the band to perform out in the middle of the audience and are reached by catwalks. So, if you want to see Coldplay on the satellite stage not only do you have to pay for your ticket, but you must also work up a sweat for the privilege. This sounds like just the job for Ed Miliband and Sir Keir Starmer who, presumably, will be getting freebie tickets for the Coldplay gigs in any case. The band claim that their current tour has produced “59% less CO2 emissions than their previous stadium tour in 2016/17”. The proceeds from their current tour have also led to nine million trees being planted; it’s just a pity that they are working hard to reduce the very CO2 those trees will need to thrive.
Quite why Coldplay are coming to Hull is not clear. Frontman Chris Martin had expressed a desire to do something ‘up north’, had been given a range of options and chose Craven Park in Hull. We are not in the top 10 green cities in the U.K. (nor are we in the bottom 10). There are much bigger stadiums available even in Hull where the MKM stadium, home to both ailing Hull City AFC and our other rugby league team Hull FC, is twice the size of Craven Park.
We do have a reasonable musical history, being the home of two of David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars and producing the jangle pop band The Housemartins (later The Beautiful South). We have one of the most famous small musical venues on the U.K. at The Adelphi, capacity 200, where Oasis played in 1994 (tickets £4) and also bands such as Radiohead. Coldplay have pledged 10% of their takings on the U.K. leg of the tour to the charity Music Venue Trust, which supports small venues such as the Adelphi. Nevertheless, none of that is explicit.
However, a Facebook posting by BBC Humberside probably gets nearest to the truth. While claiming to speculate, the posting points out the proximity of Craven Park to the waterfront Siemens Gamesa factory, which manufactures wind turbines for offshore wind farms. The shafts of the turbines dominate their area of the waterfront and will be easily visible from the upper tiers at Craven Park. The turbines are destined for the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, the world’s largest offshore wind farm. Between Beverley and Hull, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm Converter Station – built to receive electricity from Dogger Bank B and pass it on the National Grid – is blotting the formerly bucolic landscape.
Readers of the Daily Sceptic will need no reminding that, in addition to being unsightly and environmentally deleterious, offshore wind turbines are a colossal waste of money. The Dogger Bank project alone costs £11 billion, wind turbines only generate electricity when the wind is blowing and, at best, wind contributes only 17% of the electricity we need here. To date it has not proved to be cost-effective, as demonstrated in 2023 when the Government failed to get any bids for new offshore wind projects (solar and tidal projects did get bids). Earlier this year BP froze its offshore wind endeavours due to lack of financial returns.
I imagine that none of this has gone unnoticed by Chris Martin and his bandmates, and I’ll eat my Oasis tickets if their visit to Hull is not aimed at giving the offshore wind project a shot in the arm. Who knows, Mr. Martin may even be asked to throw the switch that connects it all up to the grid – after all, this part of the project is due to go live in 2025. You heard it here first.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Just put a stop to it now because it is nothing more than a pisstake. I have been to Hull and I knew a woman from Hartlepool and she was as good as gold but her life was nasty. Coldplay is the epitome of everything that is crap about neoliberalism. This is cruel and unusual punishment.
They closed down any hope of a p ositive future and now they have to live on Universal Credit, Housing Benefit and a bit of income on the side in a town where there isn’t much money sloshing about. This is sick to put your own people through this. With all the diminution of self-esteem and civic pride that it entails. Family life impossible even when it is strongly desired. You would never do that to your country if you loved it.
You consign whole towns and cities to live on benefits and then you import cheap labour and the criminal class because they will work for peanuts. Is it really that difficult to see this situation as treachery and treason. If it is then you are too far gone and you might as well just step aside.
They took your country over in 2020 please understand this. That was the pivotal moment for them. Nothing is coming back. They call it pushing the envelope. They pushed it and you did nothing. There will still be enclaves for white people but they aill get smaller and smaller.
Money worship only ends one way. Your children are screwed and your parents are screwed and next year will look very different from any year before. Once critical mass has been reached with immigraton you aren’t coming back. Just be respectful and try to cut down on the pork and booze because these things can cause problems.
I will not change what I eat or decide to eat for any man!
Can’t think of anything worse than having to listen to Coldplay.
No mention of the great Hull band from the 1980s, the Red Guitars? Good Technology and Marimba Jive are great songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs0OkiCZNRI
Ex-Coldplay fan here. I loved all their stuff and they did some amazing tracks which will always evoke happy memories for me. However, it was a great shame when Chris and the band outed themselves as total nobtards regarding this whole climate lark. I wish bands would stay out of politics and agendas, full stop. It’s like when the Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky went on about who’d had what death jab at one of their concerts. Another band I used to like scratched off my list, although I’ll still listen to their old stuff. It just leaves you cold and turns you right off when artists you’d long respected go on like this. They should just stick to music and quit alienating large chunks of their fanbase.
Very true….Rammstein comes to mind.
I think it’s unrealistic and unhelpful to worry about the opinions and character of people who produce art. That said, I might decide not to give them any more of my money, and not to see them in concert so I didn’t have to listen to the preaching. But yes I listen to tons of stuff I already own by people I know have very different views to me.
I can’t think of a single Coldplay song though.
Don’t forget to add Springsteen to that list, another childhood hero revealed as a total banker….
Am.i alone in seeing the irony of socialists who formerly demonised Margaret Thatcher for the deindustrialisation of Britain now doing everything in their power to choke the life out of any manufacturing industry that may be left in the country?
What isn’t clear is whether they are too stupid to understand that you can’t have competitive manufacturing without cheap energy or whether they have simply started to openly and brazenly despise the British working class.
Maybe both.
It could be worse. Let’s hope the don’t do any Oasis covers such as: “Don’t Look Back in Anger”.
Very amusing in a grim sort of way, and I agree completely, but would question only the idea that the oceans are not polluted. Not so sure about the air – seems ok to me! But yes, the rest of what Coldplay are about is undistilled crap.
The oceans are not polluted.
Unless you mean by oil which gets thrust into it in enormous quantities whenever the sea bed shakes a bit.
“and a satellite stage at each of the London shows will be powered fully “by the audience via kinetic flooring and power bikes”
The levels of blind ideological fervour necessary to pay large amounts of money for the privilege of cycling furiously or jumping up and down relentlessly (both offering up particularly hilarious sights during any ballads!) whilst trying to enjoy a concert are quite staggering.
Anyway Coldplay should have gone the full turn-back-time hog (a la windmills being reintroduced for power creation) and chosen treadmill-based generators instead;
Thus even more graphically displaying the complete debasement and enslavement of humanity demanded by the Green religion.
Shirley, they should be performing in a field, powered only by wind and sun and perhaps Ed running furiously in a hamster wheel, lit only by candles made from earwax, and dressed only in wool dyed with locally sourced nettles (The Goodlife), now that little disaster would be worth seeing….
Powered by bikes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaeIfGWMbvg
Freddie Starr Speeded up Singing
Forget heat pumps. All the climate virtue signallers can wear masks to capture all that hot air and that can then be pumped into a hot air national grid to be piped around to peoples houses. Much like our sewage, this hot air will have to go through a filtration system to remove all the words along with the harmful self righteous sentiment. The last thing anyone wants is the faint noise of haranguing coming from the radiators, or from under the floor!