
Music superstar backs Nigel Farage saying voters ‘should give him a chance'
SIR Rod Stewart says voters should 'give Nigel Farage a chance'.
The 80-year-old rocker slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer's policies on fishing rights in Scotland as he revealed he thinks the Reform leader is "coming across well".
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New polls suggest Reform is on track to win the next election - with more than a third of voters saying they will support the right-wing party.
And Rod 'The Mod' is no different.
Ahead of his Glastonbury set this Sunday, the Maggie May singer insisted that despite his 'extreme wealth', he is not out of touch.
Sir Rod was asked in an interview with The Times where he sees Britain's political future heading.
He responded: "It's hard for me because I'm extremely wealthy, and I deserve to be, so a lot of it doesn't really touch me. But that doesn't mean I'm out of touch.
"For instance, I've read about Starmer cutting off the fishing in Scotland and giving it back to the EU. That hasn't made him popular. We're fed up with the Tories. We've got to give Farage a chance. He's coming across well."
"What options have we got? I know some of his family, I know his brother, and I quite like him.
"But Starmer's all about getting us out of Brexit and I don't know how he's going to do that. Still, the country will survive. It could be worse. We could be in the Gaza Strip."
It comes after the music legend hit out at Farage last June after he claimed that the West provoked Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Stewart previously said he was "outraged and dumbfounded" after Farage argued that the EU and NATO had given Putin a "reason" to tell his people "they're coming for us again'.
We previously told how Sir Rod lifted the lid on exactly how much he is getting paid to play at Glastonbury this year - as well as how much money he'll lose.
He is set to return to Worthy Farm for the first time in decades, having last performed on the Pyramid Stage 23 years ago.
He's performing as this year's Legends slot act, joining a long list of iconic acts who've taken on the prestigious role.
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28 minutes ago
- BBC News
WaterAid volunteers share polaroids of Glastonbury Festival
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The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Just when the world desperately needs wise elders, its fate is in the hands of old and ruthless patriarchs
Let's attempt something delicate: talking about age without slipping into ageism. Never before in modern history have those with the fate of the world in their hands been so old. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are both 72. Narendra Modi is 74, Benjamin Netanyahu 75, Donald Trump 79, and Ali Khamenei is 86. Thanks to advances in medical science, people are able to lead longer, more active lives – but we are now also witnessing a frightening number of political leaders tightening their grip on power as they get older, often at the expense of their younger colleagues. This week, at their annual summit, the leaders of Nato – including Emmanuel Macron and Mette Frederiksen (both 47), Giorgia Meloni (48) and Pedro Sánchez (53) – were forced to swallow Trump's demand for increased military spending. The average age of Nato heads of state is 60. Germany's Friedrich Merz is 69, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is 71. All bowed to a new 5% defence spending target – an arbitrary figure, imposed without serious military reasoning or rational debate, let alone serious democratic debate at home. It was less policy, more deference to the whims of a grumpy patriarch. Nato's secretary general, Mark Rutte – himself just 58 – went so far as to call Trump 'Daddy'. That's not diplomacy. That's submission. This generational clash plays out in other arenas. Ukraine's 47-year-old president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is resisting the imperial ambitions of septuagenarian Putin. Septuagenarian Xi eyes a Taiwan led by a president seven years his junior. Netanyahu, three-quarters of a century old, is overseeing devastation in Gaza, where almost half the population is under 18. In Iran an 86 year old rules over a population with an average age of 32. Cameroon's Paul Biya, 92, has been in power since 1982 in a country where the median age is 18 and life expectancy just 62. There is no gerontocratic conspiracy at work here – no senior citizens' club bent on global domination. But there is something disturbing about a world being dismantled by the very people whose lives were defined by its postwar architecture. Khamenei was six when the second world war ended. Trump was born in 1946, the year the United Nations held its first general assembly. Netanyahu was born a year after Israel was founded. Modi was born in 1950, as India became a republic. Putin entered the world in October 1952, months before Stalin died. Xi in June 1953, just after. And Erdoğan was born in 1954, two years after Turkey joined Nato. These men are the children of the postwar world – and as they near the end of their lives, they seem determined to tear it down. It almost looks like revenge. Dylan Thomas urged us to 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'. Rarely has the line felt so literal. Yes, the rules-based international order was always messier in practice than on paper. 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The kind who think about legacy not as personal glory, but as the world they leave behind. In this age of age, what we need is not domination, but wisdom. And that, in the end, is what separates a ruler from a leader. David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World and Congo: The Epic History of a People Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.


BBC News
36 minutes ago
- BBC News
'It was the atmosphere that made The Leadmill so special'
"It's about the people you meet there and the memories you make, not how the place is decorated. It's the atmosphere - that's what made The Leadmill so special." So says Will Penney, 23, who is just one of hundreds of people queueing up outside Sheffield's famous venue on Friday night for one final time before it shuts its to get in to see Miles Kane perform, Will, who lives in Sheffield and who is originally from Northern Ireland, says he had always wanted to see Kane play at The Leadmill, so the fact he is the star of the final gig there is "very fitting".This last event comes at the end of several years of legal argument involving the venue - and once Kane has left the stage and a few final club nights have been held, The Leadmill will close in its current Electric Group, which owns the site, has promised it will remain a music venue with the "coolest bands" taking to the stage in a refurbished building, fans waiting under The Leadmill's landmark red neon sign for the last time say it is the end of an says that while other venues feel "forced", with "neon signs everywhere", The Leadmill has always been something different."That's the charm. It doesn't feel forcibly made for people our age," he Vex Deane, 20, who moved to Sheffield from Braintree in Essex, says Friday night's gig is "like a goodbye, like a funeral"."That sounds really dark, but you want to have a good party afterwards. It needs a good send-off," she says. Also queueing to get in is Sarah Pruim, 24, a freelance music photographer, who says she has travelled up from London for "the final send-off for such an iconic venue".Originally from Chicago, and visiting The Leadmill for the first time, Sarah says: "It feels like such an important part of the music history that is kind of being lost."I think it's an important day to reflect on the importance of these spaces for a lot of different people - and for art."That needs to be in the forefront of people's minds."Sarah adds: "I do shed a tear to think the original historic venue, as it was for so many years, is changing over."I think [they should] prioritise it as a space for smaller artists to have a voice. "Where are the next Arctic Monkeys going to be performing if we lose these venues?"Arctic Monkeys, as well as Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley, and many other musicians, all credit The Leadmill as a key part of their early careers. Amber, 16, a young musician from Blackpool, says she had hoped to perform at the Sheffield venue one day."Young and upcoming artists need a place to start out, and when places like this are [changing], it's not giving people like us a chance," she explains."When there's less opportunities, and places are getting shut down, I think it's scary." Charlie and Violet, both 17, say they have been to gigs at The Leadmill roughly every month for the last few years and say the change is "heartbreaking".Violet says they had signed "every petition, replied to every email, multiple times" to try and keep The Leadmill in its current form."Losing it is going to have a big impact on Sheffield," she says."I don't think we'll recover from not having it, to be honest." However, Charlie, who says he also attended lots of gigs with his mum who used to work at The Leadmill, says he is trying to stay optimistic about the says he hopes the site will remain an indie venue with small bands on the stage."If it needs refreshing to keep people our age coming and still seeing live music and new bands, that might be better for the local scene," he adds."But I think it's perfect as it is." At the scene: BBC Yorkshire's Steph Miskin attends the Leadmill's final gig As the house lights were on ahead of Miles Kane taking to take to the stage for The Leadmill's final gig, the venue was buzzing in every wearing one of a limited run of t-shirts marked with "the final show" listed on their backs were spread across the dance floor, unable to move without a drink being spilt in the sold-out 900-capacity and the Makers and Pulp blared through speakers warming up the crowd, which in reality needed no more encouragement. When the lights went down, line by line, the crowd in unison sang every single word. wasn't any old gig, it was the last more than an hour the crowd was in Kane's hands, and when he did bow out, everyone stood still - because that was shuffle for the exit - everyone stood there realising: this is it, the end of The then Frank Sinatra's My Way came on and friends hugged, people pulled out their phones to record the moment and a couple snogged on the dancefloor. Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North