Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the controversies impacting Glastonbury 2025

UK authorities have confirmed they plan to assess comments made by some controversial artists at the Glastonbury Festival.

English punk duo Bob Vylan and Irish group Kneecap performed controversial sets at the famed festival - criticising Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Israeli Defence Force.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says the organisers of the festival were 'appalled' by these - and it's likely investigations will continue. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, out of the UK with us. We've got Gavin Gray. Hello, Gevin,
Hi there cool. It is going to get hot in
southern Europe.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Isn't it It is, Yes, it's already hot and it's
getting hotter today. So yesterday southern Spain recorded forty six
celsius in Barcelona. One woman died after completing a shift
as a road sweeper in very high temperatures. Hot air
from North Africa has really spread north and across the

(00:27):
Balkans as well to Southern Europe and the holiday destinations
like Croatia, leading to these really soaring temperatures, and Italy, Greece, Spain,
France and Portugala all among the countries affected. There are
wildfires currently in Greece and the weather forecast is saying
it's a very very intense period of heat for this

(00:50):
time of year. Normally, high temperatures like this are recorded
late July early August, so to have them mid to
late June as they've been experiencingarticularly peaking now, is pretty devastating.
Here in the UK, it was thirty one celsius in
London yesterday, thirty three predicted today and today is the

(01:11):
opening day of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. That'll make it
the hottest opening day ever in history.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Now, Gavin, what do you make of this controversy around Glastonbury?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, very interesting. This so some groups were performing at
Glastonbury live on television, among them Bob Villain. This is
a rap punk duo and during their set, as I said,
live broadcast, the rapper Bobby Villain led chance of free,
free Palestine and death death to the IDF that's the

(01:45):
Israel Defense Forces. Now this was broadcast live Glastonbury did
nothing to pull the plug on them, and some are
saying this is effectively hate speech. The UK has joined
in now saying it was appalling. The music festival glaston
reorganizers say that they were appalled by what was done

(02:05):
and the Prime Minister labeling it as hate speech, saying
the BBC now has questions to answer over the live
broadcast why it didn't pull the plug. This is certainly
going to rattle on for some considerable time. There are
others saying, look, you know, all they were doing was
pointing out what's going on in Gaza, Palestine, just saying,
you know, it's all terrible there. But this call for

(02:28):
death to Israel defense forces I think has crossed the line,
has taken it further, and the BBC very much in
the firing line, along with the rap punk duo and
police in Somerset, which is where the county where Glaston
Rey is also investigating complaints they've had about it being
discriminatory language and deeply offensive.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, now I see in the UK there is this
project right to create the building blocks of human life
from scratched. It's from scratch, I imagine this is huge controversial.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yes it is, and it's why it's taken so long
actually to get the go ahead. The Welcome Trust, that's
the world's largest medical charity, has given an initial twenty
two million New Zealand dollars to start this project. It's
being conducted around the world, but with pretty several bases
in and around Cambridge where there's a research team there.

(03:24):
What they hope is this will help improve people's lives
as they age, lead to healthier aging with less disease
as they get older, and accelerate treatments for many incurable diseases. However,
what critics say is this will lead to designer babies.
In other words, people pretty much designing the baby they
want via a DNA and also unforeseen changes in future generations. So, Heather,

(03:50):
basically every cell in our body contains this molecule called DNA.
It's made of four smaller blocks, and those patterns between
the four smaller blocks AGCT are eat it over and
over again in various combinations, and that is all the
genetic information we need. Now we know that much, and
also we now know that it can be read like
a barcode in our body. Bizarrely, the question is, though

(04:13):
researchers want to create parts of these molecules and maybe
one day all of the molecules. So they were going
molecule by molecule from scratch, and that would mean you
could effectively construct a human. And this is deeply worrying
for many people who are worring, you know, just concerned
that it's going to get in the wrong hands.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Frankly, you took me back to science class, AGCT. Thank
you very much, Kevin, I appreciate Itgavin Gray, UK, corresponding

Speaker 2 (04:38):
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