The P&J and the Scotsman make a great deal of Highland Council's events manager Gerry Reynolds recent blog post. He sort of defends Jeremy Clarkson's recent shooting strikers joke and then sort of makes one himself. He suggests shooting copycat complainers or taking a sledgehammer to them. I suppose there are few of us that could claim the moral high ground here and suggest that it is wrong to make such comments. Let him without sin etc... It is all relative of course, but does Gerry Reynolds simply end up making a plonker of himself in the same way that Clarkson did, to this observer and many others?
The Devil is in the detail of course. Here's the Article in the P&J and here's the Scotsman. You can read Gerry Reynolds views for yourself here. No doubt Gerry Reynolds blog will be receiving quite a few hits today thanks to these two august journals. There will probably be a follow up from the red tops.
Much more interesting to this observer is Reynold's article on The Birth of the Highland Games. It is an illuminating interesting piece on the origin of the Highland Games as we know them. Food for thought then, as Highland Games across Scotland come under threat from the like of increasing insurance premiums and lack of sponsorship, the Cupar games are an example of this alarming trend.
This lovely example too from Reynold's games article of what some representatives get up too on our behalf:
"I once had a Scottish Government official loudly inform me, in front of guests from half a dozen countries at an event is Iceland (which made her “fair game” if you get my drift), that she strongly disliked Highland Games because they were simply not “sophisticated enough” for her and her friends.
As she smiled contendedly at placing herself at the top of some kind of imaginary pecking order and reached for her wine, I quietly asked her how much she knew about the mysteries of the Piobaireachd or the hours that the American Heavy Ryan Vierra had spent watching film of himself that winter so that he could make the minute adjustments that would enable him to explode out his rotation and launch the Weight for Distance with the grace of a ballet dancer and the power of an Olympic discus champion."
Might I suggest to Mr Reynolds that getting into bed with Jeremy Clarkson is never a good idea, joke or not
ReplyDeleteMaybe he's looking for a golden handshake?