Loch Lomond Highland Games 2024 cancelled

[Jimmy]

What a pity, Loch Lomond Highland Games have been cancelled this year 2024 as West Dunbartonshire Council have withdrawn funding.
Sometimes these councils would have us living in a cultural desert in Scotland

[Kiltedjohn]

Very sad news. So many councils in the U.K. are in serious financial trouble.

[figheadair]

Sad that it's cancelled but I'm not sure it's really the Council's (for which read local tax payers) responsibility to support what is, in essence, a commercial venture.

[Hirsty]

Trickle down poverty stemming from the Tories austerity.

[Jimmy]

Yes, you are correct , the austerity programme from Cameron and Osborne has been a complete disaster for the whole of the UK, lots of people in Scotland love to blame the SNP but although they are not entirely without fault , the poverty in Scotland didn't originate from them

[Jock Scot]

Come off it chaps, “When in a glass house one should not throw stones!”

Recent Scottish financial governance has hardly shown itself in a shining light, now has it? Far from it.

Can we now get back to tartans and kilts, please.

[Liam]

Come off it chaps, “When in a glass house one should not throw stones!”

Recent Scottish financial governance has hardly shown itself in a shining light, now has it? Far from it.

Can we now get back to tartans and kilts, please.

Thank you Jock....

I will remind everyone of one of the guiding principles of XMarks:
"We understand that as a kilt specific forum our chosen subject of discussion is not the complete spectrum of life." Over the years we have found certain subjects always seem to result in discord. Therefore, we respectfully ask our members to remember that this is a kilt forum and to leave their Politics, Religion and Weapons at the door.

[cessna152towser]

A sad sign of the times. One by one, our games have dropped away over the past ten years or so, especially here in the Lowlands where Highland Games are not a popular spectator sport and have failed to turn a profit. Eventually we ran out of willing sponsors. Some games finished with the pandemic and never re-started. As I see no further prospect of having the opportunity to display my clan's publicity materials these will be going to the Glencairn Aisle at Kilmaurs where they will be exhibited during our open days over the summer.
Thankfully we still have the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow in August and I hope I will meet some of you there.

[OC Richard]

It's been happening here too.

Two or our California Highland Games, Woodland and Monterey, were held for years up through 2019.

By California law everything was cancelled in 2020 and 2021.

In 2022 the Monterey Games were held, but not since.

The Woodland Games, one of California's largest Games, has not returned.

For Woodland, it seems that several of the people who had run the Games for decades retired during Covid, and nobody has stepped up to fill their shoes.

This left only one Highland Games in northern California, Pleasanton, for pipers and drummers to compete at. They want competitions in order to build up their standings in the Western US Pipe Band Association.

What emerged to give Pipe Bands and Solo pipers and drummers opportunities to compete was the "Pipes & Pubs" system of small competitions held in pubs across the state.

In a couple weeks in Woodland there will be sort of a halfway event, larger than Pipes & Pubs but smaller than a full-scale Highland Games, with sanctioned solo piping, solo drumming, Pipe Bands, and Highland Dancing, held as a Street Fair in old downtown Woodland's Main Street. It's a step in the process of the Woodland Games getting back on solid footing.