Man arrested for playing bagpipes in public

[CDNSushi]

Lol! I thought this might be the right place to post this news story, seeing the company I keep...

http://www.redorbit.com/news/odditie...rce=r_oddities

[Galician]

Hmmm. Interesting incident. Are the English normally hostile to Scottish culture? Or was he just being an nuisance?

[Jock Scot]

Hmmm. Interesting incident. Are the English normally hostile to Scottish culture? Or was he just being an nuisance?

The English generally are a courteous lot, as are their police. I note that this fellow was asked to cease playing first, by the police, before being arrested. There are places in this world where a choice would not be given.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Hmmm. Interesting incident. Are the English normally hostile to Scottish culture? Or was he just being an nuisance?

Sounds like he was more of jerk than a nuisance. As Jock Scot pointed out, policemen in England tend to extremely courteous as well as firm. Asked to move along he showed outright defiance-- and got exactly the response he asked for.

[LewdiKris]

I am English, and am living in England where I've heard the pipes played in towns in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire. While I have heard some comments to the effect of "what a row" (not that I agreed with the comments), nevertheless I've never seen or heard of any outright animosity to the piper. I think certainly this piper in question will have been arrested for something more than playing the bagpipes.

LK

[Jack Daw]

In general, I feel that pipers who are not very good can and should be asked to stop playing in public. If they are bad, it's not music. There was an adult piper at the Salado Highland Games that I so very much wanted to stop playing. He was not competing; just being a nuisance around the clan tents. I didn't stop him because it was very early in the morning and very few people were at there tents.

[sathor]

I am just curious by the comment he made about his hour not being up, did he have some kind of license to be there or something?

[JS Sanders]

I've heard local 'pipers' who deserved far worse punishment than this goomer recvd.

[Ian.MacAllan]

There have been varying degrees of antipathy between Northerners and Southerners (sound familiar?) in the British Isles for at least two millennia; why else would the Romans have built two walls across the island? But I doubt that has much bearing on this incident. It sounds to me as if this "piper" was creating a public nuisance and defying the authority of the police, reason enough to pack him off briefly.

.

[McClef]

Despite the irony of the Edinburgh ban, public pipe playing is not generally banned in the UK.

Many places do, however, have local noise regulations and the police do have to respond to noise complaints.

If it was daytime the noise would carry less but one set of pipes can still carry even above the traffic noise.

Bridport is in Dorset and was most famous for its "neckties" which were not your usual kind - most people would not want one as these were hangmen's ropes!

The report does not make clear whether or not any compromise was discussed. If the guy simply carried on as a simple refusal and defiance then it's hardly surprising the police acted as they did - but they would still have had to give some legal justification for the arrest (however tenuous) to cover themselves or he could have a case for wrongful arrest.

Also if he was busking for money could be a factor when it comes to local byelaws.

I would hate to think it was all caused by prejudice against bagpipes!

But several times I have suffered a police helicopter flying low at 1 and 2 am round and round above my town - they do not seem to worry about the noise then!