PP Editor’s Blog 26/12/14

With only five days to go before we announce our Piper of the Year, another opportunity to make your choice. The pipers, in no particular order, are P/M Stuart Liddell, P/M Douglas Murray and P/M Richard Parkes. Stuart won many top prizes during the year including the Former Winners’ MSR at Oban and the Glenfiddich Championship. His band, Inveraray & District, were runners-up in the Worlds, their highest ever placing….

Happy Festivities from the Editor 2014

It is Christmas Day here in Scotland and if you celebrate this festival I hope you are enjoying yourselves. Thanks to our many thousands of readers the world over who have made the first four months of our not-for-profit web magazine such a success. Our readership figures for the period Aug 25 – December 25 stand at a pleasing 99,975 with a daily average of 700+. We will endeavour to improve…

PP Editor’s Blog 19/12/14

Well done to the RSPBA Northern Ireland Branch for supporting the campaign to resist cuts to the arts and culture budget in the Province. As they say, what else can you get for 13p, the estimate of what the budget costs per head of the population. Arts Council Northern Ireland make a big contribution to the pipe band movement in Ulster, and good on them for that. Our arts body,…

PP Editor’s Blog 12/12/14

I was down at the RSPBA HQ last weekend to see the presentation of a painting by Duncan Brown to P/M Bob Shepherd MBE. The presentation was made during a meeting of the Association’s Board of Directors, the honours carried out in articulate fashion by Bob’s fellow judge Joe Noble on behalf of the Adjudicators Panel. Joe pointed out how well-deserved the honour was. The painting represented all Bob’s major achievements: his…

PP Editor’s Blog 5/12/14

To the SPA WW1 concert tomorrow where a quartet from the Army School, Donald MacPhee and I will play tunes seldom heard in public. They are all linked in some way to the Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders. This will be the third of author Colin Campbell’s lectures on pipe music connected with the conflict, and will be a model of erudition and interest if the last two were…