Pirate Flag

[LMS]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...ds/8327438.stm

A pirate flag run up a flag pole on Inverness's town house has been removed after a former merchant seaman complained it was in bad taste.

What utter nonsense - are we being so PC in this country that we are losing our senses? I thought Britain was all about free speech etc. and now people are taking down pirate flags because it offended some neep with a chip on his shoulder.

[golach]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...ds/8327438.stm

A pirate flag run up a flag pole on Inverness's town house has been removed after a former merchant seaman complained it was in bad taste.

What utter nonsense - are we being so PC in this country that we are losing our senses? I thought Britain was all about free speech etc. and now people are taking down pirate flags because it offended some neep with a chip on his shoulder.

I totally agree, what has the Jolly Roger got to do with Halloween, and I am a similar neep, an ex merchant seaman

[northener]

Aye, jolly cheeky chaps, them that serve under the Jolly Roger. Always up for a laugh and a joke......what the hell has piracy got to do with Hallow e'en?

A swastika could be a jolly good wheeze too.....

[Aaldtimer]

Given the situation that a British couple find themselves in , in Somalia, yeh I can agree with this decision.

[sids]

Arr, LMS me lad!

[Jeid]

This country needs to get a grip. I thought it was a pretty funny idea, but a complaint comes in and it's gone? Jeeeesus!

[LMS]

Wife's sister's brother-in-law's auntie lives in Portgower and has suspicious fangs. She's offended by the 'Vampire in Portgower' thread and is planning a complaint against Turquoise.

[Blarney]

Lighten up the lot of you. If you had read the article properly you would have realised that it was an lighthearted advertising ploy for one of the Winter Festival events and not necessarily Halloween. It's had the desired effect though and I'm sure that they will get a good audience now with all the publicity it has generated! Bet you folk who think it's in bad taste don't let your bairns dook for apples in case they drown because there's a major Health and Safety issue with that!!! We all know the tradition behind Halloween but if you go back a few years when we all went out 'guising' as bairns in Scotland it was quite common to dress as pirates and fairies, coalmen and fisherwives, or in any old clothes that came to hand as long as you stuck a 'false face' on. The rest of Britain treated it as just another day before they imported 'Trick or Treat' from America and decreed that only creepy costumes depicting witches, ghosts and other ghoulish outfits (all available from Tesco of course) should be worn....and so another Scottish tradition was hijacked and the rules reworked.

[starry]

Like Blarney said it was to advertise Blackbeard's Haunted Ness Islands

looks like they had a brilliant time


http://www.invernessfestivals.com/wi...y090930-193648

[Turquoise]

Given the situation that a British couple find themselves in , in Somalia, yeh I can agree with this decision.

Yes, but that couple chose to ignore the government warnings not to sail in the Indian Ocean, hence why they now find themselves in this predicament. If they choose to sail in dangerous waters, they should be prepared to find themselves in this situation.

A horrible situation to be in yes, but it was wholly avoidable in the first place if they had taken advice as given.

I for one think this is the silliest thing I have heard in some time. If we lived in fear of offending someone with every decision made, we would never make any jokes, any humorous comments or get dressed up in anything!!

It's a pirate flag for Hallowe'en for goodness sake, not an attack on anyone.

[Flashman]

The Jolly Roger refers to historical pirates as well, not the modern day speedboat variety.

Historical Pirates are a part of popular culture in this country

[sids]

The Jolly Roger is a sort of joke flag. Maybe not appropriate for INS Town Hall.

[Flashman]

Given the situation that a British couple find themselves in , in Somalia, yeh I can agree with this decision.

This is probably the silliest thing I have ever heard, I never knew Blackbeard, Morgan and co were now operating out of Somalia in the kidnapping business.

Lighten up Halloween is all about dressing up and the romantic image of the Pirate Age is a British favorite.

[northener]

....... The rest of Britain treated it as just another day before they imported 'Trick or Treat' from America and decreed that only creepy costumes depicting witches, ghosts and other ghoulish outfits (all available from Tesco of course) should be worn....and so another Scottish tradition was hijacked and the rules reworked.

Yer wrong there Blarney. In Yorkshire, Hallowe'en was a dressing up occasion when I was a kid in the 60's and had been for a very, very long time. If someone had said 'trick or treat' back then you'd have got a lot of blank looks. So it wasn't down to any American influence.

[kmahon2001]

So what's next? Ban any performances of the Pirates of Penzance or Peter Pan? Or simply reinvent Captain Hook as a very bad man, rather than a pirate, so that the performances can go ahead. I doubt that modern day pirates go about flying the Jolly Roger anyway. If anything we should stop calling these modern day kidnappers and hijackers Pirates, it gives too romantic an impression of their activities.

................The rest of Britain treated it as just another day before they imported 'Trick or Treat' from America and decreed that only creepy costumes depicting witches, ghosts and other ghoulish outfits (all available from Tesco of course) should be worn....and so another Scottish tradition was hijacked and the rules reworked.

As for guising, I agree with Blarney. In England we never did anything for Halloween when I was growing up in the South East. We concentrated mostly on bonfire night, with "penny for the guy", bonfires and fireworks etc. I'd never heard of Guising till I moved up here.

This relatively newly imported idea for Trick or Treat should be resisted and Scots should fight to keep the old Guising tradition alive instead (and possibly even try to export it to England, Wales and Northern Ireland as an alternative to kids "demanding" sweets with the threat of a trick being played if they don't get what they want). Presumably most of the current parents used to go Guising when they were kids, so why are they now sending their kids out Trick or Treating instead?

So much of the UK has become Americanised, particularly since Tony Blair came to power - we now have a Supreme Court instead of the Law Lords, we have High Schools instead of Secondary Schools, we have Border Patrols instead of Customs and Excise, we have American-style sirens on emergency vehicles (although I can't blame Blair for that one), police wandering round in American-style SWAT gear instead of the traditional "bobbies' uniforms", and I understand we may even be getting some kind of Federal police force similar to the FBI.

American tourists must feel like it's a home from home when they come over here now - but I'm sure they must feel more than a little disappointed not to see "bobbies" on the beat etc.

What hope do we have if we can't even keep hold of lovely traditions like Guising?

Rant over, and I now await all the put-downs and moans that I'm being a killjoy for wanting to see the end of Trick or Treat in favour of a more traditional Halloween celebration.

[George Brims]

We have always had High Schools. Secondary School is just another name for them. (There's some weird bloke writes a blog for the Torygraph, from America, and complains regularly about Americans calling the loo the bathroom. I always wonder, did he grow up with an outside bog?)

I agree with you on the need to preserve guising as opposed to American style trick or treating. In some American areas, you really do get a trick if you don't treat (windows smeared with soap or your house draped in toilet paper are the usual pranks), and in Caithness it's always been traditional for the older kids and teenagers to do pranks instead of guising. This has led me to conclude the American tradition is just a modified form of the older Scottish one. Possibly it's even a preserved Scottish tradition, like the way Appalachian hillbillies still sing the unaltered versions of the folk songs they took over there centuries ago, while the Scottish versions have evolved.

[Turquoise]

I only heard of trick or treat when I went to John Kennedy Drive whilst I was guising as a kid. I dressed in everything from Sherlock Holmes to a Spanish dancer with castanets.

I always practised a poem or song, always waited to be given sweets, said thank you and had never been outside of my street to go guising. However, when I had American friends in JK Drive, they would invite me round to see the pumpkins in the window and to say "Trick or Treat!" to their parents. It was a very strange concept to me and this was (only) 20 years ago!