Bagpipes on your iPod?

According to the free piece of tat given away on public transport around the wonderful city that is Glasgow, the city council have come up with yet another fantastic use for taxpayers money. In an incentive to try and get secondary schoolkids to eat a more healthy diet, each one will shortly be issued with a swipe card.

When buying lunch in school, their cards will accumulate points for healthy lunches. For example, a filled pita, yoghurt, soup and healthy drink which costs about £1.45 (where can I get a lunch like that at a price like that) will gain them 40 points.

These points can then be traded for prizes. For example an iPod shuffle costs 2500 points. An X-box is 3000, while a 20Gb iPod is 4000 points. 100 (subsidised) school dinners and you get a free iPod? Yes, I’m glad my tax money is being spent that way.

End of rant.

Today pipe bands (that’s bagpipes, BTW) from all over Europe descended on Dumbarton for the 2005 Scottish Pipe Band Championships (Not to be confused with the World Pipe Band Championships which take place on Glasgow Green in August).

Apparently there were around 150 bands taking part, and boy, did they make some amount of noise. Although, some people obviously play their personal stereo’s too loud and had trouble hearing, and for others it seemed to be that fact that they could hear the bagpipes that was the problem.

The weather was lovely, the company, with his camera, was on top form as usual, and there was beer. All in all a very good day.