With thanks to Ann-Marie Parry.
Aberdeenshire East MSP, Alex Salmond has welcomed a £100,000 funding boost for the Paul Lawrie Match Play which will take place at Murcar Links Golf Club in Aberdeenshire this July.
The event will involve a 64 main field competing for a £1m euro prize.
Scotland will now host four full European Tour events in 2015, more than any other country in the continent.
The £100,000 investment will be managed through VisitScotland and will help raise the profile of the new event.
Alex Salmond said:
“Aberdeenshire is renowned for its world-class golf courses and I am very pleased that this event will help to showcase the best the region has to offer to both visitors and locals.
“Aberdeen played host to its first European Tour event last year with the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open and I am delighted that the Scottish Government is helping to ensure the success of major tournaments in the north-east.
“We saw during The Ryder Cup how exciting match play format can be and I would encourage anyone to take advantage of the low ticket prices recently announced by the European Tour.
“This is fantastic news for Aberdeenshire and will help to raise the profile of this exciting new event and golf in general.”
Aberdeen golfer Paul Lawrie said:
“I’m delighted with the announcement that the Scottish Government will lend its support to the event and it will be great to have VisitScotland on board as a partner.
“There are some fantastic golf events taking place in Scotland in 2015 so we are grateful to receive this financial contribution to help make our event a success in its inaugural year.”
- Comments enabled – see comments box below. Note, all comments will be moderated.
[Aberdeen Voice accepts and welcomes contributions from all sides/angles pertaining to any issue. Views and opinions expressed in any article are entirely those of the writer/contributor, and inclusion in our publication does not constitute support or endorsement of these by Aberdeen Voice as an organisation or any of its team members.]
One wonders if Mr Salmond, who has already described Scotland as a “nation of drunks” and who is currently campaigning to prohibit Scottish football fans from enjoying the same rights as other UK and European citizens, in relation to alcohol, intends to pass emergency legislation to prevent alcohol consumption at golf events. Or could it possibly be that Mr Salmond thinks it is only working class Scots who constitute his “nation of drunks” whilst those middle – class model citizens, who share his love of golf, dodgy pullovers and “slacks” can easily be trusted to drink responsibly, refrain from beating up their spouses and to resist the temptation to drive whilst under the influence of alcohol.
Salmond’s Scotland seems to be one in which there is one law for the working class and another for his golf playing buddies. Regrettably, we still await the thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of tourists and flights from all over the world, which we were promised when Salmond helped out another of his rich fellow golfers.
Was just looking up on this drunk thing, this may be one of those press things that is taken out of context. Not that exciting really. I`m guessing nobody you know drinks too much? next time your at a football match ask a nearby policeman on his views on football crowds, you never see the police playing cloud control at golf tournaments, they shouldnt even be at football matches, but it seems football fans cant behave themselves, so we are back to square one. btw I dont do football or golf, but I do drink regularly, but rarely get drunk 🙂
I`m guessing 100k for the new golf event is seen as an investment, might not pay back tomorrow, but if its a regular yearly thing, then it will bear fruit one day I spose.
Hi John,
I’m having difficulty understanding what your point is, in relation to my own comments, but will do my best to respond anyway.
One politician, and football fan, has suggested that alcohol might be served, in football stadiums, for a limited period prior to the matches and at half time. This would, as he quite rightly points out, be consistent with common practice in other parts of the UK and throughout Europe. The ex First Minister has responded by suggesting that Scottish football fans cannot be trusted to have a drink, in a football stadium, without transporting us back to a mythical dark age in which drink fuelled football fans engaged routinely in mutual jihad before going home to teach the wife a lesson she would never forget, or at least not until the next match. Mr Salmond has some form, in voicing his opinion that Scots are uniquely unable to control their appetite for alcohol, by infamously denouncing us as a “nation of drunks” but has never before suggested we are, as a race, uniquely unable to imbibe the merest sip of the devil’s brew, in a strictly controlled and highly supervised environment, without deciding our opponents are in possession of weapons of mass destruction, with which they are capable of destroying our home city by the end of the first half, and making an appropriate pre – emptive strike!
Mr Salmond, in his rush to party political posturing, forgets that, during his mythical dark age, alcohol was not served in any football stadium in Scotland and never has been. The abuse of alcohol, to which he refers, was a result of fans being permitted to bring copious quantities of alcohol into the stadiums, sometimes when already blind drunk, with which to aid their descent into their coma of choice. This practice, I should add, was peculiarly unique to the followers of only two of our football clubs and to Glasgow and the surrounding area on particular. No one is suggesting allowing this to recommence and there is no reason to believe that fans would suddenly change their routine, from drinking in welcoming hostelries before and after matches, or not drinking at all, to drinking heavily in cold unwelcoming stadiums with insufficient open air walls and fences to relieve themselves against, should the demand for the similarly insufficient, but regrettably less desirable, official toilet walls lead to gridlock.
With regard to Salmond and golf, the £100,000 may, or may not, be a sound investment but his scandalous depiction of the majority of football fans contrasts sharply with his fondness for, some might say sycophantic drooling over, rich golfers and even richer foreign billionaires, with a penchant for the vulgar and alleged links to organised crime. That Mr Salmond has, in my view, gone as far as to lie, collude, conspire and sell out his own constituents, to further the interests of such golfing tycoons, not to mention his litany of lies during the referendum campaign, leads me to view him as a corrupt, immoral and unprincipled crook, who is unfit for public office and who should be condemned and criticised at every opportunity.
You are right to state, albeit clumsily, that there is more potential for misbehaviour at football matches than at a golf event. I would simply suggest that anyone whose passions are aroused by the sight of a fat guy, dressed in clobber admired only by the likes of Donald Trump, Alex Salmond and your run of the mill Russian oligarch, oh and maybe by those people, whoever they are, who buy replica expensive watches to kid on they’re rich or, even worse, just to show they want everybody to know they like rich but stupid people, need to get out more.
Apologies to John, and anyone else who reads this, for my rambling, possibly incoherent, response. I had some spare time this morning and run off at the fingers a little.
To the Editors: Is there a reason for this emerging phenomenon, in which contributors to your news site refer to themselves simply as “Jim” or “John” or is this just a coincidence?
Am personally at a loss to know one Tom Dick or Harry from another; they do all seem to be Jims, Johns or similar of late.
Bruce have you ever been to a football match? Alcohol was sold at many grounds, Pittodrie had the “nip trolley” in the main stand from which whisky and vodka was sold from bottles with optics. Beer was also sold from the food kiosks. Fighting was not limited to the two clubs from Glasgow you mention one of my first games was Dundee against Aberdeen, where I recall being brought to tears as a 6 year old with the fighting both inside and outside the ground. Fast forward 30 odd years and games are better policed and the consumption of alcohol is banned on trains and busses, crowds segregation has meant that it is now becoming family entertainment where the number of families going has increased in the last few years, but the young child who was struck with a missile throw from the Aberdeen end on Sunday at Parkhead proves that some football fans cannot be trusted. Introducing alcohol back into the Scottish domestic game will send it back to the dark ages as you put it. It would not be beneficial to anyone even the clubs who make more profit from a cup of coffee than they do a plastic bottle of Budweiser.
Whatever your personal hatred for the former first minister your argument in this case is well wide of the mark.
Season ticket holder at Pittodrie and responsible drinker
Jim,
In general, I choose not to reply, whether in casual conversation or written correspondence, to those whose lack of sophistication and intellect, or just basic ignorance, renders them, in my considered view, to be ill equipped to absorb knowledge or to form an informed opinion or coherent argument. Sometimes, however, such people are sufficiently irritating that I am prompted, contrary to my better judgement, to waste my valuable time and respond. I tell you this simply that we understand each other a little better.
I attended my first football match at Pittodrie, as a four year old I hasten to add, in 1962 and, until adopting the lifestyle of a somewhat hedonistic hobo or when playing on a Saturday myself, never stopped going regularly to matches, both home and away. During all of these years, I have witnessed and, due to my impetuous and fun – loving nature, been caught up in scenes which would, judging from your sensitive nature, lead you to tears again. At no time and in no stadium in Scotland, can I ever recall being able to purchase alcohol at the pie counters or anywhere else. I may, of course, be wrong but, other than yourself, I can find no one who can recall doing so either. As for “nip trolleys” in the stand prior to the outright alcohol ban in 1980, are you seriously suggesting, even if this were true, that this sparse band of elderly citizens, resplendent in twin sets, anoraks and tartan rugs were known for singing “come and have a go if you think ye’re auld enough” if they decided to have a wee sherry as an accompaniment to their potted heid sandwiches and flasks of tea at half time?
Football fans, who choose to drink, can currently drink as much as they like right up until kick off time and do likewise afterwards. Unless you are saying that the booze in the Blue Lamp or Pittodrie Bar, for example, are watered down, I fail to see how having a drink in the stadium is likely to make them behave any differently to drinking in their favourite bar or club.
As for Mr Salmond, you confuse hatred with contempt. Only today, I am reminded of the corrupt nature of this odious individual, by the announcement that he has chosen a Rupert Murdoch owned company to publish his forthcoming book and of how Lord Leveson found him guilty of lobbying, at Westminster of all places, to further the commercial interests of the very same Rupert. That this was done, in return for political support from Mr Murdoch’s own newspapers in Scotland, makes it no more acceptable than had he done so for financial gain.
That he now chooses to continue his relationship with the not so PC Murdoch, for financial gain, from the publication of a book which, it is alleged, was partly written by publicly funded civil servants, cements his reputation, in my view, as a crook.
Good old St Johnstone though eh Jim?!