Donald MacLeod: Don't let the killjoys stop us having our T in the Park

T in the Park (Andrew Cawley/DC Thomson)

ROCKNESS, Wickerman and Connect – three large Scottish music festivals, attended by tens of thousands of fans, which have had the plug pulled on them and are now no longer.

Now, many are wondering is the tea oot for T In The Park?

Is Scotland’s premier live music event about to become a forlorn footnote in the annals of our nation’s rich musical history?

Will it become, like the once popular but now shut Arches nightclub, another victim?

A sacrificial lamb thrown to the whipped-up ignorant and the zero tolerant?

The outraged, blinkered but powerful few who, on a whim or rather a headline, turn their backs on the needs, wants and wishes of the many?

Well I certainly hope not!

For 22 years, from Balado to its new home at Strathallan, T In The Park has led the way.

It has been crucial to Scotland, culturally and economically, delivering performances from some of the world’s biggest acts.

Since it began, more than three million tickets have been sold and the benefits to the economy have totalled at least £15 million.

Sadly, rather than being celebrated, the headlines have been about the array of problems and tragedies that has befallen the event since its move to Strathallan.

Ospreys, traffic chaos, Scottish Government funding, drink, drugs, fights, arrests and deaths.

Plus, of course, the laughable theft of an ATM cash machine.

But it’s the tragic deaths this year of two teenagers which has drawn the most vitriol, with an outraged few demanding T In The Park be scrapped.

Some have gone as far as to blame organiser Geoff Ellis for the deaths. One commentator even claimed he and his company was more interested in profit than the lives of their punters.

What an ignorant thing to say about such a sensitive, hard-working family man, someone I regard as a friend and whose whole ethos is about crowd safety.

It seems personal responsibility always gets thrown out the window when tragedies such as these occur. It’s always someone else’s fault.

As for the site lacking in security or a robust police presence, I assure you that was not the case.

As Bernie Higgins, Assistant Chief Constable of Police Scotland told me, more than 500 staff were deployed or available over the four days.

He added that, like football sectarianism, once regarded as Scotland’s shame: “You can’t just arrest your way out of it, you have to try and change the mind-set of those involved and that process can take years”.

I agree and if tragedies such as those at T In The Park, or any other event or club for that matter, are to be prevented in the future, that work must be given our full support.

Just pulling the plug and blaming the organisers for what is Scotland’s new shame is not an answer.

One Scottish festival, though, that has not been beset with any such problems is this weekend’s Rewind Festival at Scone Palace.

OK you may have to be of a certain age to remember most of the acts such as ABC, Holly Johnson and someone who never gives you up, Rick Astley. And the dress sense of some of the older clientele is questionable.

But a carnival of fun and dad dancing is had by all.

Tonight The King of The Wild Frontier himself, Adam Ant, will be making everyone Stand & Deliver with his Ant Music. Magic!

T in the Park: Police say deaths of two 17-year-olds are being treated separately and may be drug related