pipes|drums’ Top 10 news stories of 2014

Regarding regrading

May 13th: RSPBA moves Stuart Highlanders to Grade 1; still in Grade 2 with EUSPBA

The RSPBA assigning non-member bands to different grades continues to be a contentious issue, and when the luminaries at 45 Washington Street, Glasgow, bumped EUSPBA-member Stuart Highlanders to Grade 1 on the brink of their competition season it got tongues wagging and heads shaking. The EUSPA did not respond and kept the band in Grade 2 until after its season, following due process. That the Stuarts acquitted themselves well at Glasgow Green in the ultimate grade was beside the point. The EUSPBA, to its credit, followed its own protocols, assessed the band at the end of the year, and graded it according to the rules. We continue to wonder what the fallout would be if one of the world’s associations took it upon itself to regrade an RSPBA-member band. But they compete outside of the UK so infrequently that it’s an extremely remote possibility.