INVERNESS HOGMANAY SOLUTION? After fling fiasco, an ideal setting to usher in the new year
I don't know exactly when Highland Council officials started planning for the annual Red Hot Highland Fling at the Northern Meeting Park. But given the bureaucratic challenge of preparation for "The World's Biggest Ceilidh" it may well have been sometime around now.
This year the world will have to look elsewhere for its biggest ceilidh because the Inverness one has been scrapped.
Upgrading work at the Northern Meeting Park venue has been cited as one reason for this decision. Another will be that last year's event required £100,000 in public money to break even, with an admission charge and a paltry attendance of just 4000 people.
The hangover inquest after it was over stumbled towards the view that it had been an ill-judged start to 2024 with far too much money going up in firework smoke or disappearing into an overpriced programme of entertainment.
Many of us have drifted in to see what was going on when it was free. But pay for entry on a typically freezing night? That had no appeal whatsoever. And quite obviously a multitude of people last Hogmanay thought the same.
• 3 Hogmanay alternatives in the wake of the Red Hot Highland Fling’s cancellation in Inverness
The council insists that the event will return next year. That's fine, just as long as it's back to being free, is scaled down, and with the costs being contained within a very fixed budget. Which means it should not be the preserve of any official who'll throw money at it like a drunken sailor on New Year's Eve leave.
However, for now, does the scrapping of the event mean that the Highland capital should be left with no focal point for at least some Hogmanay jollity?
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The expansive grounds of Eden Court have again this year provided hugely enjoyable "Under Canvas" musical entertainment for visitors and local people alike. The riverside setting in summer has been the perfect venue for a rich variety of performers, and they've pulled in the crowds.
There's a big difference between a balmy evening in July and a freezing night in mid-winter but there's no reason why the musical magic should be diminished. Quite the opposite in fact. A spread of canvas, a cluster of musicians, open grounds, and a floodlit background of the river and the castle would be as fine a location to bring in the New Year as anywhere in Scotland.
Anyone on the council who thinks a Hogmanay party event must involve the Northern Meeting Park and a grossly inflated budget and nothing else will do is either being curmudgeonly or clueless. There's a fine alternative 300 yards from their HQ, and applying some imagination and versatility, they should make the most of it to usher in the coming New Year.
