Leader: Serenade them into seeing sense

WE WARNED it was utterly baffling and bureaucratic. We said it was illogical. We pointed out that Ritchie McCaw, the All Black captain, plays them, as do many of his fellow New Zealanders with Scots roots. Still they won’t listen. The continued refusal of the authorities at the Rugby World Cup to lift their ban on the bagpipes is making a great competition, given a richness and colour by the music and traditions of the countries taking part, a laughing stock.

It is not, we are pleased to point out, the fault of the hosts and now one of the country’s Labour MPs, Iain Lees-Galloway, has echoed the point we made yesterday that if New Zealand can have the haka then, as he put it, “surely the Scots should be allowed a bit of skirt and skirl?” So what can be done to overcome the authorities’ intransigence?

There is only one solution: piping direct action. So we urge anyone in the Wellington area on Sunday who can get a tune out of a set of bagpipes – Scots, New Zealanders, Bretons, whoever – to pick them up and play their way to the stadium. This massed pipe band should demand their New Zealand cousins on the gates show solidarity by letting them in – if they have a ticket, of course – to pipe the Scots to victory over Argentina.