New Merchandise

Since 1996 the Kilt & Thistle has built it’s reputation on importing and selling Scottish Quality merchandise at reasonable prices. This establishes the main premise for our business “ true value” . Over the years the introduction of Scottish style merchandise imported from China and Pakistan entered the market. The worst proliferation being in Scotland itself. We were not unaware of this merchandise, but the quality remained well below the standard we set for you, our customer. Junk is still junk at any price. However this last year because of the economic downturn we listened to you, asking for merchandise that fit the tighter budget. We went in search of merchandise that we would wear and be proud to sell. We found our Great Value Line and our new Halifax Line of merchandise.
I am the first to tell you that this merchandise is not from Scotland. Much of the merchandise now sold in Scotland was not made in Scotland. Some companies will present it as Scottish, or companies over here say “ imported from Scotland”, but imported from Scotland is not “made in Scotland”. Just as many will describe their kilts as 100% wool, but miss telling you what weight of wool it is.

Our three lines are as follows, our Kilt & Thistle Premium Line, comprised of merchandise actually made in Scotland or of Scottish quality such as L&M Highland Outfitters the makers of our Premium Line of sporrans and leather items. This merchandise is made in Nova Scotia , but is frankly as good or better than anything any Scottish sporran maker ever put out.

Our Halifax Line is imported at our request and to our specifications. The closest to Scottish quality we could get outside of our Premium Line suppliers. The quality is a high quality product that competes with our Kilt & Thistle Premium Line , but with a more favorable price.
Our Great Value Line is exactly that , a great value. A budget line that looks to solve the budget problems of the young gent just getting started in life, or the budget minded individual that wants to wear Scottish apparel , but just does not have the budget to step up to premium Scottish merchandise.
What ever line you choose , we will work with you on your purchase as if it was us or our best friend, because the goal is to have you as a “customer for life”.

Single Malt Scotch

As a novice drinker I will approach this topic , not as a self proclaimed expert, but rather a learning enthusiast. I have spent most of my life a as a very light drinker. At Christmas time I would buy a bottle of 12 year old GlennFiddich and it would last me the year. Since I very rarely entertain male friends at home , I drank at home only occasionally. My Scottish roots have had the sad catch 22 of being both , too cheap to spend good money on Scotch, and the other, if your going to spend good money, what better to spend it on. I also figure that I am old enough to do a few gentlemanly things that my Forefathers enjoyed. So at the young age of Fifty I started the educational process of learning the time tested tradition of drinking Single Malt Scotch. If I was not so picky and were to drink just anything, one might be accused of being a drunkard. My understanding is that to truly be called Scotch, that it has to be distilled in Scotland. That may no longer be true as I seem to see Scotch from other lands these days. There are a number of blended whiskeys out there and from time to time , I will try these just to make the comparison.

Gentlemanly Pursuits

This starts an area of my bog www.plaidtothebone.wordpress.com that will feature all those things natural to real men, smoking, drinking, and women. I will also occasionally talk about other manly pursuits like hunting, fishing, and building. I am not sure why these things are no longer considered proper pursuits, because you can not ignore these natural laws any more than the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. Anyone that knows history will know the Founding Fathers originally intended it to say “pursuit of property” instead of pursuit of happiness. But was rewritten to avoid the slavery issue. I consider this an important part of a man’s pursuit of his Scottish heritage. These are the very things our Forefathers fought and died to defend and protect. It all boils down to freedom, and the freedom to do what you want as long as you are not hurting anyone else. I will cover the above natural laws to man one at a time in future blog posts.

On the road The Kilt & Thistle

Well it’s Highland Games Season again. Well actually it has been for some time and depending on where you live , it is always Games Season somewhere. The was a time we started the year in January with a booth at the local Burns Celebration and then a small local Festival in April, before Tartan Day was proclaimed officially a real day. These days we do a small Tartan Day event in Washington 

http://www.tartanday-wa.org/ a nice event that has real potential. I hope you folks in Washington can get behind this one. Next this year for us was the Sacramento Highland Games in Woodland California. It seems like all the big events are not in the town they stated in for one reason or another. The Sacramento event really kicked ass on many levels. I only wish the Portland Highland Games , the closest event to our Oregon retail store, was this caliber of this event. Obligatory sip of Dalmore Cigar Malt and back to the post. As a side note, I thought I would by a blended whiskey for the summer Bar-B-Que season for whiskey and coke. Bought a half gallon of Grant’s. What a waste of money. I had no idea what a Single Malt Snob I had turned into. Now on to the rest of the post.
We then turned our sites to the local event in Eugene Scottish Festival, another newer small event with plenty of potential. However read my post Oregon Vs. Washington to get the flavor of these two small events and the vast differences. In the Northwest the Bellingham Highland Games , the first weekend in June really kicks things off up here. We have started limiting our events based on ROI , translated , return on investment. Two years ago we were doing twelve events a year this year we have cut that to less than half. For all these events and more see our events schedule posted at http://www.kilts.com/events.htm . Our next event is the Skagit Valley Highland Games in Mount Vernon Washington. We were personally invited to this event thirteen years ago when they were just getting started. It has grown to an attendance of over twenty-five thousand for the two day event. The folks that put this on, Skye Richendrfer in particular, have made this one of the must see events on the West Coast. You can get more info at http://www.celticarts.org/ the second weekend in July. Next in line for us is the Seattle Highland Games now names the Pacific Northwest Highland Games http://www.sshga.org/ and naturally it’s not in Seattle, it’s in the cute little town of Enumclaw. at the Expo Center. This is the largest event in the Northwest for an approximate thirty-five thousand in attendance for the two days. We were on a waiting list to get into this one, and I see why. If you live in the Northwest, try to make this event and be prepared to stay two days , because there is simply that much to see and do. August has several small events in Oregon with the best one being the Douglas County Highland Games http://www.dcscots.org/ . We no longer are a Vendor at this event, but I highly recommend it as one of the better small events when it comes to the variety of music during the two days. So we are in the store for August and then, for the first time, off to Pleasanton, California. By far the largest Highland Games on the West Coast. Last years attendance was sixty-five thousand and for our first year there we will probably not be fully prepared for what happens. I will certainly have a full report when it’s all over. We hope those of you that we have come to know by phone and email will stop by the booth to say hello. That buttons up our year and we settle back in to our retail store for the winter.

Washington vs. Oregon

The Kilt & Thistle Scottish Shop has been around since December of 1996. We opened a retail store and then added our sales on the Internet at www.kilts.com. The summer of ‘97 we started selling at some of the Highland Games here in the Northwest. Only a few at first, but we added events every year until we were doing twelve a year for several years. For more than a few years our sales at a single highland games event was equivalent to a full months of sales in our retail store. The reason we added as many events as we could. So there is a little of the background information and gives you a idea of how important the events were for the growth of the business. From the start the contrast between Oregon and Washington Highland Game events were dramatic. The state of Washington has roughly twice the population that Oregon does, and that is very important in respect to everything else. The Portland Highland Games is the largest of the events in Oregon and over the last ten years has had an average attendance around 8,000. The event itself is just over 50 years old , another important fact. There are another ten or so events around Oregon with attendance amongst all these around 2,000 average per event. Now remember that Washington has double the population than Oregon. Washington has a similar number of events, but the attendance difference is staggering as well as the enthusiasm factor. There are three large events in Washington, Bellingham Game in June, and Skagit Valley and the Pacific Northwest Highland Games, AKA Seattle Highland Games are both in July. Bellingham has an attendance around 12,000, Skagit Valley at 25,000 and the Seattle Games at 35,000. The Seattle Highland Games and the Portland Games have both been around the same number of years and look at the difference in attendance. Naturally as any good businessman I try to evaluate why these numbers differ so much. It is more than just shear numbers, evidenced by the two early spring events we did this year. The Tartan Day Festival in Puyallup and the Eugene Scottish Festival in May. The size of these events is about the same as the number of attendance, and similar numbers , in Clans, Vendors and entertainment offerings. The Tartan Day event is indoors and the Eugene event is outdoors, being the only major difference. This fact also threw my “outdoor events are better” theory right out the window. The Tartan Day event was more than double in total sales for us, over Eugene, and the quality of those in attendance was amazing as the Tartan Day event attendees were terrific. We have had our poor years at every event and theses two are no exception. But Eugene has been very disappointing for several years now. Frankly the only reason we show to either one of these events is the wonderful and dedicated people that organize and put them together. So back to my dilemma, why is the attendance so dramatically better in Washington than Oregon? Do people in Washington care about their Scottish heritage more than Oregonians? Is it the fact that Washington is closer to Canada a factor?

Sad day for the British Soldier

Not sure where to begin on this one. If the subject were not so serious I would have thought it was a April fools joke. The British Military commonly referred to as the MOD has just purchased an Armored Dune Buggy. Actually 75 of them. Below is the article from Defense Management and they are serious.

http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=9189

Let me say that again “An Armored Dune Buggy” , by it’s very nature there is very little that could be armored. So what are they protecting with the armor? Certainly not the soldiers!!!! The soldiers should simply not use them. As with our US Military and the Humvees that were sent into a war zone without armor, the soldiers simply took matters into their own hands and armored them the best they could in the field.

 

Armored Dune Buggy

British MOD Dune Buggy

 

My friends this is deadly serious and I am afraid for all us that there are people in high positions making these decisions.

Sacramento Highland Games

This was our first year as Vendors at the Sacramento Highland Games. Other Vendors had spoken highly of the event and I did as much research as I could about the event before applying. We applied for the 2008 Season only to be turned down. The Sacramento event organizers it seems have their standards. However it was not to do with our reputation , but more to do with theirs. This year as usual I contacted the Vendor Coordinator and as fate would have it, that a vendor had canceled for this year. Leaving a space that we were allowed to fill. For those of you not in the business, the number of vendors at an event is very important. If an event has more vendors than the attendance can support, then all of the vendors do poorly. Far too often the event organizers feel that the more the merrier, as they say. However for those of us in business, the key is a balance between too many and for the attendees having too few to select from. Many events even include vendors that are not even Celtic related. If for no other reason , it confuses those that attend a Highland Games as to what is Scottish and what is not. Having someone there that sells sun glasses for instance just does not make any sense. But you see all vendors pay for the space at these events, and the greed of the the event organizers takes priority over the purity of the event. If you are ever in the Sacramento area the last full weekend in April then I highly recommend this event. I was amazed at the number of displays and the entertainment available to the public. For the $12.00 entrance fee , there is more than a full day of things to see. Especially interesting in the military unit display. Scottish related military units from the era of the Romans to World War Two are there. Well displayed and outfitted , the camps were set up in period settings and there was over a dozen different units to take a look at. Several of them even had heavy canons that they fired off to the amusement of the crowd. The event is also blessed with a wide variety of musical acts. From a Grade Four Pipe Band Competition to well known acts such as Molly’s Revenge and even a punk Celtic group to round out the venue. A huge selection of food items were available from the traditional haggis to a modest selection of foods that anybody can eat. The only thing I was taken aback on was the prices of everything. Apparently in California they used to paying higher prices for just about everything than we are. This event is a two day event and even though it can be seen in one day, plan on two and really take all of it in.

I thought O’Bama was Irish

I was shocked to find out that it’s not O’Bama , but Obama, apparently he’s not Irish. Or at least from his poor knowledge of Irish history , reveals he is does not have a grasp of recent Irish events. President Obama compared the conflict of the IRA with England to the Palestinian, Israeli conflict. He believes peace can prevail simply by Presidential persistence. Whether you are on the side of the Palestinians or the Israeli’s , peace is just not that simple. I am old enough to remember President Jimmy Carters attempts at peace between the two and President Bill Clinton gave both leaders millions in foreign aid to say they had an agreement, only to have it last about an hour that it took to get to the plane leaving DC. I have been a student of the conflict between the British and the IRA. If you can call it that. Many people do not even realize that the original Irish Army was a uniformed military like any other. They and the British fought in open battle. Way too many Irish died because of it. After the Irish surrendered the IRA took over using terrorist tactics, refusing to abide by the agreement. From that grew organizations like Sinn Fein and now today, there is the Real IRA. The simple fact was that the larger terrorist IRA, did lay down their weapons only after a threat that they would never be recognized as a legitimate political power until they did just that. Because of President George Bush, Tony Blair and a great deal of help from the Church the IRA laid down their arms. It was as show of force and nothing less that help end the major conflict.

The Prime Minister

As a Scotsman , I am no friend of the British, AKA the English. As the American Indians do not feel that they are Americans, since they were taken by force as we Scots were, I do not feel I am British. But that was then, and we should just forget the thousands of our fellow countrymen slain by a oppressive government simply wanting to acquire more land and power.

As Presidential nominee Barack Obama toured Europe he was lauded as the Saviour of the world. The British press acted like truck drivers at a strip club. However truck drivers have more integrity. Recently several things have happened that do not make the main stream news. The reason is that it makes President Barack Obama look bad, and we just can’t have that.

The British government are just as sycophants as the press, and the worm has turned on Barack Obama. A bust of Winston Churchill that sat in the White House for over ten years was removed and was scheduled to be returned to the British. At the same time Barack Obama snubbed British Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he visited the White House recently.

This blog in the Telegraph of London says it all:

Http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_delingpole/blog/2009/03/05/was_lady_macbeth_behind_barack_obamas_snub_of_gordon_brown

It points out that the real culprit may actually be the First Lady Michelle Obama. His assertion, and I do say assertion, that the First Lady simply holds all white people responsible for the oppression and slavery of blacks. The author of the blog, James Delingpole justifiably points out that it was Englishman William Wilburforce that was chiefly responsible for the elimination of slavery in the modern world.

For those of you feeling the “white guilt” that your white European ancestors were somehow the only bad people on the planet, I suggest you actually read some real history to find out just the opposite was true.

However Michelle Obama has shown on many occasions that she holds a very deep seated hatred for all whites.

Delingpole also writes:

 

Consider her (till-recently suppressed) Princeton thesis

, “Princeton Educated Blacks And The Black Community.”In it she writes: “I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”

Here we see that she has mastered the authentic voice of grievance culture. She also – the thesis was written in 1985 – pre-empts the Macpherson report’s

ludicrous, catch-all definition of racism: “A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.” No matter how hard young Michelle’s white undergraduate contemporaries try to be nice, it’s not their behavior that counts, but how Michelle feels.

That’s what much of our Political Correctness is based on, the premise that it is how someone perceives or feels about someone else’s actions.

And since we can clearly not control how someone else feels, then we are at the mercy of how somebody else feels about something. Ultimate control of the debate the is the goal.
Michelle may just hold Winston Churchill in very low esteem that she may very well have been the reason for the removal of the bust.

In the end spineless Prime Minister Gordon Brown is left begging President Obama for help with the British Banks. My hope is that the Scottish National Party, SNP, sees all this and comes to it’s senses and embrace the monetary and political philosophy of Scotsman Adam Smith. It will be the only hope for Scotland as an independent nation.

Financial Servitude

 If you are of Scottish or Irish heritage, your ancestors experienced something called indentured servitude. It was the politically correct word for slavery, as slavery was against the law in Great Britain. The concepts are the same. You loose your freedoms for a period of time or for life.

The country of Australia was populated in large part by indentured servants and criminals from Ireland and Scotland. The English used the new world of America as the dumping ground for these indentured servants until it became obvious in the early 1700’s that they were feeding a population that may some day rise up against them.

As immigrants my forefathers have had simple aspirations, Freedom to make of your life what you were willing or capable of. They left a world that was ruled by nobles, or elites as we would call them today. You lived on a piece of land that you were obligated to pay a percentage or a fixed tax to stay on. You never really owned the land, you were merely occupying it as the whim of the noble.

They came to a new land, and with help of our Founding Fathers, a land of free men was born. One of my Fathers aspirations in life was to own his own home. I mean have it paid off so you do not owe anything to anybody. Because of the greatness of the United States he realized his dream of home ownership, he was able to pay off the mortgage.

Many years later, he and I were talking about my first home purchase. He said that even though he had paid off the mortgage he still did not own his home. The taxes still needed to be paid, or as we all know the government will confiscate the house for not paying the taxes. He will need to pay these taxes until the day he dies, or sells the house. Either way he cannot live there without paying the nobles, in this case the government.

Are we really better off? Have we betrayed our forefathers? Was the sacrifice they all made, the hardship of leaving the land and people they had known all their lives, all for nothing?

 

“The amount of money involved [in the stimulus bill is staggering. With 90 million tax filers who actually pay taxes, the $787 billion means the average taxpayer will pay over $8,700. By itself, adding $8,700 to the average tax bill should get everyone's attention. But that is on top of everything else that we are spending this year. ...[T]his year’s deficit is already at about $1.7 trillion — almost $19,000 per taxpayer.” –economist John Lott

 

That is today and you now owe the government $19,000 dollars. If you don’t live long enough , or if you do not have children, no worries, someone else’s children will have to be the indentured servants.