Rules are rules.
In any walk of life, or any contest, quiz or award, there are guidelines, rules, and qualification criteria. And, of course, one cannot make one rule for one person - including for, or perhaps especially, for successful people - and another for everyone else. But hard rules always throw up contestable anomalies.
This has been dramatically shown in the case of the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) this week. These distinguished awards, with a judging panel that include noted critics from The Herald, have unveiled their 2015 short lists this week, in ten categories.
Still Game, a quintessentially Scottish success story which transferred spectacularly from TV to the stage last year, is in none of the categories. This is because, as the CATS award rules state, the show was not "substantially" produced in Scotland. It was produced by Phil McIntyre Entertainments of London, and therefore could not qualify for the awards. Greg Hemphill, one of the stars and writer of the show, is perhaps right to question whether such a Scottish show in spirit, with a Scottish cast, Scottish writers and staged in Glasgow, could not be considered a "Scottish production".
There was, CATS judges say, no animus towards the show among its panel, instead respect was paid to a clear rule. Perhaps, following this case, these rules could - aptly for a critics' awards - be reviewed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article