Tell me honestly – what do you think of this design? It’s the outfit which our poor athletes are going to have to wear at the parade at the beginning of the Commonwealth Games which kick off in Glasgow on the 23rd of July.

I think it’s truly horrible, from the turquoise shirt to the tan – yes TAN socks. I really feel sorry for anyone having to don this combination. What is the tan colour referencing I wonder – the inside of a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer?!

I often think that we in Scotland shoot ourselves in the foot a bit because so often we do everything to avoid any sort of tartan, distancing ourselves as far as possible from the old fashioned shortbread tin tartanry and tat. Tartan is hardly to be seen anywhere in Scotland- unless it’s a wedding when it seems almost to be obligatory for the men to wear kilts. In fact if you go to Northern Ireland or even France it’s really surprising how much tartan you see in their streets compared with Scotland.

Let’s face it some tartans are pretty garish but I’ve never seen one as ghastly as the mixture which has been thought up by the designer. I’m presuming that she canvassed opinions on the colours from various high heidyins involved in the planning of the games, so why was nobody brave enough to say – no that’s not a pleasing colour combination, in fact none of it ‘goes’ and the colours really are not what you think of when you think of Scotland.

You can’t go far wrong with a white shirt teamed with a kilt and when you think of Scotland’s landscape and the Saltire flag then it’s blues and purples which are the natural choices to go with. It looks like the designer has decided to use colours just to look different, but it’s a mistake to go with something just because it’s a shock to the senses. The colour choices make the kilts look cheap and nasty and it’s really difficult to make wool look cheap! I’m assuming they used Scottish wool in the making.

I signed a petition online complaining about the outfits, it’s obviously too late to change things now and knowing the price of one kilt I dread to think how much these monstrosities cost, but I felt I just had to register my feelings on the subject.

The designer Jilli Blackwood is apparently internationally renowned but she seems to have just gone for the shock horror value and forgotten that our athletes are representing Scotland, they look more like an advert for dolly mixtures or liquorice allsorts in that pink and blue tartan. The women’s outfits just look so old fashioned and not in a good way.

I’m all for zany fun but there’s a time and a place for it.

The powers that be should have had a competition between schoolchildren to design the outfits, the kids would have come up with something far more enhancing I’m sure, after all it was a kid who designed Clyde, the Glasgow Commonwealth Games mascot, obviously in the shape of a thistle, and that’s a beezer!