Celebrating the Homecoming

As school pupils across Banff & Buchan start their summer holidays and many families head off for well earned breaks, it seems an appropriate time to consider the success that Homecoming Scotland 2009 is having in attracting visitors from all over the world to Scotland.

Thousands of people have already taken part in large numbers of events so far this year, with many more yet to come. Many annual attractions with a Homecoming theme all over Scotland have reported record attendances as visitors from across the globe flock to the wide variety of events taking place. The indications are that the Homecoming celebrations are proving to be highly successful, both with visitors and people from Scotland.

As well as being an extremely fitting way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, the success of the Homecoming is also a timely economic boost to many businesses across Scotland. There is still much more to come this year, something confirmed when the First Minister Alex Salmond was able to announce that an additional 44 attractions were being added to the Homecoming programme while he attended one of Banff & Buchan’s key Homecoming events, the Portsoy Traditional Boat Festival.

The four day celebration of the traditional skills and boats that were historically common in the coastal villages of Banff & Buchan was an enormous success this year, having been expanded from its usual two days especially for Homecoming Scotland 2009, and has proved a wonderful part of the Homecoming calendar. Many residents of Banff & Buchan will have attended and I am sure that they will have found the experience thoroughly enjoyable.

I extend my warmest congratulations to the organisers of the festival and everyone involved in making this year’s event such an enormous success. Clearly the other Homecoming celebrations taking place in Banff & Buchan over the course of the year, such as the Peterhead Scottish Week or the Fraserburgh Heritage Fair, will have to work hard to meet the standard that the events so far this year have set.

Scotland’s dangerous relationship with the drink

While we may be celebrating many aspects of Scottish culture as part of the Homecoming festivities, statistics released recently reveal a disturbing picture of one side of our culture that nobody will be proud of. New research has shown that alcohol could be responsible for the death of up to one in twenty people in Scotland, a truly shocking statistic.

This number is twice as high as had previously been thought and could mean that one person in Scotland is dying from alcohol related causes every three hours.

This has massive cost implications for the NHS, the police and other relevant professions in financial terms, but an absolutely incalculable one in terms of the suffering endured by those who lose loved ones through circumstances relating to alcohol. Clearly something fundamentally has to change in our society.

The Scottish Government is determined not to shy away from this difficult issue and recently held an Alcohol Summit so that people from all political parties, retailers, health professionals, the alcohol industry and others could come together and discuss the problem and some of the ways to improve the situation that have been suggested.

While some of the solutions that are being discussed are not universally popular, it is clear that in order to confront the damage being caused by Scotland’s relationship with alcohol we must be prepared to go further than has previously been attempted. With so many lives at stake, inaction is simply not an option.