Liberal Democrats Manifesto Published

Just gone through the Scottish Liberal Democrats Manifesto for the Scottish Elections and while there's no section dedicated to Tourism there is much to say about development of culture, sports and interestingly the strcuture of the future body looking after tourism marketing under their leadership.

The following statement jumps out clearly from all else; the Liberal Democrats will

Replace VisitScotland and Scottish Development International with a new body – Scotland International – to promote Scottish industry globally, and promote Scotland around the world for tourism, creativity and research. This will promote Scotland better, helping tourism and exporters to grow.

The following is also reproduced directly from the manifesto document:

The Most Creative Country Action Plan
Arts and culture currently contribute at least £5 billion to the Scottish economy. A thriving creative sector provides jobs and economic benefit in its own right. Yet its wider impact is greater still. A thriving arts and cultural movement improves the quality of life and acts as an attraction for inward economic investment.
We want to support and develop Scotland as a country that treasures innovation and creativity in arts, culture
and recreation.

The Most Creative Country Action Plan will:

• Establish a Creative Industry Fund within Finance Scotland for near-to-market creative companies or products and ask Regional Development Banks to work with the creative industries in their areas to capture the benefits of economic spin-offs of local cultural events.
• Continue to support the Edinburgh Festivals Expo during the next parliament to make sure that Scotland gains long-lasting benefit from internationally renowned cultural events.
• Maintain free access to Scotland’s national museums.
• Step up efforts to engage with the 2012 Olympics to make sure that Scotland benefits from an inspiring UKwide sporting event and cultural Olympiad.
• Build the partnerships necessary to ensure that a cultural and sporting benefit comes from Glasgow’s staging of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
• Make the most from the tourism potential of the 2014 Ryder Cup.
• Support 2014 as a second year of homecoming for those people around the world with Scottish ancestry.
• Make sure that Scottish public agencies are able to support online genealogy to help encourage a global interest in Scotland.
• Support Gaelic medium education where there is demand and promote the language in cost effective ways.
• Support Scotland’s valuable video games industry, with greater emphasis on the development of computing and artistic skills throughout the education system, closer working between the computer science industry and Scotland’s schools, colleges and universities and more professional development for lecturers. We will work with business to introduce a new schools competition to engage young people in the industry and support their career choices.
• Support the expansion of creative collaborations and initiatives through a super-fast broadband network across Scotland. The opportunities for Gaelic language teaching and learning, online music tuition and community broadcasting are examples.
• Encourage greater investment in quality Scottish network productions and regional programming.