Oh, Kolkata!

Published on Tuesday 17 February 2009 20:58

How strange that Roy Cross, the British Council Scotland's man in Kolkata, failed to mention any of its blunders when he reported on his three-week, taxpayer-funded junket in a luxury hotel in Kolkata (Life & Arts, 17 February).

Those lasting memories in India will include, however, damaging stories in the Indian press and The Scotsman (your reports, 22 January) about the resignation of the architects who were chosen to design the Scottish pavilion for the Kolkata Book Fair; the late withdrawal of both the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and the director of the Edinburgh Book Festival; heavy criticism of the British Council (in India and Scotland) over its Indian library closures; the extraordinary advice in the Scottish section of the Kolkata Book Fair website to "try the haggis if you must but don't miss the Aberdeen-Angus beef" (in a country where cattle are sacred); and the headline: "Scottish minister keeps mayor waiting" which described the upset caused by Labour's Anne McKechin MP, who was flown over to promote "middle-class tourism" by the British Council and attend a late Burns supper sponsored by an English-registered charity called Education UK Scotland.

NEIL ROBERTSON

Glamis Terrace

Dundee