A wasted week

You've pegged it with your editorial, "Tartan Week's effectiveness is the real question", (6 April) in questioning why so many members of the Scottish Government, the civil service and quangos go to New York during Tartan Week.

It's called "a holiday at the taxpayers' expense". Questioning the cost-effectiveness of this political junket is laudable. Let's hope you can determine what the benefits of the week of "promoting" Scotland are for the thousands of people here on jobseekers' allowance.

Marketing Scottish tourism through Highland Games in America and Canada would be a better way to spend 400,000 a year. I wonder how many Americans and Canadians who came over for the Gathering last year go to Highland Games in their own state – hot prospects for visiting Scotland, as Arisaig's Highland Games in 2005 showed with its tie-in to the Loch Norman Games in North Carolina.

Now, all we have to do is get the politicians to realise there is a better way of spending their time and the public's money in New York than telling high school students that some people back here want independence.

GE MacDONELL

Station Square

Inverness