IT HAS been billed as a celebration of "Scottishness" and a potential rival for the St Patrick's Day festivities across the world.
But the Scottish Government has been left red-faced after it emerged its website was still promoting last year's St Andrew's Day celebrations.
Despite awarding its staff an extra day's holiday earlier this year, the government has still not announ
ced what events it is staging across the country.
VisitScotland's website includes just a handful of St Andrew's Day events, including a performance of Mother Goose in Kilmarnock. It is ignoring several major events taking place around Scotland.
Alex Salmond, the First Minister, has previously vowed to make St Andrew's Day, on 30 November, a global celebration and said he wanted it to kickstart "winter festival" celebrations across the country.
But details of events being staged to celebrate Scotland's patron saint are almost impossible to find. The www.scotland.org site – billed as the "official online gateway" to the country – has an extensive list of events, all of which are 12 months out of date.
The Scottish Government told The Scotsman it was still finalising a programme of events and insisted an announcement was due within the next few days.
A spokeswoman said: "The programme for St Andrew's Day will build on previous years. We are not going to publicise events on the website until a programme is finalised and officially launched."
A spokeswoman for Visit Scotland said: "We will work with the government to ensure we get the message to as many visitors and potential visitors as possible. This will still provide people with plenty of time to plan attendance at events.
"We have already been promoting St Andrew's Day through a range of PR and marketing activity around the world."
However, Ted Brocklebank, the Scottish Tories' culture spokesman, said: "This is the final St Andrew's Day before the Year of Homecoming, with events scheduled to run from Burns Night in January all the way to St Andrew's Day next November.
"We would have expected a more co-ordinated and efficient promotion effort from the Scottish Government. In my home town of St Andrews, our annual St Andrew's Day festival is up and running, and has been well publicised. Perhaps the Scottish Government could take a leaf out of that book, rather than standing idly by."
Simon Thoumire, founder of the Scottish Traditional Music Awards, who launched a campaign to promote St Andrew's Day events several years ago, said: "I'm unaware of anything the government is doing for St Andrew's Day.
"It does seem odd that there's out-of-date information on the website, and this year's programme has still not been announced. It should be promoted months in advance."
