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Living in Scotland - Neil Fitzgerald December

"We're just so busy."
Over the last few days, the same phrase keeps cropping up in my regular phone-rounds and catch-ups over coffee with business people in Scotland. And it's usually in a slightly disbelieving tone.

Neil Fitzgerald

After all, this is less than 14 shopping days to Christmas. Now there is still a vague tradition that for the Scots Christmas isn't the big event of the festive season, it's the New Year or Hogmanay (old Scottish word for New Year's Eve, derivation uncertain). Nowadays, however, the Yule tide has definitely turned. In recent years, just like everywhere else, working life in Scotland has seemed to wind down rapidly from the first week of December onwards, amid office parties, surreptitious sneaking out to buy presents, and the rest of the rapidly snowballing seasonal activities. Even those maintaining a certain self-discipline would find no option but to wind down too as no-one else seemed to be around to do business with.

Until this year. Suddenly, the flow of new launches, deals, projects and initiatives from al directions looks like going on right up to 24 December. And the way my contacts are talking, many of them will be back on the case immediately after.

Festive Fever
Be assured, though, Scotland in December is nowhere near retreating into some grim, workaholic trance. Across Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens from the Castle, a 140-foot Ferris Wheel twirls above the now-traditional fairground and open-air ice rink, while on the Mound between Princes Street and the Old Town escarpment a full traditional German night-time market has been in full sway. Glasgow's own open-air ice rink and fairground has genereted even more winter light and noise in George Square for passing shoppers and party-goers.

The live pop and rock venues have been vibrating to music old and new (Beautiful South, Foo Fighters, Steps, the Bootleg Beatles) while Scotland's vibrant club scene continues to roll out new regular nights and specials for everything from hi-hop and house to Latin and jazz. On a more refined note, amid a whole gamut of classical and Christmas-oriented concerts by Scotland's world-class orchestras - the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BT Scottish Ensemble and - just back from a historic tour of China -BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - came the Vienna Philharmonic. With a name that belies its professionalism, Opera On A Shoestring is taking its stripped-down versions of operatic favourites round the local communities in Glasgow, just as big brother Scottish Opera opened its new production of Madama Butterfly to rapturous reviews by the UK-wide press. Meanwhile, the big opera event in Edinburgh was the charity concert by Jose Carreras inaugurating the city's Usher Hal after its £9 million refurbishment.

All this, even before Madonna arrives for her wedding in the Highland surroundings of Dornoch in Sutherland on 22 December....

Taking Off
Still, Scotland is doing the business, not least in electronics and information technology. One the one hand, a supply chain management and e-procurement conference in Glasgow heard that the Scottish business-to-business market will double next year to £5 billion, roughly 3 per cent of the global total. On the other, a training industry report found that Scotland now has a disproportionate percentage of the UK's electronics workforce, and that overseas companies are looking to Scotland as the best base in the UK, building on its traditional engineering skills and innovation as a way to resolve an increasing worldwide shortage of skilled workers in a booming sector. The recent announcement by system-on-chip solutions provider Simutech of Portland, Oregon that it was setting up its European Headquarters within the Alba Centre was the latest example of this inward investment trend at the high-level, R&D end.

Home-grown electronics, IT and opto-electronics businesses continue to proliferate. Scotland's own First Tuesday network is now a well-established, integral part of matching entrepreneurs and funders, and this month saw the first Female Finance Finding event, in Glasgow, where the best woman-led start-ups were coached in pitching before being introduced to a fast-expanding, new-technology-oriented business angel and venture capital community.

The supply of premises and facilities for all these different types of businesses, inward-invested and local, is also keeping up. The next phase of the Alba Campus site, extending the choice of premises available there, is on target for April. Meanwhile, at Hillington to the West of Glasgow another business incubation centre offering premises to high-tech, high-growth start-ups in Scotland was opened. Next door, around Glasgow International Airport, a flurry of developments are on the table for those businesses needing to be close to air cargo facilities as well as freight handlers themselves. Similar conceptualising and land clearing is going on for expanding cargo operations around Edinburgh, Prestwick and Aberdeen airports.

Talking of air connections, competition continues notably from smaller, feisty budget airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet and Go with even more low-cost, new direct routes opening up between Scotland and London and Europe. Among the latest are Go's Glasgow-London Stansted flights and, from 7 January, EasyJet's twice-a-day Edinburgh-Amsterdam.

Hogmanay this year offers new as well as traditional reasons for being around Scotland. Some of the rituals are well nigh buried in time: for instance, a late New Year's Eve parade of 60 men through Stonehaven, near Aberdeen, each swinging a blazing ball of pitch on the end of a chain round their heads before launching them into the sea. Or next day there's the Orkney Ba' Game, with 200 men split into two teams each fighting to move a leather ball up or down a main street in Kirkwall - in all the chaotic fun, who cares who wins?

Of course the big Hogmanay events are in the big cities. This year Edinburgh's got even bigger. As if 31 December wasn't enough, there's the Night Afore Fiesta with a march to pipes and drums down from the Royal Mile into the New Town for street theatre, a ceilidh and Afro-Caribbean music. New Year's Eve then sees the real Street Party, with live music from around the world played at various points on Princes Street, while for the first time fireworks displays will be staged from seven hillpoints around the city.

Glasgow, not to be outdone, has a fireworks display by the people who last year lit up the Eiffel Tower, as seen on TV screens around the world, forming the highpoint of a Riverside Spectacular and the unveiling of the new Glasgow Tower at the Glasgow Science Centre on the Clyde. Then everyone heads for the streets of Glasgow's centre, where thousands of clubbers will join the BBC's Millennium Dance Party in George Square while elsewhere under the night sky top Glasgow DJs share record deck stints and there's live gospel, salsa, and rock music and international street theatre until the early morning hours. After which I somehow feel everyone will want a couple of days off before 2001 gets really busy again....

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