Cullen Skink

Bagging-Scotland planning continues and our ace designer Ramsay’s pulling-together a presentation for a number of potential ‘In Association With’ sponsors. Putting an exact ‘number’ on how much this jolly excellent opportunity is worth is a toughie because we’ve not got a ‘model’ to base it on. However, we’ve taken a researched and educated gues at…well, there’s no way I’m telling you here. Big thanks to my clever PR chum Pete Sigrist at Fishburn Hedges, who offered me some very good advice in this area. I rip the pish out of Mr Sigrist as he’s stupidly posh but he’s a clever chap and goes out of his way to help you. As he’s busy and as he offers this advice for nowt, I value him greatly and he’s a great geezer but I am too shy to tell him. Hope to hell he doesnae read this!

Today, I also met-up with the GMF Co people, who happen to be based in Glasgow’s Lighthouse. Fucking hypocrite that I am, I was in there today and managed to avoid the snipers. It was completely, utterly dead, so I stand by every comment I made in ‘that blog’ where a number of people suggested I “ken fuck-all aboot fuck-all”.

Anyway, in spite of biding in a ghost building, I really liked their style and think they’d be interesting to build relationships with because they’ve got a broad experience. They also seem to be up-for-the-cup. However, I was rather sparkled today, so probably came across like a manic loon.

As they work on the Tiree Wave Classic,  they ‘get’ islands, so we’ll see. I’d like to do something with them, anyway. I’ll call them and ask if they can help with sponsorship. I alluded to this but alluding to things is a bit daft. As from today, I’m being a LOT more direct!

There’s been loads of stuff on the box just now about the part that Scotland played in forming the modern world. It’s amazing really but in the fields of medicine, heavy industry and in inventing a lot of the modern’ building blocks’ of things we take for granted; television, bicycles, video, telephone,( there’s a massive list that a quick Google search will reveal) we’ve led the world.

It’s easy to eulogise about this and suggest we’re outrageously clever, ‘punch above our weight’ a nation of geniuses etc etc. This might be a tiny bit true but in reality, we were actually victims of circumstance, caught up in neccesity having to truly be ‘the mother of invention’. In essence, loads of factors came together-raw materials, money, a hugely increasing Global Marketplace-to give us no real opportunity but to throw lots of money in solving problems. Of course, there were clever people that capitalised on this but we’d created a ‘perfect storm’ for ideas generation, capitalisation, ‘research and development’ and finally, taking it to a massive market, which the British Empire had created.

It’s a bit different today but as a proud Scot, who’s striving to create my own wee success story, I think the opportunites are out there but it needs a lot more, if not perfect storms, lots of mini squalls, to make things happen. I’m beginning to have a bit of success in getting people to have some faith in my www.bagging-scotland.com project but one thing is clear, I’ve had the most ‘luck’, inspiration, guidance, knowledge transfer and faith when I’ve been meeting people, asking them things and gaining advice, sometimes from some really unlikely sources.

I’ve been really suspicious of ’self-help’ books but I HAVE found that there are a number of ‘mini Scottish squalls’ which have been created on the internet and I’ve really benefitted from them. Also, if there’s been ‘the opening of an envelope’ in Glasgow recently, I’ve gone along, met people and tried to help them and they’ve helped me!

This isn’t the beginning of a ‘my experiences’ load of old bollocks on my blog but it’s good to know that there are a number of people out there who will help you. You just need to do a very un-Scottish thing-and ask.

You don’t have to be particularly ‘enlightened’ to realise that in Scotland, we don’t make or invent things quite as much as we did 150 years ago. We also are not in the extremely fortunate position of having a f*ck-off, huge, Global marketplace that we erm…owned (I suppose feudalism, slavery and genocide help here, a bit) so we need to think differently. That thought process has to involve asking for help and ‘bouncing-off’ ideas. I think we’re undoubtedly a clever Nation but you’re living in a slightly deluded land of cloud cuckoo-ism if you don’t think the whole of South East Asia, USA and the Indian subcontinent feel exactly the same way about themselves.

So, some quite, self confidence but let’s get the creators of Scotland, in facts Scots of all kinds to become GREAT at meeting people, becausse that’s when the sparks start to fly!