Labour and the SNP clashed again yesterday over the cost of Scotland's advert for Homecoming Scotland.
Labour claimed that the clip, which features the likes of Lulu, Amy Macdonald, Brian Cox and Sir Sean Connery singing lines from Dougie MacLean's popular song Caledonia, had cost more to make per minute than Slumdog Millionaire, the Oscar-winning film.
Lewis Macdonald, Labour tourism spokesman, compared the £233,450 cost of making the 60-second advert to that of Slumdog Millionaire, by dividing up a budget of £3.3m by the length of the film, 120 minutes, and arriving at a figure of £28,000 per minute.
Transmission costs were £299,287 and while none of the celebrities taking part received a fee, their expenses added a further £1550 to the bill. An edited version of the advert to screen in the US cost £10,000, while music usage for a year added another £15,000.
Mr Macdonald said: "I am astonished that the SNP's Homecoming advert cost more per minute than a film that won eight Oscars. They'll certainly not be winning any prizes for getting value for public money."
He challenged First Minister Alex Salmond to explain why the advert was so expensive. "The SNP began by trying to remake Brigadoon with SNP supporters Sean Connery and Sandi Thom in the lead roles. Now it turns out that they did so at prices which are more Hollywood than Holyrood."
An aide to Jim Mather, the Enterprise Minister, claimed Mr Macdonald was mistaken. He said: "This is another embarrassing blunder by Lewis Macdonald. In a bizarre attempt to talk down the wonderful year of Homecoming and bad-mouth an advert in which all stars gave their time for free, Mr Macdonald has got his facts all wrong.
"As well as being wrong about Homecoming, Labour are even wrong about Slumdog Millionaire, the production costs of which were some five times the figure they claim."
He added: "The bottom line is that the Year of Homecoming is set to deliver £40m extra in Scottish tourism revenue and 100,000 additional visitors, turning around a threatened downturn and giving our tourism industry a huge boost in a tough economic climate.
"The Labour Party need to decide whether or not they support this fantastic initiative for Scotland. Mr Macdonald's press release is also hugely disrespectful to all of the Scottish stars who all gave their time for absolutely nothing, including Brian Cox, who has been a prominent Labour Party supporter."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "These are inaccurate claims about a great advert for Scotland."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article