Until recently I felt ambiguous about Homecoming Scotland. While seeming to have missed the mark, it is not an entirely misguided project. The tourist industry could always do with a boost, Runrig need to be kept in business, and Americans need to be given as many opportunities as possible to spend their dollars visiting castles with spurious connections to their surnames. To some extent, we all must accept the trade off between the economic boost of tourist revenue and the seemingly inevitable cultural pantomime it perpetuates.

Such views were instantly removed from my thoughts on the project by a single object, that with one fell swoop of a marketing executive's flip chart, will surely mark this year's festivities as yet another example of the inexorable trend in Scottish history of putting profit above prestige. The offending article is a specially designed bottle of Coca-Cola, featuring a shiny white and gold image of Burns emerging from the antlers of a stag, and instructing the drinker to celebrate 250 years of Robert Burns. This move is both ridiculous and offensive. The legacy of Robert Burns, regardless of your political perspective, is a controversial one. Yet at its core is a rejection of material gain in favour of a cultural and emotional sense of identity and empathy with one's fellow man.

It is astonishing that Homecoming officials could see the juxtaposition of one of the first truly egalitarian poets in history- with one of the most unscrupulous brands in globalization's hall of shame- as a positive publicity move. It is a thoroughly depressing fact that an administration with the ultimate goal of self-government should see fit to seek promotional opportunities and cash from a company that is guilty of stealing drinking water from communities in India, Ghana and Mexico, turning a blind eye to child labour, happily profiting from trade with oppressive regimes (not least Nazi Germany) and murdering and torturing union officials in Colombia.

While cultural icons should never be sacred, they should be treated with respect, (it is interesting to note that the first commemorative postal stamp featuring our national poet was not issued within our own borders, but rather in the Soviet Union in 1956). In the case of a 'national' poet, the image, not to mention the canon of such a figure belongs to the national community, and should not be available for use by the highest bidder.

While I am in no way qualified to speculate as to what the bard himself would have made of this cultural fau-pas on the part of the Scottish government, a basic knowledge of his works, such as my own, is sufficient to give us a substantial idea. And perhaps this points to the most ridiculous failing of Homecoming Scotland's promotion of 250 years of Burns: that they clearly haven't taken the time to look at his writings or legacy in anything like the depth they deserve. In his highly poignant reflection on the Union of 1707 Burns penned one of the sharpest critiques of our national tendency to 'sell out'. In the wake of this controversy its most famous line 'we're bought and sold for English gold' can now be re-written as 'we're bought and sold for corporate gold', and sadly we are still moved to reflect on our decision makers as 'a parcel of rogues'.