(I realise now that this is quite a long contribution, but "my pen quite ran away with me" as the man said).   

No, there's quite a lot of publicity in the media, primarily because there's a thing called "The Homecoming" which is an initiative to encourage millions of people from America, Canada, Australia &c &c to visit Scotland for holidays, golf, ancestor-tracing and the like; the commercial aspect of this, naturally if a bit dispiritingly, has been given a great deal of emphasis. I understand the idea was put forward some time ago by a certain Jim Wallace of the "Liberal Democrat Party", when it was in partnership with the "Labour Party" in the Scottish Parliament; now it's the "Scottish National Party" which is in charge (albeit a minority administration, but they're doing so well in social legislation which does have genuine and demonstrable benefits for many people that I think it likely they'll be returned with a real majority at the next election). Now that it's the "S.N.P." that is in charge, however, the other parties are already sniping away at the "Homecoming". There are absurdities to the campaign, not least a dreadful video in which a succession of "celebrities" sing a word or two out of a song called "Caledonia" by ?Dougie MacLean (one would have thought that something by the Bard himself might have been more appropriate), as part of this campaign to bring people from "The Scottish Diaspora" back on a visit; but as far as I understand, the video is being shown only in Scotland!!! No doubt someone has made a good deal of money out of it, though. There have been a few of the usual kinds of BBC programmes, too; little beyond very basic biographical information and the usual, very familar songs, and too much emphasis given to the usual "talking heads" who take too long to contribute too little. I can readily understand why some of Burns's more political work will still be suppressed or misrepresented; after all, much of it is in principle still directly relevant today. Many people are still in want, while others on countless thousands (of pounds) rant away; and it's the latter who decide how funds are allocated, and to whom, and for what purpose. And when you can have "A Man's a Man for aa that" sung in the presence of one of the usurping Hanoverian "royalty" without anyone roaring with laughter at the way the puir cuif is being insulted to his face, it's pretty obvious that the true import of these "good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme" has been subverted into a complacent acceptance of poverty rather than a contemptuous dismissal of artifical human rank and title.

Finally, I was concerned to notice in part of a BBC news/current affairs programme the other night an attempt to emphasise the role of the English antiquarian Joseph Ritson in influencing Burns's song-collecting, with reference to Ritson's 1795 collection. By that time, of course, Burns had already been engaged in this activity (as well as composing, as well as working bluidy hard for a living) for a decade; worse, there was not any mention of David Herd's collections of 1769 and 1776. Burns certainly knew of them and - as Hecht showed more than a century ago - had access to "Auld Greysteil's" MSS when he was in Edinburgh. It's a pity that the Academics involved in the programme were either ignorant of this scholarship or, worse, content to conceal it.