With an artistic spirit

''You can't draw any conclusions at the moment,''says UD's Jane Richardson. ''Lord Macfarlane still has a very strong link with the company as life honorary vice-president. There is no change to the collection and it would be wrong to speculate about the future.''

UD has three collections of paintings, the collection of the ''whisky barons'' (Dewars, Haigs, Buchanans) which includes The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer and a strange assortment paintings acquired by directors in the 1960s; early advertising paintings including a full-size Striding Man (Johnnie Walker) which will presumably migrate to the ''brand home'' UDV is creating for JW; and the modern collection. Lord Macfarlane moved the original two collections to Distillers House after the Guinness takeover, and under his chairmanship began to assemble a representative collection of contemporary Scottish art as part of the company's support for the arts in Scotland.

It is a living, breathing collection,'' says Richardson. ''It is shared round the organisation, gets moved from one building to another and loaned to art collections and galleries.''

Meanwhile on Thursday the annual ABSA Scottish Awards for Business Sponsorship of the Arts are made, and UDV is among 31 shortlisted companies for its sponsorship - not of classic paintings, but of Scottish traditional music by Classic Malts.

n John Moorhouse has just stepped down as director of Scottish Business in the Community (SBC), and sees his eight years in an evangelical light. ''I will always think this was the most important job I was ever called to do - it really has been a mission thing.''

Moorhouse took over from Graham Ross on May 1, 1990 after a 27-year career with Shell culminating in running Shell Exploration & Production's UK public affairs operation from Aberdeen. Shell was one of eight serious players seconding managers into SBC, formed in 1982 (soon after the English version) to promote ''corporate social responsibility'' or community investment.

''I saw how big business can play a very positive role in the development of a community, tackling social problems, education deficiencies and environmental issues. It changed my life

and changed the way I looked

at things,'' Moorhouse recalls.

''I only realised it when a group of us got together in the early 90s, we had all been in our late thirties, early forties, working for big companies, all fairly sort of hard business people, and when we went back into normal mainstream business we all carried this torch. That period gave me the belief that every businessman should be committed to at least one serious external 'pro bono' activity. I found it hugely useful in my regular job, it gave me a sense of balance and proportion.''

SBC had built a successful network of 40 enterprise trusts, marrying business experience with public funds, which became the model for the local enterprise companies (lecs) in 1991. ''I felt strongly that the trusts still had an important role to play because lecs were going to be handling much bigger pieces if geography. The secret of the enterprise trust's success was to be parochial.''

But Moorhouse says he failed in his wider crusade, to broaden the role of trusts, ''to encourage them to become local deliverers of corporate social responsibility''. He points to London Enterprise Agency, which over 20 years reinvented itself and ''now has nothing to do with small business but is tackling all the other social ills as they affect business''.

But out of this crusade there have emerged the remarkable Business Support Groups, in which business people grapple at first hand with problems of areas like Castlemilk and Wester Hailes, and help deliver real solutions such as routes into local jobs.

''Frankly this is not such an obviously attractive thing for business people to do, it takes them right outside their comfort zone. But once they realise what they can do to help, they become even more enthusiastic. It has attracted a completely different type of business person in the field.''

The original four groups have grown to 12 and the first rebranding -''Scottish Business in the Community of Paisley'' - has begun to deliver Moorhouse's vision. Looking back, he says: ''In the 80s people were very generous with their time and services. The combination of that and the recession led people being more focused on the bottom line, so it hasn't been necessarily easy.''

Looking forward, as he hands over SBC to former Strathclyde education chief Frank Pignatelli, Moorhouse says: ''There are 2200 business people actively involved in community investment in Scotland. It's a start, there is a long way to go. We won't have done our job until people see it as the natural thing to do.''

n What do Ken Clarke, Ian Lang, Malcolm Rifkind and Sarah Hogg have in common? They have all been appointed to the boards of investment trusts - Mrs Thatcher's former adviser Baroness Hogg only yesterday, when the agm of the Scottish Eastern trust run by Edinburgh-based Martin Currie approved her appointment. Last week Martin Currie's St Andrew Trust appointed to its board Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who is already a director at British Assets Trust. Kenneth Clarke accepted a seat on the board at Foreign & Colonial, the quaintly-named oldest trust of all founded in 1868, while Lord Lang of Monkton now has a directorship at Murray Ventures, one of the Murray Johnstone stable in Glasgow, which also has Viscount Younger of Leckie chairing three other trusts. But are the good and great really necessary?

Giles Weaver, managing director at MJ, says: ''They are extremely well connected, well versed in managing meetings, they have been heads of huge departments and they certainly know about management They have been the leading people of their generation, dealing with things from a macro level, and they are very informed and demanding for us as managers.'' Ex-Ministers ideally should have had economic or industrial posts. ''I would regard it as a coup to have someone who has been at the DTi like Ian Lang.''

At MJ the going rate for board posts is #7000 to #10,000 for directors and up to #15,000 for the chairman, but bigger trusts pay up to #18,000 for a big name. Directors usually have to guarantee to attend a minimum of say four meetings a year.

Not all sector watchers are convinced. One London analyst says: ''It does look a bit like jobs for the boys. There are a lot of investment trust boards who have people on them who do not have specific sets of skills that add value to trusts I don't see how someone like Ken Clarke is going to do much except add a bit of kudos. There is also the danger of tainting yourself with a particular political stripe - you wouldn't put Ken Livingstone on your board.''

Sector guru Hamish Buchan at Bankers Trust International says: ''There is a swing towards having more independent directors, and these are serious issues. If you are looking for people to spend the amount of time needed to do the job properly, #5000 would be far too little. There may be a case for smaller boards, paying more to the people who are there.''

n Florida is set to welcome Scots who will be earning, not spending, money when the Florida Scotland Initiative sets up shop in Orlando in August.

Orlando is one of the world's key centres for optoelectronics, a #7500m market in the US. The Scottish Enterprise Optoelectronics Team in partnership with Scottish Trade International will run the base to provide in-market support for Scottish firms in the sector. They will also service companies operating in other priority areas such as the healthcare and film industries.

Alastair Wilson head of the SE team, says: ''We are predicting additional optoelectronics sales of around #8m via the initiative - generating more than 12% on current sales.''

Chris Maclellan of Livingston-based Macam Photometrics says: ''The idea of using Florida as a beach-head interests me. I like the fact we could use the office to allow us to get to know the market and develop a long-term strategy.''

In California, the Photonics West exhibition supported by STI has generated #12m of sales for Scots firms in the past two years.

Meanwhile Scotland's most ambitious home-based networking project, Connect, is poised to make a major announcement on Thursday. It is to extend its successful pilot into a national programme linking academia and business, to be launched this week with the support of 12 universities across Scotland.