Remember the picture in last week's Groat of Sir Paul McCartney's photographer brother Mike McCartney taking a picture of the world's shortest street, Ebenezer Place in Wick?

Well, a fortnight next Tuesday will see the official launch of the photographic exhibition Mike McCartney's North Highlands in the Garden Lobby of the Scottish Parliament.

As the local MSP I am the official sponsor of the exhibition (which will involve a speech on the night) and I can only say that it is a real honour to do this – to help mark the impressive fruition of an initiative launched by the Caithness and North Sutherland Partnership. Apparently the photographs are terrific; I can't wait to see them. And it will be fascinating to meet Mike McCartney.

Almost certainly some of the McCartney family's ancestors came from Ireland; very probably they came from the Province of Ulster where the surname McCartney is common.

Ulster is made up of nine counties: six in the North of Ireland (and therefore in the UK) and three of them, Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal, "across the border" in the Republic of Ireland. It was about five miles from the border, in County Armagh, that my family and I spent this Christmas.

Most Stone Christmases in Ireland, once the festivities were over, would see the Scottish contingent popping over the border to take advantage of the sales and the relative strength of the pound. A fill of cheap Eire diesel (entirely legal, let me hasten to add) usually featured alongside bargain shoes and clothes. Over the years, to the wry amusement of the in-laws, it had become a Stone family "must".

But not this Christmas. With the pound plummeting and rapidly approaching parity with the euro, tranquil Monaghan town no longer beckoned. Prices across the border were suddenly way beyond UK pockets. This time we filled up in Armagh, in the UK, before we headed home.

But before we went we saw with our own eyes the very large number of Eire-registered numberplates parked in Armagh. The local shops told us that they had never had it so good: thousands flooding up to Northern Ireland to take advantage of the cheap prices – which, ironically enough, probably included diesel and clothes...

Of course this seesawing of exchange rates between the pound and the euro is in one sense very unhelpful to British businesses.

If you are pricing imported goods from the euro zone – say, wine from France – and then in a matter of weeks the pound dramatically sinks, then a business can be in a lot of trouble. Having priced the French wine to a shop or restaurant in the UK at an agreed price, then it is seriously bad news to suddenly turn round and tell your customer that the price has just shot up.

Just one more bit of bad news on a bleak front; something else to add to our woes? Not necessarily.

This is where Mike McCartney and cross-border shopping come together. The McCartney exhibition – which will in turn lead to the highest-quality exhibition book being published – is entirely about promoting the beauty, interest and sheer "difference" of the North. I may be proved wrong, but I bet that this promotion of the North is going to be a winner, one that will be long remembered.

The fact that a few days ago shoppers were flooding across the Irish border to shop in the UK surely bodes extremely well for the next UK tourist season.

Now that the pound is so cheap, and that the euro and other currencies like the US dollar are so strong, this will result in two things. The first is that UK holidaymakers will be very tempted to holiday in the UK this year – and the second is the obvious point that similarly the newly cheap and good-value UK will be even more attractive to overseas visitors.

The more we can market somewhere like the Far North to UK and overseas visitors, the more this year could be a bumper one for our local tourism industries. Clouds and silver linings – I do not underestimate the gravity of the financial climate which we all have the misfortune to be going through right now (and have said as much as a matter of public record), but not all is gloom and doom.

A good year for Far North tourism will also help businesses not immediately connected with the tourism sector – food production and agriculture being good examples. And this is precisely where Mey Selections will play an important part.

Tourism is also about people wishing to revisit somewhere where they have had a high-quality tourism experience. In this way a successful season this year will become useful bedrock for future years – in hopefully brighter economic times.

For these reasons we must push Far North tourism like never before. Right now this is one opportunity that we do have. We mustn't miss it. The Mike McCartney's North Highlands exhibition is an excellent high-profile step in the right direction.

Jamie Stone MSP

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