Did you actually read what I wrote? Your comment has nothing to do with the subject of my post.

"The American prairie was once full of wildlife; now it grows corn. The forests of Europe once had wolves and bears; now there are only a couple of pocket-sized natural forests left on the whole of the continent" ?

We go one step worse though – the ad agency pinches video files of things like hummingbirds from OTHER COUNTRIES and tries to kid us they are Malaysian. How can the people who PAY to have these things made be so cynical?

I have seen Sarawak Tourism Board advertise Sarawak as the Land of the Hornbills with the photo of a hornbill not found anywhere on Borneo, let alone Sarawak. I’ve seen full page adverts in the Herald Tribune for Malaysia using a Blue and Yellow Macaw from S.America as the centrepiece. I have seen tourism brochures using other exotic bird pix.

I suppose I used to tell people that I live on ‘a rock in the sea’ (because the island is so small, only about 10 miles by 5) and from there I just developed the habit of referring to it as ‘the rock’.

Our local Tourism decided to make a series of promotional ads for the rock a couple of years back, to encourage more visitors to come here. They hired professionals who shot all the photographs and videos … on the south coast of England! Apparently they worked on the theory that one beach looks much like another if you’re looking out to sea (only true for certain for values of ‘beach’, natch). But of course it did nothing to promote the actual beauty of our rock (which is very beautiful in parts) and the resultant blandness of the ads resulted in a very predictable flop.