Visit Scotland. But not Dundee.

I was in the cinema the other day doing my patriotic duty and going to see Your Highness. It wasn't very good. But while I was waiting for it to start there was the usual set of car, perfume and film adverts, and this time a Visit Scotland ad. This first struck me as a bit odd since I was in Scotland so it was pretty difficult for me not to go to it. But obviously this was because Cineworld is a chain, and the people in charge of what adverts to show are idiots so show the same everywhere.

So i was sitting watching it, and it showed Edinburgh Castle, The Royal Mile, Glasgow, Ayr, Inverness, Aberdeen, Stirling and even festivals in Stonehaven. It seemed like a pretty good and balanced advert for my country. Good mix of monuments and musuems and folk traditions and festivals, and it showed a wide variety of places, some wee villages and every city. And then it stuck me. It didn't have every city. It had the biggest (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen), and the smallest (Stirling, Inverness). But it was missing one. Dundee. My home town. This wouldn't have bothered me if more than one city was missed or if Dundee was the least important. But it's the middle in size and importance, so it must have been a conscious decision by the filmmaker not to include it. This annoys me.

I'm a big fan of my city. But most people will admit that even though it's got parts which no-one would ever visit, it has it's good features. They could've shown the Discovery, or The Steeple if they ever got the kids to clear off the lawn, or Broughty Ferry Castle, or it's waterfront. There's nothing particularly special, but neither is there anything special in Inverness and they had a shot of a random street there. So they could've included Dundee, got people to visit. Maybe the filmmaker hates Dundee, maybe his boss had a bad experiance here, or maybe they just wanted to piss me off, but i really can't work out why they wouldn't have it. So here's the today's moral. I love Dundee and i'm sure tourists would too, don't make the decision not to inform then yourself tourist board. It's not the best but it's a hell of a lot better than some places.