[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4265
Set by Gavin Ross
The BBC has reported that negative advertising about the downside of living in the UK is planned by the government to deter Romanians and Bulgarians from coming here. We asked for descriptions of the country that officially seek to attract foreign visitors but achieve the opposite.

This week’s winners
Some of you failed to read the rules. First, you were not asked to send in descriptions of Afghanistan or anywhere but the UK; second, the descriptions were supposed to at least pretend to be inviting but in reality be aimed at deterring the visitor, not simply making the UK sound fabulous; third, you were not asked to make the UK sound ghastly from the off. Those who did what was asked can give themselves a pat on the back. The Tesco vouchers go to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead. All four winners get £25 apiece.

Home comforts
Binevenit! Dobre dosal! In our glorious United Kingdom, you’ll find so much that will make you feel at home, you’ll wonder why you stayed away so long. Our town planners have worked hard to create the same sort of clean-lined, neutral concrete apartment buildings found in your great cities – you may even see your compatriots in the teams responsible for keeping these litter-free. Our health and education services promise the provision of basic services for all. People flock to these, so you’ll never feel lonely and communication is facilitated by their multicultural staff.
No need to worry about unfamiliar food either, for our supermarkets are just brimming with products – too many to identify individually – that, while their names may be hard to understand, you’ll find have been comfortingly manufactured with a taste of home. Drum bun!
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead

Forced exposure
You will feel welcomed from the moment you arrive, as friendly interrogators check your return ticket and means of support.
Only a few hours later, you will be exposed to English culture as you join a queue for taxis. Eventually, for a mere £60, you will experience English irony as your driver playfully makes fun of your foreign origins. As you inch through busy, colourful traffic jams, look out for red buses and flashing blue lights as “English bobbies” chase rioters.
Then to your hotel in central London, where you will immediately feel at home – most of the staff are from your country! And you will learn that in England, “central” has a very different meaning.
As for English cuisine, your food may seem strangely familiar: it could have been pulling a cart back home.
You will be charmed by all this and the gentle rain that constantly refreshes our green and pleasant land.
Keith Mason

Calm down, dear
Samuel Johnson once said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” Live here for any length of time and you will soon understand how he probably felt.
London is a city that literally reeks of history. For instance, in today’s London, you’re still never more than two metres from one of those iconic rats immortalised by Daniel Defoe in A Journal of the Plague Year or those that roamed Dickens’s well-known locations.
History is everywhere. Tired of south-eastern Europe’s facile bonhomie and insouciance or life under a relentless sun and monotonous blue sky by the Black Sea? Live in London and experience the true, gritty spirit
of the Blitz. In the crowded streets or Tube stations, you’ll soon be joining your new compatriots in that inspirational call to stoical perseverance faced with whatever life brings under the soft, refreshing rain; that ubiquitous, stirring rallying cry: “Keep calm and carry on!”
David Silverman

We can be heroes
Welcome to Britain, land of the law abiding, hard-working and honest. Britons pay their taxes and lead orderly lives, often working into their seventies and eighties. The famous “stiff upper lip” translates as a “no-whining” self-reliance.
The rich English language compensates for being so difficult to learn, pronounce and spell by being wonderfully good for literature and jokes that most Britons make several times a day.
Deferred gratification is practised and admired: couples typically have two children when they can afford them and house them in a home that they are buying and bring them up by their brave and uncomplaining example to be self-sacrificing heroes.
Dorothy Pope

[Peter Goulding]

"Reports have appeared on the BBC that negative advertising about the downside of living in the UK is planned by the government to deter Romanians and Bulgarians coming here. We want descriptions that officially seek to attract tourists, but achieve the opposite."

Well, to my mind, that doesn't actually say it has to be UK. It could be, say, the Irish Tourist Agency seeking to beef up Killarney. God, I hate Killarney.

Not that my effort was a patch on the winners, so a purely academic point.

[Chris O'Carroll]

It's true that the rules some competitors were scolded for failing to read did not actually say "We want descriptions that officially seek to attract tourists to the UK, but achieve the opposite." That was probably meant to be inferred from the previous sentence, but somebody who wrote a "come to beautiful Afghanistan" entry would not have been clearly in the wrong as far as I can see. (My own losing entry had a "come to beautiful Leicester" message, so I can say this with high-minded disinterest.)

[Adrian Fry]

Ahem, I wrote the - or, more hopefully an - Afghanistan piece. It wasn't a patch on the winners.