Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Obtruding on our offsprings' obligations...

Ed Miliband, the UK's Climate Change Secretary (does that title make you laugh or cry?) has had his wrist slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority. Two ads released by the government that used nursery rhymes to raise awareness of climate change have been banned. This banning sounds reasonable as they are clearly designed to scare influence children - not a new tactic in the 'climate wars' - however, the watchdog cleared complaints against a commercial shown on TV last autumn and showing a young girl being read a nightmarish bedtime story by her father about a world blighted by climate change, (drowning dog etc...see first link of this blogpost for the video on BBC), which to me was far worse than the two ads.

Clearly governments, after failing to convince their current taxpayers (but still green-taxing and eco-controlling them), are playing the long game and trying to get future generations to carry the torch: I foresee a group of demonstrating youngsters becoming extreme, morphing - as has happened so often in the past - into terrorist groups. Or another possible future: remember Climate Cops (no, not Green Police, that's something else, albeit related!): no doubt some such system will prevail, with an 'edicto de fe' following the denunciation, then an examination by calificadores, who would determine if there was heresy involved, followed by detention of the accused...

Update: I like CF's dodgy salesman take on this:

The offending adverts had presented predications as fact, made exaggerated claims, distorted the evidence and - cheap trick - had tried to instil fear in their audience.

Then the person ultimately responsible for these adverts was wheeled on. He was as evasive as you'd expect a person in that position to be...

And he's not actually selling us anything in the traditional sense - we've got no fucking choice. He's just advertising why he's helped himself to our money, after the event. We paid for the adverts, and we'll pay for whatever Climate Change-related bollocks Ed wants us to.

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3 comments:

Paul said...

Green Police have a better uniform than Climate Cops. The Climate Cops video is very simplistic and I wonder what age group it was aimed.

I have to be honest when I first saw the Dad reading the bedtime story my first reaction was how bizarre!

Span Ows said...

It was aimed at children, I can understand getting them involved but the grassing up family and friends bit was going a bit too far! Re the video, my first reaction was blind rage! ...where are my pills?

Span Ows said...

P.S. FULHAM!!! jeez...