Sunday, January 04, 2009

Gov.com Bollocks

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Television adverts are irritating at the best of times, but are now becoming doubly irritating as advertisers adopt government doctrine so that now double glazing will reduce your carbon footprint, margarine will stave off obesity and expensive yoghurt will stop your arteries clogging (whilst filling your plastic recycling bin with piss-little pots). But at least these advertisers are only trying to sell us something.

Worse are the endless begging adverts and health warnings paid for by our taxes funnelled to on-message charities like, for example, ASH, which received a total of £11,143 from the public and £320,400 from the government, or like Alcohol Concern, which received nothing from the public but over £400,000 from the Department of Health.

Worse still are the ones brought to us direct by gov.com. Presently we’re being bombarded every evening by the low fat healthy living message from the Morph’s Plasticene family. This message is delivered with such teeth-filing dumbed-down patronising nanny-state knows best subtlety I want to throw a brick through the screen. Apparently healthy people eat carrots and apples and dump burgers in the bin. Healthy people walk rather than use the ‘comfy car’ or the ‘more comfy bus’ (The message here of course that those who use the bus are less reprehensible than those who use a car).

Then, this morning I discover two full-page spreads of this dreck in two national newspapers. Obviously the budget for ramming home gov.com statist tripe will be the last to be cut as the country goes into financial meltdown. I mean, gov.com has £75 million to throw at this, but only just managed to scrape enough together for drugs to stop people going blind.

They just won’t stop, will they? They just won’t be satisfied until we are all good little low-carbon carrot-eating robots obedient to nanny state for every minute of our lives.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The clock is running down for nulabour so it is quite fun to watch and listen to all the last gasps of a defunct regime.

Anonymous said...

I'm wondering whether the originator of the "comfy bus" phrase has been on one lately? In west London they tend to be late, crowded and slow, which is why I still prefer taking the car.

You're right about the adverts - they are very very irritating. And I'm someone who eats sensibly, exercises, doesn't smoke, rarely drinks - and they still irritate the hell out of me. Watching them gives me an almost irresistable urge to spend hour after sedentary hour on the sofa consuming vast amounts of burgers and double whiskies.

Re righteous living, perhaps our glorious leaders could lead by example and renounce the "comfy gravy train".

Anonymous said...

I do find it disgusting the amount of money wasted by the government on this kind of campaign and sending things to everyone through the post. Bunch of idiots with no common sense running the country

Anonymous said...

I wonder how some people would cope if they had no one to blame.

I do use buses regularly. Where I work there is a cheap an convenient park and ride scheme. I think this is the way thing should work. You'll never get people out of cars but you can get the cars out of the cities if the alternative is usable and affordable. I pay £1 to get a days parking and the bus journey is no longer than it would take to park the car.

This is a good use of public transport. I expect examples like this to be ignored and disappear quickly as they are not punitive enough for our green overlords.

Anonymous said...

Olaf, actually you are right about the park and ride schemes, they're good; Norwich has a decent one, and my wife was impressed by the scheme at Oxford. If only the local buses in Hounslow/Brentford were as good...