Category: Communications disease

Tom Berry, Head of Campaigns & Marketing, at the Disability Rights Commission very kindly wrote to me tonight to tell me how much the “Are we taking the dis?” campaign cost. £1.2 million for a national billboard and press campaign out of a £22 million overall budget for the DRC.

The DRC was set up by an act of Parliament to eliminate discrimination against disabled people, promote equal opportunities and encourage best practice. I am not sure that their campaign is a good use of this money I am afraid.

The Sunday Times today uses figures from the Central Office of Information annual report to have a go at Government spending on nannying, statement of the bleeding obvious advertising by Government. This spending has tripled since Labour came to power. £334 million in 2004-5 up from £111 million in 1997-8.

Going back to the annual report, the expensive pictures of plain, middle-aged people on pages 4 and 5 are typical of the breed and of no value whatsoever to taxpayers. Looking back on previous reports it is noteworthy that they have gone from plain to jazzy with lots of specially commissioned photos. This is brutally expensive and a total waste of money because they are not trying to sell themselves. We have no choice about using the services of these self-aggrandising twits.

These are the same figures used by the Telegraph back in October but they only included advertising not other activities. The message is the same though: spending up by a factor of three since Labour came to power.

Another big Government ad in the Guardian today from the Disability Rights Commission. There is nothing on their website I can disagree with in terms of objectives. I just question the way they go about it. A high profile ad campaign with both newspaper and billboards. It is bizarre the way they highlight it on their website. Would a commercial organisation invite you to “View our advertising campaign”? It seems they are trying to ape French Connection UK’s punning allusion to foul language.

Other ads from the same series appeared in the Evening Standard and Telegraph today.

In today’s Sunday Times some genius from the Home Office has managed to place a half page ad on page 8 warning of the dangers of the internet for children. Some communications whizz at the Home Office probably enjoyed commissioning all of this expensive imagery but public information it is not. Who is the audience here?

I think I would much rather that someone from the Home Office was sytematically going around ISPs and evaluating their controls and monitoring of online child abuse than producing flashy newspaper ads. I know the grunt work is not as exciting but puffing yourself is of no use to kids in danger.

This morning I cleared my girlfriend’s mail from her mat in Hammersmith. By coincidence the Mayor’s Londoner had arrived the same morning that Hammersmith and Fulham’s hfm magazine had.

The Londoner’s headline, “London schools make the grade”, and the accompanying article failed to mention the vocational qualifications scam that is artificially inflating schools’ performance figures right now. On the whole hfm steered clear of naked propaganda but managed to puff local schools’ performance in an editorial response to a letter stating that: “Overall 59.3% of Hammersmith & Fulham pupils gained 5 or more good GCSE passes.” Again there was no mention that a single GNVQ was worth 4 Cs.

The Mayor insists that Transport for London places three one page ads in the 20 pages of the Londoner to hide the Precept money he is wasting in the TfL communications budget no doubt.

It is scandalous that the Mayor and local authorities in London are squandering our Council Tax to puff themselves and at the same time unfairly competing with local press who will add commentary about real performance and value for money. The Evening Standard covered this issue much more promptly (on 14th October) and properly explained the GNVQ scam.

In an article today the Telegraph highlights that in the first three months of the year, in the run up to a general election, the Government outspent both Unilever and Procter & Gamble. 

The central government advertising bill for the whole 2004-5 financial year was £203.2 million.  This is three times higher than when Labour came into power.