So all this stuff about cutting spending is guff, then? Apparently, government can piss our money up the wall on advertising campaigns after all.
The coalition government has announced funding for new public health campaigns, despite a previous freeze on all marketing and advertising.
Ministers announced a freeze last year on the £540m annual advertising budget, except on what was regarded on “essential” campaigns.
The government will now spend £44m on four campaigns in England.
That’s £44m that we don’t have, that will be extorted at gunpoint from those of us struggling to make a living. All so that Nanny can nag us about our health. Apparently, the change4life website isn’t visited as much since the advertising stopped last year and calls have fallen by 80%. So what? Apparently similar fall-offs have occurred with the quit smoking helpline, too. Again, so what? What people do with their lives, what they eat, how much – or little – they exercise and whether they smoke is nothing to do with the government and it should not be involved – even peripherally. There shouldn’t be a taxpayer funded change4life or quit campaign in the first place, let alone adverts for them. Cease all this nagging and campaigning at our expense and perhaps we can see a small dent in the massive debt burden the country faces.
The report goes on to say that “evidence submitted to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health concluded that the cessation of marketing activity has resulted in declining quit attempts and subsequent loss of life from smoking-related illness”.
Wow! That’s one hell of a leap. I wonder if the all party committee can produce some hard evidence to back up this baseless assertion. How many people, exactly, have died of smoking related illnesses in the past year as a direct consequence of the failure to advertise the quit smoking helpline? Or is it that anyone who smokes and has died of, say, a cardiac problem being deemed to have been “smoking related deaths”?
Once again, meet the new boss; same as the old boss – both are profligate with other peoples’ money.
Idiots! How do they imagine this nagging changes anything? And what’s wrong with being unhealthy? We’ve all got to die sometime. I don’t want to be the healthiest person in the care home when I’m a 150 years old.
It really has been bliss, since the bad old days ‘Stop shouting at me’
I’ve even started listening to the radio again. (strange I’m in exactly the same employment situation as I was when I wrote that post)
“…… the cessation of marketing activity has resulted in declining quit attempts ……”
or could it be that we, the ignorant electors, realize how useless their ‘treatments’ are!
“I wonder if the all party committee can produce some hard evidence to back up this baseless assertion”
Nope, but an excel file loaded with presumptive formulae can. Real life long since ceased to have any relevance to politicians.