For once, the Advertising Standards Authority has made a sound decision. They ruled last night that Sadiq Khan and his TfL misled Londoners with some claims about the benefits of the ULEZ, flouting the rules three times via radio and newspaper adverts. These claims made by Khan are not the whole truth: “One of London’s most polluted spots is inside your car,” “most air pollution deaths occur in Outer London,” and overstating ULEZ’s impact that it resulted in “almost a halving of levels of nitrogen dioxide”. Guido could have told you that months ago…
Here’s one advert to watch out for – don’t be fooled by Khan’s propaganda:
While ASA ruled these ads were “misleading” and “unsubstantiated”, the ads are not banned from future use, though TfL’s future Ulez ads will have to include the data sources for claims on its effectiveness.
City Hall Conservatives Tony Devenish said:
“Sadiq Khan and TfL have been caught out making misleading and unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of ULEZ to Londoners. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sadiq Khan’s own report said the ULEZ expansion would do little to tackle air pollution. Sadiq Khan has a history of making misleading and false claims. Afterall, he told us he wouldn’t expand ULEZ to outer London but then did exactly that. Sadiq Khan can’t be trusted. He doesn’t deserve another four years as mayor. Eight years is more than enough.”
Just more hot air from Khan exaggerating the benefits of his money-grabbing scheme…
Update:
Susan Hall tells Guido:
“It is shameful that Sadiq Khan has consistently misled Londoners about his ULEZ expansion. It is nothing but a tax grab which only has a negligible effect on air quality. We know his staff leant on scientists to change their findings and he is taking hundreds of millions from the poorest Londoners. I will scrap the ULEZ expansion on day one of my Mayoralty, no ifs no buts.”
In the latest bout of politically correct absurdity, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has wielded its censorious might, banning a Calvin Klein advert that dared to showcase singer FKA twigs in a denim shirt drawn halfway around her body. ASA deemed the ad, produced by the *underwear* brand, as “overly sexualised.” The ad displayed the strap: “Calvin or nothing” to appeal to potential purchasers. Looks like ASA opted for “nothing”…
In their infinite wisdom, the self-appointed bureaucrats swiftly executed their ban-hammer after a whopping two complaints came in after the ad was released in April last year. They ruled that the “image’s composition placed viewers’ focus on the model’s body rather than on the clothing being advertised.” According to ASA, the ad shamelessly zeroed in on FKA twigs’ “physical features.” Oh, the horror…
A decade has passed and still Tom Watson is still fighting Tony, this time it is Tony the Tiger who promotes Kellogg’s Frosties because they’re “grrrrreat”. This morning he told a gathering of advertising industry executives that “this failed advertising executive* loves your industry… and the Labour Party wants to do everything we can to support your success.“ He then told them to “Get that monkey off our packs. Get cartoon characters off advertising for high sugar foods… if you don’t I promise you the next Labour government will.” Which doesn’t seem very supportive of advertising…
The Shadow DCMS minister also asked if political advertising needs to come under the Advertising Standards Authority’s regulatory umbrella. Guido has practical and philosophical problems with that, firstly the ASA is not a regulator, it is a politically driven trade group that has no statutory powers. Nor should it.
Secondly it is the job of the voters to choose between liars who want to be elected. The idea that there could be some apolitical body that decides what is true in politics is nonsense, that is why we have democracy. Could an advertising regulator rule on claims as to whether tax cuts or more government spending will boost the economy? That is a political choice, not a matter of absolute truth.
Thirdly, Labour’s attack line against the advertising industry is a wilful misunderstanding of the true nature of the obesity problem in the UK. Lifestyle choices are the cause, not advertising. Banning promotional characters will not in itself get people off their screens and sofas. Left-of-centre politicians around the world are antipathetic to advertising because instinctively they know it is the propaganda arm of capitalism, it enables and encourages consumer choice in a free society. Advertising informs consumers and enhances competition, it lubricates capitalism…
An attack on advertising is, in effect, an attack on free speech. While commercial free speech may not be valued as highly by some as other forms of free speech, it should, nevertheless, be defended as an important principle. The advertising industry needs to defend itself strongly, something that the ASA cuckoos will never do…
*Tom Watson remind the ad execs he was once a junior account manager at an advertising agency in London where they “operated on the margins of creativity and the seedy world of direct mail…I loved the absolute bullshit of it all .. that experience helped me greatly in my job as a politician.” No further questions m’lud.
The censorious self-appointed bureaucrats at the Advertising Standards Authority have previously targeted anti-gay marriage adverts, anti-environmentalist adverts, Fathers4Justice adverts, pro-hanging adverts and women in bikinis in their insidious campaign against politically incorrect causes. This morning they have banned Poundland’s teabagging elf, the light-hearted campaign that took place around Christmas to much amusement on Twitter, for being “demeaning to women”. Poundland said in a statement: “Britain’s the home of saucy postcards, Carry On films and panto, so I’m sad the ASA found my double entendres hard to swallow”.
This Tunnock’s Tea Cakes advert was also censored, with the ASA ruling it objectified women and was socially irresponsible. Sigh.
The censorious bunch of self-appointed bureaucrats at the Advertising Standards Authority have targeted anti-gay marriage adverts, anti-environmentalist adverts, Fathers4Justice adverts, pro-hanging adverts and women in bikinis in their insidious campaign against politically incorrect causes. Their latest investigation is into Poundland’s teabagging elf, who caused a storm in a teacup over Christmas. Literally several vastly overpaid men will be sitting in a room discussing whether an image of an elf holding a teabag over a plastic doll is against their code. The investigation is going to last months. And all because some lefties moaned on Twitter. Free the teabagging elf!
Friends of the Earth has been rebuked by the advertising regulator and forced to promise it will not repeat pseudo-scientific claims about the economic, environmental and health effects of fracking. FoE published a scaremongering campaign leaflet last year warning fracking would be responsible for everything from falling house prices to asthma and cancer. Now the Advertising Standards Authority has extracted a pledge from the group that future literature will not include the claims, none of which could be evidenced. The watchdog said the environmentalists must:
- Not claim that fluid used in fracking contains chemicals dangerous to human health or that it would contaminate drinking water;
- Not claim a US fracking site was responsible for increases in asthma rates or that the public would be at risk of equivalent increases in asthma rates in the UK;
- Not claim that there is an established risk of the chemicals concerned causing cancer and other conditions among the local population;
- Not claim that fracking will cause plummeting house prices.
That means the entire ‘scientific’ basis of FoE’s anti-fracking lobbying effort has been debunked. Importantly, these now banned claims were made on a leaflet intended to solicit donations from the public: Friends of the Earth is a registered charity. Guido understands a complaint has been put in to the Fund Raising Regulator. FoE is yet to remove the claims from its website. Quite literally fracking unbelievable…
