How advertising used to be
I decided not to buy products by Benetton several year ago because I thought that their advertising campaigns insult our intelligence. This was in 1991 when they plastered posters of a new born baby covered in blood all over London. Firstly, this was not something I wanted to see before breakfast, and secondly this was a wonderful personal moment, crassly exploited to sell jumpers.
Since then hyper-commercialisation has become acceptable and politicians and artists have no shame about selling their kudos and integrity to flog stuff. Tony Blair works for massive banks and Madonna was sponsored by a Vodka company. Fair enough but when they take the money they also surrender any credibility or right to have their opinions taken seriously. They forgo leadership for the role of a hired hand.
Commercialisation is now built into the DNA of the Anglo-Saxon world and, while it may have made us richer, it has also eroded our self respect and sense of community.
I recall hearing a younger friend discussing the renovation work going on at London’s St. Pancras station and he said: “..and that’s before the shops go in…” Before the shops go in! It has now become normal that every department in every organisation everywhere in the UK must be a profit centre and sell stuff to the public all the time. Forget punctuality sell ‘em another coffee.
I saw some bloke on Dragon’s Den a few months ago trying to flog his invention. He had invented a modification to the little pole and rope barriers used to encourage queuing at cinemas, airports and stations. His idea was that advertising should be hung beneath the ropes – ugh! In a hundred years time every inch of “public” space will have been sold off for advertising. The walls, the floors and the ceilings will all be showing video advertising 24 X 7. Forget freedom or speech it will be freedom of though that we need to worry about.
I placed a comment in a similar vein to this on The Huffington post and received a reply that enterprise was the way of the Western world and that using catchy, funny and positive ideas to sell products was good.
Leaving aside whether this tripe is catchy, funny and positive I don’t deny the right of organisations and individuals to advertise their products and services. I do object to the ubiquity of advertising especially when the vast majority of it is controlled by a handful of corporations. I also despair at our press who collude in this fake controversy because it is a cheap and easy story to cover.
Many people consider that we should not object to this sort of thing because that would lead to social engineering. This is perverse. We have social engineering. The marketeers who work for corporations to create these campaigns are social engineers. That is their job.
BBC Radio 4 has a series of programs recently in what it terms its Brain Season. One example of psychological research is something known as anchoring. The idea is that you show a couple of numbers to experimental subjects and then ask them a question such as “what percentage of countries in the UN come from Africa?”. It terms out that their answers will be significantly weighed toward the numbers shown.
Interesting stuff. But who do you think is using this? Are you using it in your every day life? Are your mates at the gym or down the pub using it? No, the people who use this stuff are marketeers working for large multinationals who are trying to lure you into buying more and more useless stuff. They have even developed an Orwellian term for it: Behavioural Economics. This is what’s behind BP changing it’s corporate colours to green or Shell changing the name of their petrol to “FuelSave Regular Unleaded”. While they talk green they act mean.
So now the marketing execs at the jumper company are at it again. They claim they are promoting peace by displaying pictures of famous people snogging but we all know that their real goal is to pick away at a bunch of people who, rightly or wrongly, will take offence. The company are hypocrites because their goal is not the promotion of peace. Their goal is controversy. They want the Catholic church to take offence.
Whether you like their campaign or you loath it you are being used to promote a bunch of fucking jumpers. In 1962 controversy meant socialism or democracy. Fifty years later it means a contrived argument about kissing in adverts for a jumper company. I can only imply that the vacuity of the advertising campaign reflects the vacuity of the company and its owners.
In Western democracies in the 21st century the individual has very little power. One of the few powers we still have is to refuse to buy stuff.
If you like this companies shenanigans then by all means buy their jumpers. If you don’t then for God sake have some self respect and resolve not to buy their products in future.
Photography
Ich bin ein Osbaldwicker (NIMBIs are good)
Tags: BBC, Big Yellow Taxi, democracy, developers, Hands Off Our Land, Heathrow Airport, houses, housing, Joni Mitchell, Joseph Rountree Foundation, National Planning Policy Framework, natural beauty, Nigel Ingram, NIMBI, Not In My Back Yard, Osbaldwick, Osbaldwick Parish Council, overcrowding, planning permission, Radio 4, Sanchia Berg, Today program, Wendy. Madocks
Just one more tree
This morning on the BBC Radio 4 Today program Sanchia Berg reported on a building project that took nine years to “work it’s way through the process” and I thought of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi:
“You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone,
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot”
It seems that the government are about to publish a revised National Planning Policy Framework which will replace 44 existing planning statements numbering over 1,200 pages with a 49-page document.
The Today program reported that in 1999 plans were published to build 540 modern houses near the village of Osbaldwick east of York. Local people objected and, with the help of a local MP and the parish council, were able to delay the project until work finally started in 2011.
An interesting story but what struck me was that the whole stance of the BBC piece was that the objections of the local people were merely an inconvenient obstacle which had delayed a legitimate project. This was epitomised by Nigel Ingram, of the Joseph Rountree Foundation, who was reported as saying that “the planning system was primarily to blame” and the foundation thought that the battle cost it £5 million. Even Osbaldwick Parish Councilor, Wendy. Madocks, confessed that she found it “incredible” that the local people had managed to hold off the developers for ten years.
From this BBC report it seemed that the battle had beeb merely a waste of time and money and an encumbrance to the developers who were considered in the right by default.
It may have been fairer to portray this as a failure of democracy under pressure from a large well funded organisation.
One reason that we we assume that local people’s objections are an obstacle is that we brand them as NIMBIs (Not In My Back Yard). We consider that these people want all the conveniences of modern living such as housing, electricity and sewage without taking their share of the irritations which, in this instance, was to have an area of natural beauty demolished to make way for new houses.
I believe that condemning NIMBIs is short sighted and that, on the contrary, we should cheer NIMBIs in their battles to protect their corner of the natural environment.
Yes, it’s true that we need more housing, power stations and whatnot. However it will always be possible to make the argument that a handful of local people must sacrifice their little bit corner of planet Earth to pay for the necessities of modern life. And if we continually override the objections of NIMBIs then we shall eventually have all areas of natural beauty demolished.
It works like this:
Suppose that the stubborn people of Osbaldwick had won their battle. Suppose that whatever bureaucracy which rules on these things had come down 100% in their favour and the Rountree Foundation had been told, in no uncertain terms, that they could forget the idea of getting approval for the planning application near Osbaldwick. What then?
The pressure for housing would still exist and so the Foundation would have found another site and let us say, for the sake of argument, that the other site they had found was near Middlethorpe. Let us say that the foundation won approval there and the houses were built.
That would not have been the end of it.
The next time that it was necessary to build more houses or a power station or a sewage works then the planners would search around and the excellent site near Middlethorpe would have gone but they would be thinking, “…well, there is always that site up near Osbaldwick”. And this time when the planners came back they would claim the moral high ground. “Consider the honest people of Middlethorpe”, they would argue, “You cannot seriously expect them to put up with more houses when they allowed the development last time. The people of Osbaldwick must take there share of development”.
And even if Osbaldwick fought off this second assault there would be a third and a fourth until the area of natural beauty was eventually demolished.
That is how things work.
England used to be covered in forest but the great and the good always insisted that just a few more trees should be chopped down. Just a few more because the great and good always have enough money to live in the few remaining areas where there are trees.
Yesterday I was looking at my old secondary school from the air on Google Earth and it struck me how, when the school was built in the 1950s or 60s, there had been a great deal of space around the building. Some space for sports but also some just for kids to run around in. The school has changed over the years as the town has expanded and more buildings have sprung up on the green spaces where I used to run around. We all have grown used to living more densely packed.
Last year I went walking in The Peak District. I thought it would be good to get away from the city and walk around in the wilderness. Hah! Walking around in the hills I occasionally stopped to peer around and I observed scores of other bastards also standing on their fucking hind legs like bloody meerkats also looking around and trying to enjoy the wilderness. The English “wilderness” is crawling with tourists and it will nto be long before they install sandwich dispensing machines.
England is too crowded and there is pressure for more housing and I guess it must be built but if we continue like this we will all be living in shoe boxes. Already I can see that my parents lived in a smaller home than my grand parents and I live in a smaller home than my parents.
Just a few more houses, just a few more. Just one more terminal at Heathrow Airport. Then, once it is built, just on more runway at Heathrow Airport. The argument for the Heathrow Airport is that England must maintain it’s position as a global hub but for who’s benefit? If our environment is gradually eroded by development then in who’s benefit is this development? Just when are we going to stop hankering after more and more stuff and start valuing the stuff we have?
Thus far an no further! Ich bin ein Osbaldwicker and all that.
Star House