One of the reasons I don’t have a television is the quantity of rubbish far outweighed any quality and there was little sign of the original broadcasting promise to inform, educate and entertain. The adverts, with their continual pressure to comply with cultural discursive practices, were particularly galling. I haven’t missed it at all. I want to have some choice over my exposure to media advertising – not have it forced on me. Like this morning – at the cash machine – where in order to draw out cash I had to watch adverts for a well known brand of chocolate biscuits.
This is wrong on so many levels. It’s evidence of further linkages between corporate multinational food companies, the supermarket giants and the banking system. It’s contrary to government initiatives to promote healthy eating and reduce the amount of sugar, fat and salt we consume. You might not have thought ‘chocolate biscuits’ all week but the image is now surfacely and subliminally planted in your psyche. Why weren’t they advertising British apples?
The present government’s Change4Life programme is aimed at combating Britain’s high obesity rate by encouraging people to eat healthier food and exercise more. Then they scrapped the Food Standards Agency and gave the task of promoting healthy eating to food giants like Unilever, Nestle and Mars – who between them just about control the worlds supply of sugar, salt and fat. It’s like asking tobacco companies to run stop smoking campaigns and it’s madness. Or like my good friend and colleague Maria told me this morning, in response to the news that David Cameron’s uncle has said the working classes prefer to be lead by aristocrats, it’s absolute tosh – which apparently is aristocratic for ‘shite’.