Dubious Advertising

I've just re-read some of my recent posted blogs and my English is definitely deteriorating so I'll have pick up the game and try to get into the habit of taking a bit more time over the posts. Having managed to squeak through school with an e means that it'll never be great but when even I can see that it is less than ideal, it is definitely time to make an effort. Actually, I shouldn't be blaming myself. My proof reader, Caron, didn't pick up the miserable English so really, it's all her fault. Just like in the Garden of Eden! :-)

We're having a controversy around northern suburbs because we have had a spate of strip and other clubs of ill-repute advertising on bill boards. I'll leave it to your imagination as to the pictorial matter; suffice to say that it has managed to get some sections of the population up on their soap boxes about protecting their children which is fair enough. The issue is that there really isn't anything sexually explicit or illegal i.e. no nudity so while I'm tempted to agree that they shouldn't be allowed to advertise on billboards, at the end of the day, the billboards are no more explicit (those that I have seen) than a suntan cream or exotic vacation advert so what is being objected to is not so much the material on display but the fact that it is advertising morally unacceptable businesses. If I was a strip club owner, I think that I would be morally bound to object to the advertisements for large church gatherings :-)

I would however be quite keen on banning all roadside advertising, not from some moral standpoint but simply because advertising, by definition, is meant to attract your attention. In this case it is attracting your attention away from what you should be doing which is driving. No wonder we have such poor accident statistics.

What actually started this was an article in the local newspaper which given that the headline contained the word 'evil' and a picture of one of the offending adverts with a picture of a beautiful woman on it, one could easily draw a relationship between evil and women. Now, I know that the point of the article was not to portray women of any sort as evil, it's just that that is the way it came across. So if you are a women, firstly it could be argued that you are exploited by the businesses of dubious distinction and then portrayed to be evil by those opposed to said businesses. What a conundrum to get out of.