The Telegraph devotes an editorial to the controversial new anti-poverty charity advertisements being featured in British newspapers in which new-born babies are shown with syringes, methylated spirits and cockroaches (superimposed by computer) in their mouths.
Haven’t Barnardo’s got a better way to dispose of one million Pounds (originally donated by the public for the relief of poverty) than giving it to an advertising agency which shares Barnardo’s belief that having less money than your neighbours means your children will end up as alcoholics or drug addicts ?
It’s extremely patronising to low-income workers to assume that their offspring will end up in the ways implied by the advertisements. Neither is there any evidence to show that relative hardship in childhood is an important factor leading to addiction in later life.
I’d call for the resignation of the person at Barnardo’s who thought these advertisements were a good enough idea to waste such a large sum of money on but he or she would probably only be replaced by someone else with an equally silly view of low-income “victims”. Sadly there are plenty of people like that around.
