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Conservative advertising campaign targets “scroungers”
A new advertising campaign from the Conservative Party has launched in marginal constituencies contrasting “hardworking families” with “people who don’t work”, according to an independent Conservative website ‘conservativehome’.
In targeted online media, banner ads contrast the “hardworking families”, showing your standard all-white nuclear family and “people who don’t work”, illustrated by a man sitting at home on his sofa, and will be displayed on local media websites.
In an email to Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) colleagues on Friday, Grant Shapps heralded two points about the campaign: speed and message. He said that by the time Labour launched their own campaign targeting marginal seats, CCHQ had already placed the advertising rebutting their message in exactly the seats they were targeting.
New Statesman has also covered this story here The Tories’ shameful new ad campaign against “the scroungers”
If you’d like to leave your views for the Conservatives about the fairness of their welfare reforms, they’re also asking for your responses on their official website.
You can leave your thoughts here We’re interested in your view about the fairness of our benefit reforms
Please keep it clean and constructive, it might teach them a lesson perhaps?
“If you’d like to leave your views for the Conservatives about the fairness of their welfare reforms, they’re also asking for your responses on their official website.
You can leave your thoughts here We’re interested in your view about the fairness of our benefit reforms
Please keep it clean and constructive, it might teach them a lesson perhaps”?
Ooh! Loaded yes/no questions. Just love those. As for the third question. If I had the time and could really be bothered I could write them a thesis which most Tories would neither agree with nor understand.
Paul, for some reason I can access the links but then I get blocked. Have you got a more detailed flavour of the ad.
“If you’d like to leave your views for the Conservatives about the fairness of their welfare reforms, they’re also asking for your responses on their official website.
You can leave your thoughts here We’re interested in your view about the fairness of our benefit reforms
Please keep it clean and constructive, it might teach them a lesson perhaps”?
Ooh! Loaded yes/no questions. Just love those. As for the third question. If I had the time and could really be bothered I could write them a thesis which most Tories would neither agree with nor understand.
Paul, for some reason I can access the links but then I get blocked. Have you got a more detailed flavour of the ad.
3 slides.
First a fluttering Union flag with “Who do you think the government should be doing more to support?”
2nd a stock image of a happy blonde family, “Hard working families”
3rd a stock image of a man looking pretty depressed, I can’t see the sofa, and can see something that looks like the arm of his therapist. “Or those that won’t work”
Thanks Lorraine.
Ooh goody! Divide and rule. How original, how crude. A stock image of a happy blond family you say. Aryan by any chance?
Paul, for some reason I can access the links but then I get blocked. Have you got a more detailed flavour of the ad.
It’s probably to save your blood pressure Paul….
As Lorraine notes, it’s pretty crude stuff, and certainly doesn’t give me much hope that this Guardian piece will come true any time soon Farewell to the myth of the ‘welfare scrounger’
Good spot mate, thanks for highlighting.
Just seen that Polly Toynbee is piling in now, for the Guardian.
Benefit cuts were the winning ticket to trap Labour on the side of scroungers, but it’s not working. Against the predictions of Tory strategists and the unhelpful battalion of retired New Labourites, Ed Miliband’s team is making headway because the facts are on their side: the majority of those whose benefits are cut are in work. That fact has struck home with voters, as it dawns on the Tories that more than 6,800 voters in each of their 50 most marginal seats draw tax credits, key voters who feel the cut painfully and who take offence at Tory stigmatisation.
Ipsos Mori polling shows attitudes shifting: only 27% think the chancellor is right, or should cut benefits deeper, while 69% think benefits should rise with or above inflation. As many expected, more people now know friends and family struggling through no fault of their own. George Osborne thought he’d hit the button with his workshy sleepers behind blinds.
Meanwhile, Nick Clegg suddenly sees the wind changing and today devised a new stance to distance himself, saying: “There is absolute moral equivalence between working hard in a job and working hard to find a job.” But after voting through cuts for disabled children it’s a bit late to boast he stopped the Tories using a garotte as well as a cheese wire. Labour knows one poll may not yet signal a total shift, but with the worst cuts still to come and queues at food banks even in Tory areas, Osborne’s vicious tone and Shapps’s sleazy crudity may strike a memorably wrong note with all but the deepest blue voters.
I must admit to being quite sceptical that things are maybe quite so black and white in public opinion, but to read the whole thing, see The Tories are losing their vile war on ‘scroungers’
Paul, Paul. They’re at it again Paul. Come and see!
see rightsnet news story on the Welfare Cash Card Bill, successfuly introduced to parliament yesterday -
http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/news/story/welfare-cash-card-bill-introduced-to-parliament/
[ Edited: 19 Dec 2012 at 02:35 pm by Ros ]I know Paul. As Declan Gaffney pointed out on twitter, it’s astounding how Mr Shelbrooke was even able to claim that his bill would reduce stigmatising benefit recipients…..
A stigma around those on benefits is commonplace, but that is neither accurate nor fair to low-paid workers who rely on the extra support that the welfare system offers. We need to stop the damaging perception that all benefit recipients are financially reckless. If taxpayers can be safe in the knowledge that claimants can no longer purchase NEDD items at the taxpayer’s expense, the concept of welfare will be viewed once again as a responsible way for people to get back on their feet. That is what the welfare state was intended to be: a safety net in times of need; a hand up, not a hand-out.
As I went onto point out, more or less his next words did exactly that by implying that benefit claimants drink and smoke too much and therefore incur increased health spending…..
A ban on cigarette and alcohol purchases would also inevitably impact on NHS costs. This is not to suggest that welfare claimants are purposely taking advantage of the NHS, but a reduction in smoking-related and alcohol-related admissions would be a natural by-product of the welfare cash card. Smoking-related illnesses are estimated to cost the NHS at least £2.7 billion a year in England alone, with the same cost attached to alcohol-related harm. With that figure expected to rise to £3.7 billion by 2015, it is simply wrong that the state is inadvertently fuelling the problem by allowing the use of welfare payments for the purchase of NEDDs.
A NEDD in case, anyone is wondering, isn’t a Glaswegian hooligan but “non-essential, desirable and often damaging items—NEDD items, as I call them”..... actually, maybe he does mean the Glaswegian football hooligan?
Please keep it clean and constructive, it might teach them a lesson perhaps?
I can think of a few lessons I’d like to teach them, but none of them clean and constructive.
[ Edited: 20 Dec 2012 at 11:06 am by Ros ]So they want to stop people on benefits spending their money on Sky. Dont these idiots realise that sky TV also comes with phone line rental and broadband internet as well? Universal credit will only work online and woe betide any Jobseeker who does not email the sufficient amount of job applications.
Bit tricky with no internet. Or maybe its a more ingenious way of stopping benefit claims and applying new sanctions. Or maybe I am too cynical.
Isn’t it more about preventing access to cash? The governement can’t control the way people spend cash, therefore absolute control of every aspect of people’s lives can only be enforced if you prevent them having cash.
I see a potential human rights argument here:- Does any governmenthave the right to control or restrict people’s choice when it comes to how they spend their money. If we allow them to do this to benefit claiments, they will surely try to extend their power to cover other members of society, e.g pensioners, immigrants etc.
If only they had excercised control over the banks spending, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.
The DWP have gone one step further in his case and planted a camera in his forehead so it can monitor his job searches directly. I hear the Department’s next step will be to remote control him.