Are you reading the right newspaper and looking at the correct adverts?
Remember the fuss Labour made in August about how Jeremy Corbyn was being “smeared” for attending a ceremony in Tunisia that allegedly honoured several dead terrorists? The party followed up its public gripes with a bumper complaint packet about various newspapers (this one included) sent to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, the body set up by newspapers to police press behaviour.
Complaints are meant to be followed up by packages of hard evidence within a certain timeframe, so that the procedure is fair to all parties. You might expect, for a group so exercised about the great unfairness of it all, whose leader used his conference speech to whine about the free press, that Labour would be pretty quick on the uptake.
Not so. The party allowed the IPSO deadline for submitting evidence to expire because, well, it was really such a busy
The censorious bureaucracy policing our lives is totally out of control
time! But now, rather than accepting it’s too late, Labour is seeking to reopen the complaint or submit a whole new one. Could it be that the party rather likes the chilling effect of sending in complaints, but finds the evidence part more difficult?
Another unaccountable decision by an unaccountable quango: the Advertising Standards Authority has banned Costa Coffee from suggesting in its adverts that bacon rolls are nicer than avocados on the grounds that this would “encourage poor nutritional habits”. As an eater of both bacon and avocados, I think I can claim some neutrality on this issue, and all
I can say is that the joyless, censorious and paternalistic bureaucracy policing our public sphere is totally out of control. When did the freedom-loving British people agree to any of this?