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Seven sinners
Serial sinning is overcharged and under-rated, according to GUIDO…
The very idea of a new-year resolution fills me with horror. No. I’m not going to give up smoking completely. Or drinking. While I’ll get back into the pool and lose that goddamn weight again, it’s probably about time we all gave up on the idea of getting back down to whatever the ideal height/fatness index is. Let’s settle for whatever allows me to keep the flying medical.
And I’m not going to give up speed, or horsepower, or motorcycles. Or reading (it probably rots your brain – just wait for the reports), or flouncing across the couch on every third Sunday, or anything else.
But I am going to give up ad campaigns and statistics.
I really am fed up to the back teeth with those visceral ads telling me that using pretty much everything I play with for leisure is wrong, will kill, make you look bad, and is generally frowned upon.
There’s the vivisection scenes of lungs for smokers, the chainsaw-in-a-44-gallon-drum noise of anti-alco ads, and dribbling-idiot-loser you failed to obey assorted road or gambling or whatever rule advertisements for most other things. By the end of the night, if you can stomach watching television for that long, you stagger away baffled and generally ticked off. There’s a fair chance you’ve transgressed, but after seeing yourself in so many wrong scenes, you start to wonder if just breathing was the real problem.
When I sober up long enough to ride Hannibal the Hayabusa to work the next morning, I bring it down from about 160 for the next red light. And stub out the cigar in the ashtray. (Bloody Suzuki – the ashtrays are never big enough.) It’s then I get time to ponder, who the hell is paying for all of this?
Why do we have separate campaigns for smoking/drinking/couch-sitting/speeding/poor furniture choice/use of motorcycles/anger management/drugs/gambling and regrettable choice of wives/husbands/children? Each one is the product of research (if you call fake and overfunded investigation of other public fake and overfunded research, err, research), plus of course the all-important ad agency ‘creative’ that brings it to life on television.
That is generally the product of someone with far too much experience with alcohol, drugs and poor furniture choice. Who charges a bomb.
What gets me is the theme is always the same: stop it at once. (“Gee, how creative,” they say in the campaign meetings.) So why can’t we just have a general stop-it-at-once campaign? You know – someone who looks parental and frowning, wagging a disapproving finger, saying that, whatever it is you’re doing, it’s probably excessive and unnecessary. And dangerous. Hell, they might even be right.
Think of the savings. One campaign instead of 83.
At the moment I’m paying several thousand dollars a year to my local third-party insurer (never was the word “party” used more ineptly) to ensure that any stumble on the road is covered for several vehicles. Or that’s the theory. But the practice is the insurer (TAC in Victoria – it varies in name only from state to state) is famous for taking a vicious legal axe to anyone who dares to claim for injury. So I’m never sure who is covered, other than the insurer.
During print and radio interviews over the years, I have asked how much money, as a proportion of the annual fee, went to those wonderful televisual feasts designed to protect us all. And got no answer. In fact, they were arrogant and offended. But they kept sternly repeating the various sins of road users, mostly including alcohol, speed, tiredness, having a pulse…I can’t help wondering if poverty was also in there somewhere.
However analysis of their own stats often doesn’t back up the publicity. Nor does research from other nations. The truth is their mission has become religious rather than reasoned. Which is fine.
Let’s make it religion and stop pretending it’s based on analysis. I own seven road bikes and am prepared to name them after the seven deadly sins. What are they, again, and do I get a discount for PR purposes?
You’re always welcome to get in touch (and send counsellors) via the palatial MT offices at locked bag 12, Oakleigh 3166; Or on the wire at guy.allen@traderclassifieds.com.au.
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