Beyer calls for local councils to watch Antichrist….and then ban it

Beyer’s still not done yet. Now he’s calling on local councils to ban a film if they don’t like it.

From Mediawatch UK courtesy of the Melon Farmers:

How could censors pass the ‘revolting sex film’?
There were growing calls last night to ban a controversial film that shows the mutilation of female and male genitalia, scenes of graphic sex and a toddler falling to his death.  Antichrist, which stars Willem Dafoe, 54, and French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, 31, was given an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification and released nationwide on Friday.  Tory MP Anne Widdecombe led the condemnation branding the film, “truly revolting”. 

As disbelief grew that the explicit and horrifying film had been deemed fit for our cinemas, campaign group mediawatch-uk called on local councils to view the film and decide if it is suitable for showing in their area. John Beyer, its director, said: “There are explicit scenes of masturbation, real sexual activity, mutilation and part of it are filmed in black and white to accentuate the theme of darkness.  I would call upon every local authority to watch this film and if they are unhappy with what they see, they should withdraw it from cinemas straightaway.”  Ms Widdecombe said the film is “no different to hardcore pornography.”
Sunday Express 26/7/2009

“I would call upon every local authority to watch this film and if they are unhappy with what they see, they should withdraw it from cinemas straightaway.” 

So paying cinema goers should be stopped from seeing this film if local councils “don’t like what they see”.

Local councils wouldn’t be banning the film based on evidence of harm they would be banning it because they are offended by it.

Beyer’s suggesting that local councils shouldn’t like what they see. But what if they do? Will he accept their decision to allow the film to be released in cinemas and for the public to be allowed to see it?

Will he fuck!

No doubt any local council that doesn’t ban the film will be labled as “lefty liberal PC” by the Tory press.

Anyway do local councils have the power to withdraw films from cinemas?

“As disbelief grew that the explicit and horrifying film had been deemed fit for our cinemas.”

Our cinemas! Who’s cinemas? Tory middle England’s cinemas?

Sorry but cinema should be for everyone and not just the right-wing Express/Mail reading crowd.

The Express acts as if there is mass outrage over Antichrist being passed for release but it’s only self appointed moral guardians, many of whom who haven’t even seen the film who are outraged over it.

“Ms Widdecombe said the film is “no different to hardcore pornography.”"

But of course she hasen’t seen it!

Tookey reviews Antichrist

Surpisingly muted from the Daily Mail’s number one self appointed moral guardian film “critic”.

In fact at one point he kinds of Antichrist from criticism and points out the critic who attacked the film without even seeing it.

“In its defence, Antichrist turns out to be not the picture that I have seen vilified in the press, sometimes by writers who lack any context of recent cinema with which to compare it, and in at least one case by someone who hadn’t even taken the elementary step of seeing it.”!

Lol! Even Tookey can see the absurdity of condeming a film without even seeing it. He might want to have word with Christopher Hart.

Nevertheless he still takes his chance to have another go at the BBFC which was predictable enough……

“this pathetically ineffectual organisation, funded by the film companies”

Ah yes because the BBFC allows films that Tookey and his chums at the Daily Mail don’t like they must be funded by the film companies.
Makes sense don’t it?

From Tookey’s Film Guide:

Antichrist (18)
© Unknown – all rights reserved
     
Tookey’s Rating
 1 /10
 
Average Rating
 4.14 /10
 
Starring
She – Charlotte Gainsborgh  , He – Willem Dafoe  , 
 
Directed by: Lars von Trier 
Written by: Lars von Trier 

Released: 2009
   
Genre: CONTROVERSIAL
DRAMA
HORROR 

Origin: Denmark/ Germany/ France/ Sweden/ Italy/ Poland
   
Length: 109
 
Reviewed by Chris Tookey

Lars von Trier announced after this movie’s Cannes premiere that he is the greatest director in the world, a statement that was greeted with well-justified gasps. On the evidence of this week’s releases, he’s not even the best director in Denmark.

In his defence, he is imaginative. Even in this most maligned of all his films, the demonic Dane and his Oscar-winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (who did excellent, though very different, work on Slumdog Millionaire) have created a few images of startling beauty, alongside other framings that I would much rather didn’t linger in my memory.

Parts of the picture are exquisitely crafted. They have a lyricism and a milky, dreamlike quality that evoke memories of the Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky, to whom the film is dedicated.

So why did Antichrist arouse jeers and critical catcalls at Cannes, especially from the French, who are not easily offended? And why has it brought forth so many demands that it be banned?

It is partly because Mr von Trier has earned himself an unenviable reputation for misogyny through Breaking The Waves, Dancer in the Dark and Dogville. Of all his films, Antichrist is the most openly, psychopathically hostile towards women.

Antichrist is a bonkers attempt to merge three extremely different genres – art-house, horror and hard-core pornography – with predictably catastrophic results.

It is too slow and boring in its first two thirds to appeal to fans of horror and pornographic erotica, yet too crude and violent in its final third to satisfy those who pride themselves on having an art-house sensibility.

The schizophrenic confusion of the film is foreshadowed in its prologue, a lustrous, black-and-white sequence of a married couple (played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) making love, into which von Trier tastelessly inserts a single shot of hard-core pornography. This features two body-doubles who operate under the names Horst Stramka and Mandy Starship.

The effect of this clumsy insertion is not so much erotic as laughable. It does nothing for the film except serve early warning that some sequences are going to be unnecessarily graphic.

The sequence is also pretentious, bordering on kitsch, and gratuitously hostile to women. While the couple make love, their baby son is drawn to a window by the beauty of nature – in the form of falling snow. When the child falls, it is a slo-mo, art-house, aestheticised death.

Intercut with the fatality are shots of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s face in a state of erotic exultation. The creepy implication is that somehow she and her child are being punished for her taking pleasure in sex.

This is the first hint of misogyny, but it certainly isn’t the last.

The film that follows is a lengthy, verbose and extremely tedious representation of two souls descending into hell. The expressionistic visuals present images of naked bodies in torment that have a ponderously obvious affinity with the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

Both of von Trier’s characters are driven mad by grief. The man, unable to express his despair at the death of his child, devotes himself to controlling his wife’s more flamboyant emotions. As a psychotherapist, he tries to “cure” her, while not tending to his own increasing fear that nature is cruel, if not downright Satanic.

As they repair to their hut in the woods, ironically called Eden, he has visions of a deer carrying a stillborn faun and a fox that eats its own entrails and tells him “Chaos reigns” – a line that is meant to be chilling, but is delivered with such preposterous solemnity that it invites laughter.

As if such hallucinations aren’t enough to unsettle anyone, he discovers that his wife – who has been researching an academic work on witchcraft and the mediaeval fear of women – has come to regard herself, and all women, as Satanically evil. He also finds out that she was secretly, or perhaps unknowingly, torturing their baby son by dressing him in shoes that deformed his feet.

For her part, with her pale face and lank hair, she looks increasingly like one of the mad, oriental women in Japanese horror flicks, and takes hideous, disproportionate revenge on her husband for his kindly but controlling attitude.

She castrates, impales and cripples him, before punishing herself with a repulsive scene of sexual self-mutilation, shown in grisly close-up. He responds by strangling her to death and burning her body.

Normally, I would not give away the film’s ending, but it is right that you be warned about its extreme brutality, and these late scenes are the ones that have aroused the most controversy.

In its defence, Antichrist turns out to be not the picture that I have seen vilified in the press, sometimes by writers who lack any context of recent cinema with which to compare it, and in at least one case by someone who hadn’t even taken the elementary step of seeing it.

For a start, this is not torture porn. The nastiest aspect of torture porn – as manifested in films such as Hostel and Scar 3D – is that it invites the audience to take a voyeuristic, sadistic and quasi-sexual delight in violence and mutilation. Usually, though not invariably, it involves men inflicting extreme pain on women.

In Antichrist, by contrast, the torture is carried out by a woman on a man, and by the woman upon herself. These scenes are extremely graphic, but they are deliberately made unpleasant to watch, and profoundly unerotic. The audience’s sympathies are clearly meant to be with the male suffering the violence, at least up to the point when he turns the tables.

It is a moot point then whether his violent reprisal constitutes a justifiable act of revenge, or reflects the underlying misogyny of the writer-director. Probably, it’s both.

The British Board of Film Classification does have guidelines, and these require cuts in “portrayals of sexual or sexualized violence which might, for example, eroticise or endorse sexual assault”.

However, the BBFC has been disregarding its own guidelines for at least five years. Indeed, they tried to evade enforcement of them as early as 1996, when they awarded an 18 certificate to David Cronenberg’s notorious eroticisation of non-consensual sexual mutilation, Crash.

The sad truth is that there is nothing in Antichrist that this pathetically ineffectual organisation, funded by the film companies and seemingly unaccountable to the public, has not let through before, with an 18 certificate.

We’ve already had graphic images of castration (in, for example, Waz, Captivity and Hostel II), genital self-mutilation (in The Piano Teacher), hard-core pornography (in Shortbus, Destricted and von Trier’s own The Idiots) and women torturing men for pleasure (in Saw III, Straightheads and Baise-Moi).

Antichrist is a horrible combination of extraordinarily unpleasant elements. It’s offensively misogynistic. It’s needlessly graphic in its use of violence. And its maker almost certainly needs psychiatric help.
But if I were you, I would just give it a miss.
“seemingly unaccountable to the public.”

Or seemingly unaccountable to the Daily Mail reading Tory voting public.

Would the BBFC be more “accountable” to the public if it started dictating what the public can and cannot see and started banning films based not on evidence of such films being harmful but because a select bunch of politicians, who have appointed themselves the moral guardians of the nation, find such films offensive?

Tookey needs to think about that one but we suspect he may find the idea of such a set up preety appealing!

Laughing at the critic who called for a film he hasen’t seen to be banned

Christopher Hart’s attack on the film Antichrist and call for it to be banned has caused much laughter across the internet. Websites and blogs have been pointing out the hilarity of a film critic condeming a film he admits he hasen’t even seen and calling for it to be banned.
Others have pointed out the obvious agenda of “lefty liberal” loathing and EU bashing behind Hart’s diatribe.

We’ve been looking at some of the best. The most well written rebuke to Hart’s illinformed codswallop comes from the Daily Mail watch website:

Antichrist and The Mail: How not to review a movie
Posted by Jamie Sport

July 21st, 2009

The Daily Mail resides in a terrifying alternate reality. In this dark and hopeless place, decent middle-class folk are surrounded by pernicious subliminal messages of hate designed to brainwash them into murdering, maiming, pillaging and setting fire to each other. The inhabitants of this world have no control over their actions; sinister forces fill their tiny minds with sex and violence and, inevitably, they succumb to the evils of the media induced orgy of societal destruction.

With predictable regularity, The Mail has clutched at its pearls and warned readers of the impending apocalypse every time a new movie, video game or book is released that contains depictions of sex and violence. A few years ago, Chris Tookey, the Mail’s resident film critic (who, bizarrely, appears to despise almost every movie ever made) described Eli Roth’s Hostel as ‘the most revoltingly violent pornography ever to have polluted mainstream cinema’ under a headline that hooted ‘Disgusting! Dangerous! Degrading!‘ from behind its chintz covered sofa.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but for The Mail it isn’t enough to simply dislike something. If The Mail doesn’t get on with something, be it immigrants, the BBC, teh gays, or that Twitter, it must be presented as harmful, or at the very least, a symbol of moral decay. Think what you will of Hostel (and I, for the record, don’t particularly like it), but blaming any film for creating ‘a desensitised generation’ that ’sees nothing wrong with torture and mutilation’ is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps I’m too jaded to be affected by it, but Psycho doesn’t make me want to murder hotel guests in the shower and Goodfellas didn’t convince me that it’s acceptable to shoot barmen who ignore me.

The Mail’s alternate reality was similarly shaken by the Grand Theft Auto franchise which was blamed variously for stabbings, arson and even sexual assault – despite being lauded by the very same newspaper as a 5-star ‘epic’. The Dark Knight was linked to knife crime and the corruption of Britain’s children, while Korean cult classic Oldboy, it was decided, was entirely to blame for the Virginia Tech massacre. The fact that the gunman was a twisted, gun-obsessed maniac before seeing the film had nothing to do with it, naturally.

All of the above cases shared one common element: you had to actually see the offending films or games before your mind exploded in a fit of sick filth induced spasmic doublethink. Now, it seems it is not necessary to actually experience the gratuitous screen sin for your soul to be defiled, as broad-minded Christopher Hart explains in The Mail’s newest jolt of celluloid condemnation:

You do not need to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist to know how revolting it is.

I haven’t seen it myself, nor shall I…merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-turning, and enough to form a judgment.

As Ernest Hemingway said of obscenity in a justifiably disgusting image, you don’t need to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know they’re scabs.

Hart finds himself able to discuss a film he hasn’t even seen, moved presumably by the sheer potency of the vile images contained in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist to a shamanic state of higher consciousness where he…just…knows…things. Nightmarish things.

After ruining the plot by revealing the beginning, middle and end of the film (just so even if you did want to go see it, there’s no point), he lambasts the British Board of Film Classification for giving Antichrist an 18 certificate, thereby granting it a release in this country. ‘As we all know’, he intones, ‘this is meaningless in the age of the DVD because sooner or later any film that is given general release will be seen by children.’ For Hart, this film he hasn’t even seen should never be seen, by anyone, anywhere, because he’s heard it’s wrong. Hilariously, his article is shrilly titled: ‘What DOES it take for a film to get banned these days?’. Well, I would assume actually watching it would be a good first step Mr. Hart.

Hart, who describes himself as a ‘libertarian’, goes on to implicate the unseen horrors of Antichrist in Islamic extremism:

It doesn’t shock or surprise me in the slightest that Europe now produces such pieces of sick, pretentious trash, fully confirming our jihadist enemies’ view of us as a society in the last stages of corruption and decay.

Before adding wearily that it’s all the fault of those bladdy Danes wot live where that von Trier sicko comes from:

It doesn’t surprise me that Antichrist was heavily subsidised by the Danish Film Institute to the tune of 1.5 million euros.

Can you see where this is going? Sick film that will break Britain, made by a Danish director with Danish money, Denmark is a European country, we pay taxes that go to Europe…ohmigod, this disgusting movie is being forced upon us by that great Satan, the EU!!1!

I tried to find out more from the Institute, but to my small surprise they disdained to reply. But you can be sure that they in turn are funded by the EU and so by my taxes – and yours.

Yes, you can be sure that your tax pennies are funding this sort of abomination because of the EU, and because Christopher Hart rang the Danish film institute because he’s a real journalist and stuff. He may not have been able to find the time or inclination to watch Antichrist but at least he did some background research, right?

Well, perhaps not quite right. We contacted the Danish Film Institute and asked whether they had any record of a Christopher Hart attempting ‘to find out more’. The DFI said that they have no record of any email enquiries from Christopher Hart to their enquiries address and no record of any member of staff speaking to him. They did acknowledge that they are large organisation of over 100 employees, many of whom are currently on summer vacation, so there is a chance his correspondence was missed – but then, if we could get hold of someone there, it can’t be that difficult.

The very pleasant and helpful member of staff (who replied to us only a couple of hours after we asked for exactly the same information Hart claims he requested) also cleared up some issues regarding the DFI’s funding. The DFI is in fact funded by the Danish government through the Ministry of Culture as regulated by the Film Act 1997. Not the EU. They were even so kind as to provide documentation detailing exactly where the money comes from and how it is used (PDF)

An interesting figure worth noting is on page 8 which reveals that, in fact, the DFI only contributed 13.9% of Antichrist’s budget. The DFI also gave us a link to the Film Act of 1997 that sets out the framework for funding Danish film. For those of you interested in the finer legal details of the Danish Ministry of Culture’s working, it’s here.

Following Hart’s tirade against the big bad EU giving money to big bad Danish directors to make depraved violent pornography, he asks plaintively:

How do you feel about that? If not shocked, then weary, furious, disgusted? Well you can complain all you like, but no one is listening. Our arts mandarins, along with the rest of our lofty liberal elite, don’t work like that.

Quite. Here’s another question: How do you feel about a journalist pontificating on the evils of a film he hasn’t seen, making inaccurate claims about its funding, conducting zero research, and laying blame for his lack of evidence at the feet of what is actually a very open, helpful organisation? Does it shock, weary, infuriate and disgust you? Well? Does it? You can complain all you like, but chances are the editor isn’t listening.
We couldn’t agree more! Mail Watch perfectly point out how illinformed Hart’s whole attack on Antichrist was.

Here’s are the links to some of our picks of the best of the rest:

www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/…/mail-film-critic-slates-film-he-hasnt-seen/

http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2009/07/i-havent-seen-it-but-id-love-to-ban-it.html

sarahditum.com/…/film-reviewing-the-christopher-hart-way

www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com/archives/2529

Maybe when the Daily Mail sees how stupid this twerp has made them look (as if making the Daily Mail look stupid is hard) they might think twice before allowing him to present his views as if they are based on any kind of fact.

Alcohol Concern call for pre-watershed booze ad ban

As we have said before when the anti-booze lobby get a pre-watershed ban on adverts for alcohol they will push for a total ban.

From This Is London:

Call for pre-watershed booze ad ban

10.07.09

Alcohol should not be advertised on television before the 9pm watershed, a leading charity has said.

A large number of adverts for alcoholic drinks are shown before this time, when children are likely to be watching television, Alcohol Concern said.

A spokesman said: “Our research has shown a peak in alcohol advertising during the hours of 3pm and 5pm when there are obviously going to be lots of kids watching, often unaccompanied by adults.”

He continued: “Given the evidence with regard to the high level of drinking among minors in the UK, and the influence of alcohol advertising on young people, it is appropriate that the current rules should be tightened in order to protect children.”

Under the current rules, alcohol adverts must not be aired if there are 20% more children than the average proportion of children watching at one time.

A Committee of Advertising Practice (Cap) spokesman said: “If you’re watching the seven o’clock news there can be alcohol advertising, but if you’re watching The Simpsons or Ugly Betty, there can’t, because lots of children tend to watch these shows.”

Alcohol Concern chief executive Don Shenker said: “Children are not being protected from alcohol advertising, despite evidence which shows it increases their drinking. It would be unacceptable to allow smoking to be promoted to children, yet alcohol – which adversely affects thousands of children every year – is advertised to millions of youngsters as a matter of course.”

The CAP spokesman said: “We will assess all responses to the consultation – of which there have been more than 3,000 – and Alcohol Concern’s proposals will be taken into consideration.”

David Poley, chief executive of the Portman Group, the social responsibility body which represents nine of the largest drinks producers, said: “Unless advertising is completely banned, it is inevitable children will be exposed to some ads that are not aimed at them.

“The strict content and scheduling rules on advertising apply 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This system of audience profiling is a more reliable way of assessing if a programme or film has particular appeal to children than any watershed. Besides, it makes no commercial sense for the industry to target people who can’t legally buy their products.”
“David Poley, chief executive of the Portman Group, the social responsibility body which represents nine of the largest drinks producers, said: “Unless advertising is completely banned, it is inevitable children will be exposed to some ads that are not aimed at them.”

The anti-alcohol lobby want advertising for alcohol completly banned and their calls for a pre-watershed ban is them trying to get closer to achieving their goal to get adverts for alcohol completly banned.

“Alcohol Concern chief executive Don Shenker said: “Children are not being protected from alcohol advertising, despite evidence which shows it increases their drinking.”

Actually it’s debatable whether evidence shows alcohol advertising cause children to drink alcohol at all let alone cause an increase in their drinking.

Here’s an article from Spiked which shows how much research and evidence into the effects of alcohol advertising on consumption is highly flawed:

Tuesday 21 July 2009

Basham and Luik   Banning alcohol ads won’t cure alcoholism The campaign to restrict the advertising of booze in order to save the public could end up driving us to drink. Printer-friendly version Email-a-friend Respond   Despite a sceptical literature on the relationship between alcohol advertising and drinking initiation and consumption, there remain powerful public health campaigns to restrict or eliminate alcohol ads. Exhibit A: the British charity Alcohol Concern’s declaration last week that alcohol should not be advertised on television before the 9pm watershed. According to Alcohol Concern’s spokesman, ‘Given the evidence with regard to… the influence of alcohol advertising on young people, it is appropriate that the current rules should be tightened’. Alcohol Concern’s pronouncement is the progeny of two books published a half century ago, journalist Vance Packard’s million-selling The Hidden Persuaders and French demographer Sully Ledermann’s Alcohol, Alcoholism, Alcoholisation. These works shaped today’s public health establishment consensus about the effects of alcohol advertising. Packard asserted that advertising exerts a strong manipulative influence on consumption. Ledermann claimed that there is a fixed relationship between total alcohol consumption and the proportion of heavy drinkers; the only difference between heavy drinkers and the rest of the population being the amount of alcohol consumed. Hence, there is a causal relationship between consumption and misuse. Between them, Packard and Ledermann provided the basis for the public health establishment’s demand that alcohol advertising be either tightly regulated or completely banned. According to the public health view, increases in average alcohol consumption increase the number of problem drinkers and thus the amount of alcohol-related harm, including healthcare costs. Given that alcohol advertising both initiates new consumers and increases total consumption, it should be restricted or banned. At the very least, this view asserts, exposure to advertising causes individuals to drink who might not otherwise drink and causes people to consume more alcohol than they otherwise would. Restricting or eliminating advertising is justifiable since it would reduce total consumption and with it aggregate alcohol harm. Are the public health community’s claims about alcohol advertising effects true, and are its demands for restrictions or complete bans on alcohol advertising, based as they are to a large degree on Packard and Ledermann, justified? In order to test these claims, we examined the public health model of advertising’s effects, experimental studies, studies of alcohol advertising exposure and recall, econometric studies of alcohol advertising, drinking initiation and consumption, and studies of alcohol advertising restrictions and bans. The public health model is foundational to the view that advertising affects drinking choices. The empirical evidence for this model is weak and even taken on their own terms studies of alcohol advertising consistently fail to demonstrate that the drinking behaviour of an individual is the causal result of an alcohol advertisement. Even if we were to allow that this effects model is strongly supported by the empirical evidence, which it is not, there are no studies of alcohol advertising that trace the effect of an advert from exposure to purchase behaviour across a sample population in such a fashion to demonstrate that the advert actually caused the behaviour. Without such a demonstration, it is impossible to conclude legitimately that alcohol advertising caused a behaviour. As for experimental studies, even allowing for the substantial issues around methodology, small sample sizes, and the appropriateness of drawing conclusions based on artificial settings, it is nonetheless clear that there is no support in the experimental literature for the claim that alcohol advertising causes initial alcohol use or increases alcohol consumption. Some prominent regulation advocates, such as Professor Gerard Hastings, claim that newer studies provide evidence of the link between alcohol advertising and drinking behaviour. Our analysis of 11 cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of advertising exposure and recall suggests otherwise. Three problems undermine the findings of the alcohol advertising exposure and recall studies. First, and most importantly, none of the studies can justify a causal conclusion about the relationship between advertising and drinking initiation or consumption given their cross-sectional or longitudinal design. Second, all have significant methodological issues, particularly with respect to warranting that they have in fact accurately measured alcohol advertising exposure, and also in terms of their reliance on unverified subject recall. Finally, the studies generally report data that is either not statistically significant or, if significant, is a weak relationship, or in fact contradicts their thesis. Together, these studies present virtually no support for the claim that alcohol advertising causes young people to begin drinking. Collectively, these studies suggest that alcohol advertising either does not increase total alcohol consumption, or has an impact that is, in the case of beer advertising, so marginal as to be insignificant. With respect to econometric studies, out of over 30 such studies over the past two decades, only a handful support the claim that alcohol advertising leads to drinking initiation or increases total consumption. The imposition of alcohol advertising bans represents a reasonably direct way in which to test the Ledermann-derived public health hypothesis about both the effects of alcohol advertising and the corrective of advertising restrictions and bans. Although the evidence is not completely consistent and has, as we have noted, significant limitations in its ability to control for possible confounding factors, there is still very strong evidence that the imposition of bans has not reduced consumption. Of 17 cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of the effects of advertising restrictions and bans on drinking initiation and consumption, only three find that such measures have a statistically significant effect on either initiation or consumption. There is strong evidence that restrictions have not reduced consumption and the evidence from jurisdictions that have removed bans shows that consumption has not increased when advertising has resumed. Nor do such studies provide support for the claim that such restrictions on advertising reduce alcohol abuse or alcohol related-harms such as road fatalities or disease. Indeed, one study found that broadcast bans of spirits advertising resulted in both higher consumption levels and increased levels of traffic fatalities. Moreover, where alcohol advertising bans have been lifted, there is no evidence that consumption has increased. This does not, of course, mean that advertising is ineffective, as many of these studies, both nationally and internationally, have demonstrated the expected advertising outcome of substitution effects and movements between brands and beverage categories. Based on the empirical evidence, it is clear that the public health establishment’s claims about the effects of alcohol advertising are incorrect. Indeed, the weight of the evidence substantially argues against its assertions about alcohol advertising initiating drinking and increasing consumption and alcohol-related harm. Consequently, there is no public policy justification for measures to restrict or completely ban alcohol advertising that is directed to legal consumers. But what about warning labels on alcohol? Either instead of or in tandem with advertising restrictions, can they not be an effective deterrent against drinking? In short, no, they cannot. The main evidence against the effectiveness of such warnings comes from the US. According to the proponents of warnings, they serve both to inform the public about the specific risks of drinking and reduce the drinking of specific groups most at risk, such as pregnant women, adolescents, and problem drinkers. But the research evidence suggests otherwise. If the warning is to be effective it first has to be noticed. But US telephone surveys have found that only between 20 and 25 per cent of respondents noticed the labels in the first six months after introduction, with only 16 per cent recalling the content of the warning. Effective warnings, according to Kip Viscusi of Harvard University, must also provide new information. Yet an Ipsos-Reid survey in February 2005 found that 99 per cent of Canadian women of childbearing age knew that there were risks with drinking during pregnancy, suggesting that the proposed warnings would not be providing new information. Equally unimpressive is the evidence for warnings affecting behavioural change. The US Surgeon General’s warnings about the risks to pregnant women from drinking have been mandatory since 1989. A study of alcohol consumption by pregnant women reported by the US Centers for Disease Control noted that almost eight years after the implementation of the warning labels the number of women drinking during pregnancy had risen. As Dr Janet Hankin in a review of fetal alcohol prevention discovered, only the lighter drinkers who were less at risk of having children with fetal alcohol syndrome followed the warning. ‘Among high-risk drinkers’, Dr Hankin noted, ‘the label law clearly has not affected drinking behaviour’. A similar result has been noted with adolescents. David MacKinnon reported in the American Journal of Public Health that in a group of 16,661 high school students followed from 1989 to 1995, ‘there was no beneficial change attributable to the warning in beliefs, alcohol consumption, or driving after drinking’. The World Health Organisation’s 2003 study on alcohol noted that warnings failed to increase young people’s perceptions of alcohol risks and had ‘no direct impacts’ on consumption. Studies have also found that heavy drinkers, while aware of the warnings (they see them more frequently), are more likely to consider them less believable and to discount them more than other drinkers. This suggests that warnings may not only be ineffective, they might also be counterproductive in at least three senses. First, warnings appear to reduce at-risk drinkers’ acceptance of the risks associated with their behaviour. The very act of warning actually works against itself. The reasons for this are various. There is a natural tendency to avoid information that has negative self-implications. People are very good at avoiding processing information like warnings that they perceive as threatening. Through a process known as cognitive readjustment people tend to exempt themselves as subjects who ought to be concerned with the warning. Then, too, there is the fact that large numbers of risk-takers display what psychologists call ‘reactance’, in which there is a high level of resistance to the demands of outside authority and control. For these individuals, a label represents an unreasonable attempt to shape their behaviour. Second, as the WHO study and others have noted, warnings highlight risk and for those attracted to risk this serves to make alcohol more attractive than it might otherwise be. Finally, in pregnant women, research by Professor Ernest Abel, director of reproductive toxicology at Wayne State University, suggests that warnings might provoke stress in pregnant women that in turn may result in stress-related physiological changes that compromise the health of the fetus. Even if the evidence of failure does not convince, perhaps the strong probability that alcohol warnings and advertising restrictions drive some people to drink might bury these pernicious regulatory instruments. Patrick Basham and John Luik are authors, with Gio Gori, of Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade, a Social Affairs Unit book. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar. John Luik is a Democracy Institute senior fellow.

Broad minded liberal critic….I haven’t seen this film but I say BAN IT NOW!!!

 

This “critic” claims to be broad minded but he’s all for banning a film which he hasen’t even seen based on his disgust at the thought of it.

Broad minded? Bollox!

From the Daily Mail:

What DOES it take for a film to get banned these days?

By Christopher Hart
20th July 2009

As censors approve a movie that plumbs grotesque new depths of sexual explicitness and violence, one critic (who prides himself on being broad-minded) despairs…

Grotesque: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist has been given an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification

A film which plumbs new depths of sexual explicitness, excruciating violence and degradation has just been passed as fit for general consumption by the British Board of Film Classification. 

They have given the film an 18 certificate. As we all know, this is meaningless nowadays in the age of the DVD because sooner or later, thanks to the gross irresponsibility of some parents, any film that is given general release will be seen by children.

You do not need to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is.

I haven’t seen it myself, nor shall I – and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency. But merely reading about Antichrist is stomach-turning, and enough to form a judgment.

As Ernest Hemingway said of obscenity in a justifiably disgusting image, you don’t need to eat a whole bowl of scabs to know they’re scabs.

Here is the ‘plot’ of Antichrist, with apologies in advance. But since this is coming to a cinema near you soon – and then a DVD, a website and a late-night TV channel – you might want know about it.

A couple are having sex. Graphically close-up. While they are doing so, their toddler falls to his death from a balcony.

The husband and wife go to stay in a log cabin to recover from their grief. There, horrors the likes of which I have never witnessed unfold in graphic detail. Eventually, the husband strangles her and escapes through the woods, where he is surrounded by hundreds of children with blurred faces. The end. 

Now the anonymous moral guardians of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), in their infinite wisdom, have passed this foul film for general consumption.

Another bizarre but typical judgment from this panel of experts whose names we don’t even know (and so we don’t even know if they are parents). We do know that its president, Sir Quentin Thomas, gets £28,000 for 25 days’ work a year. Nice job if you can get it. 

In a jaded and degraded culture, Antichrist is presumably intended to shock. In fact, it doesn’t shock, it merely nauseates. 

Amoral: The film has been described as completely devoid of any sense of justice or retribution

It doesn’t shock or surprise me in the slightest that Europe now produces such pieces of sick, pretentious trash, fully confirming our jihadist enemies’ view of us as a society in the last stages of corruption and decay.

It doesn’t surprise me that Antichrist was heavily subsidised by the Danish Film Institute to the tune of 1.5 million euros. 

 

I tried to find out more from the Institute, but to my small surprise they disdained to reply. But you can be sure that they in turn are funded by the EU and so by my taxes – and yours. 

How do you feel about that? If not shocked, then weary, furious, disgusted? Well you can complain all you like, but no one is listening. Our arts mandarins, along with the rest of our lofty liberal elite, don’t work like that. 

Their job is to take our money and spend it on such fashionable torture  porn – sorry, art - not ask us our opinion.

Excruciating violence: The sexually explicit Antichrist, which stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, was heavily subsidised by the Danish Film Institute

 

Since sex and violence are both intrinsic parts of human experience, art and literature will necessarily contain both. There are few more horrific moments on the English stage than in King Lear, when the Duke of Cornwall gouges out the aged Gloucester’s eyes.

I must have seen the scene 20 times and it never fails to appal. But although superficially similar to the atrocities of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, it differs in every significant respect.

Shakespeare is dramatising the tragic universe we inhabit, human evil at its worst, and the hidden moral process by which Cornwall will eventually be punished for his cruelty.

The world of Antichrist, by contrast, is blatantly amoral, without any sense of justice or retribution whatever. Its mingling of sex and violence, the cheapest and nastiest trick in the book, is usually one which the BBFC pounces on in a straight horror film. But here they are blinded by their own cultural snobbery, swallowing the lie that Antichrist is Art.

 

Danish director Lars Von Trier in Cannes

Von Trier, the film’s writer and director, naturally scorns as a philistine rabble those who don’t appreciate his rare genius.

‘I don’t think about the audience when I make a film. I don’t care. I make films for myself.’

A pity he doesn’t fund those films for himself too, then. But he cannot be blamed for his atrocities, he explains. ‘It’s the hand of God, I’m afraid. And I am the best film director in the world. I’m not sure God is the best god in the world.’

Willem Dafoe, meanwhile, who plays the father, is evidently proud of his work in Antichrist too. He believes that all that child death and sexual violence is ‘poetry’, that the film is ‘true and fresh and living’, and dismisses any objections as ‘very conservative.’

In quintessential luvviepseak, he explains: ‘Your responsibility is to the integrity of what you do to yourself.’ 

Now bearing the stamp of BBFC approval, Antichrist is to be released uncut into our cultural bloodstream. In artistic terms, it is the equivalent of food poisoning.

How odd that while government-appointed health czars are so obsessed with anything that might harm the nation’s physical wellbeing – hanging flower baskets, conkers, too much sunshine, not enough sunshine – any concern with the nation’s moral or spiritual well-being has completely vanished. 

Meanwhile, there’s Bruno, another film out at the moment. Sacha Baron-Cohen’s latest film about a gay Austrian fashion TV presenter is outrageously smutty – including close-ups of genitals and pictures of babies in the bath with a group of gay men – and well deserves its 18 certificate.

So when the film-makers wanted to release a milder 15 version of the film, presumably the BBFC required them to produce a whole new edit?

No. Instead, BBFC merely suggested that they remove one minute 50 seconds. What a joke!

Now, Bruno contains some hysterically funny scenes, especially those where real danger is involved. It offends nearly everybody – gays, straight, Hasidic Jews, Arabs, African Americans, Christians – and you still come out of the cinema with a smile on your face, albeit slightly worried about the way Baron-Cohen’s mind works sometimes.

He isn’t a satirist, not even close: he’s just an updated version of a bawdy, music-hall drag act, rude, crude, and utterly harmless.

But as for Antichrist, its approval by the BBFC raises the question: what on earth does it take for a film to be banned nowadays? If the visceral sadism of Von Trier’s film passes muster, surely anything will? 

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in one of the film’s many sex scenes

Censorship today seems to have been reduced to the feeble principle that if it doesn’t harm children, then it should be allowed.

As soon as it’s released on DVD, Antichrist will harm children anyway, deeply and irrevocably. But when did this principle of protecting only children arise anyway? What about harming adults? 

If I were to see Antichrist, I don’t believe for a moment that it would incite me into copycat violent behaviour or make me a danger to others. But it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.

Isn’t that good enough reason to ban it, or at least demand extensive cuts? But have we – that is to say, the hesitant, fumbling, comfortably cushioned, value-free Leftish elite who now govern us – got the guts? I doubt it.

 

“I haven’t seen it myself, nor shall I”

Yet you condem it and say it should be banned when you haven’t even seen it and have no intention of seeing it.

“You do not need to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is. “

No because we have twerps like this guy and the Daily Mail to tell us how revolting and “morally corrupting it is” and to get the self appointed moral guardians amongst us to crusade for it to be banned.

“You do not need to see Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is. “

Nah you can just read the Daily Mail and their biased BBFC bashing agendas and form your opinions of the film based souly on their reactionary bullshit.

Oh yes you don’t need to see Antichrist to judge for yourself.

“I tried to find out more from the Institute, but to my small surprise they disdained to reply. But you can be sure that they in turn are funded by the EU and so by my taxes – and yours. 

How do you feel about that? If not shocked, then weary, furious, disgusted? Well you can complain all you like, but no one is listening. Our arts mandarins, along with the rest of our lofty liberal elite, don’t work like that. ”

Oh surprise fucking surprise! It’s not just the shockingly disgusting violence of this film that this “critic” (a critic who passes judgement on a film he hasen’t even seen is no kind of critic at all) objects to it’s the fact that it was funded by the EU and “our taxes”.

Oh yes as we al know those lefty liberals of the EU are funding all sorts of corrupting filth.

Homosexual porn and baby eating peados are all funded by the EU! Oh and don’t forget that those wet human right terrorist peado loving namby pambies are funded by the EU as well! Yeah!

This isn’t just about this crticic’s objection to this film. It’s about his own hatred of “lefty liberals” and people who don’t share his narrow minded views of the world or the belief that adults should be free to view films that some people might find offensive.

“In artistic terms, it is the equivalent of food poisoning. “

We can’t think of any response to that except….NURSE THE STRAIGHTJACKET WE’VE GOT A LIVE ON HERE!

Lol!

“How odd that while government-appointed health czars are so obsessed with anything that might harm the nation’s physical wellbeing – hanging flower baskets, conkers, too much sunshine, not enough sunshine – any concern with the nation’s moral or spiritual well-being has completely vanished. ”

Oh yeah those health and safety zealots. Yeah they will ban hanging flower baskets and conkers but they won’t ban vile morally corrupting filth like Antichrist.

Of course whenever the health and safety zealots do ban things the Daily Mail scream blue murder about the “nanny state”. But they are quite happy for the “nanny state” to ban films that they find disgusting.

“If I were to see Antichrist, I don’t believe for a moment that it would incite me into copycat violent behaviour or make me a danger to others. But it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me for ever.

Isn’t that good enough reason to ban it, or at least demand extensive cuts?”

So it should be banned because of what it WOULD do to your mind? And the minds of others?

But you arn’t even going to bother seeing it so why should it be banned just to protect your mind?

The justification this “critic” makes for advocating this films banning is because of what it MIGHT do to people’s minds. People need to be stopped from seeing “filth” like this for their “own good”. And this “critic” who hasen’t seen this film and has no intention of seeing it has appointed himself the guardian of what people should and should not be allowed to see.

Unbelievable!

“But have we – that is to say, the hesitant, fumbling, comfortably cushioned, value-free Leftish elite who now govern us – got the guts? I doubt it. “

And this sums up what this is all about. Just another chance to attack the “Leftish elite” who apparently think “anything goes” and wish to see our society and “our” children exposed to violent “corrupting filth”.

This “critic” prides himself on being liberal minded. But he panders to the very worst sensationalist reactionary right-wing bollox of the Daily Mail.

He condems a film and calls for it to be banned even though he hasen’t seen it!

He is no kind of critic and certainly not liberal minded. He’s just one big joke!

Going out with a bang….Beyer wants Watercolour Challenge not nudity

Beyer’s still a rent-a-quote for the Daily Mail even after he’s stepped down as Mediawatch UK director.

The Daily Mail tells us that there were dozens of complains but in reality the complaint is coming from Beyer who is complaining to Ofcom after he was contacted by “concerned parents.”

The Mail continues to hold up Mediawatch UK as some great authority as if it represents the entire TV viewing public who are all so disgusted by nude life art drawing being shown on daytime TV and that TV bosses should be worried about Beyer winging to Ofcom on behalf of hordes of professional compaliners.

A lot of Beyer’s mates really are lazy so and sos. They can’t be bothered to get up off their bumbs and complain to Ofcom themselves so they get Beyer to do it for them. Well now he’s stepping down maybe they might have to do it themselves.

From the Daily Mail:

Model poses nude for Life Class art show… on DAYTIME TV

By Paul Revoir

Lunchtime TV is well known as the preserve of news bulletins, women’s talk shows, Australian soap re-runs and cosy family dramas.

So you can imagine the surprise when mothers sitting down with their children flicked over to Channel 4 yesterday and were greeted by a fully naked woman.

Dozens of viewers are understood to have complained after they saw more than they bargained for of fashion model Kirsten Varley.

Outrage: Ofcom received dozens of complaints after fashion model Kirsten Varley was seen posing for artist Gary Hume on Channel 4 at lunchtime

She stripped off and posed for artist Gary Hume in the programme Life Class: Today’s Nude which aired at 12.30pm.

The show was up against Bargain Hunt on BBC1, Daily Politics on BBC2, Loose Women on ITV and House Doctor on Channel Five.

The programme saw the camera lingering on the model’s naked form as the artist talked through the process of drawing her. But the show which was filmed at Mr Hume’s studio has sparked a backlash from viewers.

 

At one point, the artist tells Miss Varley to have a rest if she needs one as he is going for a toilet break. He is also heard saying: ‘One of the things about art is that you have to be embarrassed. You have to be embarrassed to make it.’

Yesterday’s broadcast was one of five programmes about how to paint the naked body, which is running throughout the week on Channel 4.

On Monday, distinguished painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling drew male model Matthew Oghene. Tuesday’s episode featured portrait artist Humphrey Ocean painting female model Tinka Ziff.

John Beyer, of TV pressure group Mediawatch UK, questioned showing the programme at lunchtime.

He has referred the matter to media regulator Ofcom after being contacted by concerned parents.

Complaints: Artist Alan Kane sketches a nude model for another show in the Channel 4 daytime television series

Mr Beyer said: ‘I have had complaints about this. Obviously people feel this is not really suitable for daytime TV when they have got children at home.

‘One was particularly incensed because his child was at home and thought it was not appropriate.

‘It’s a pity Channel 4 cannot revive its Watercolour Challenge show.’

One viewer who was in her sick bed watching daytime TV, said: ‘It nearly gave me a relapse. It was adult viewing, not for screening in the middle of the day.’

Channel 4 has defended the programme,  insisting it was not gratuitous and saying it was meant to help artists capture the beauty of the human body.

In the series, each episode features a different type of life model including a dancer and a highly sought after male model.

Gary Hume is renowned for his paintings of simplified forms usually using high gloss paint on surfaces such as aluminium.

He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996 and was made a member of the Royal Academy in 2001. The audience is invited to pick up a pencil and use the class to develop their own interest in drawing with the artist’s guidance.

 

“Obviously people feel this is not really suitable for daytime TV when they have got children at home.”
 

Erm no Beyer. More like the people who contacted you feel this is not really suitable for daytime TV when they have got children at home. Their views arn’t representative of what people feel in general.

Beyer wants to end his days as Mediawatch UK director by making out that he speeks for the entire TV viewing public.

‘It’s a pity Channel 4 cannot revive its Watercolour Challenge show.’

And Beyer ends his time as Mediawatch UK director with the most pointless and inane statement he’s ever made.

“One viewer who was in her sick bed watching daytime TV, said: ‘It nearly gave me a relapse. It was adult viewing, not for screening in the middle of the day.’”

Yee gads! She must really be sick that she can nearly be given a relapse by the sight of a naked human body. What does she have?

Lol!

As usual with these things the Daily Mail take one outraged comment from one viewer and try to make out as if hordes of viewers are up in arms with moral outrage!

Mediasnoops notes that the majority of readers’ comments on the Daily Mail website are in favour of the nude life drawing on daytime TV and lots of readers are saying that people should get a life and stop complaining.

We wonder how in touch with their readers the Daily Mail really are.

Two Feet In The Grave and one moan from Mediawatch UK

“The hour-long special includes footage of funerals and corpses in mortuaries. It is also thought to include photos of the dead taken by their relatives as keepsakes – a ghoulish practice considered normal by the Victorians.”

That’s just what The Sun is telling us. The programme hasen’t been aired yet but as per usual Mediawatch UK are rushing to condem.

Beyer’s depature and the lack of a replacement rent-a-quote explains the abscence of a spokesperson.

From The Sun: 

Two feet in the grave
One Foot in the Grave star Richard Wilson is to present a controversial documentary about DEATH.  Richard, 72 – who played legendary moaner Victor Meldrew – was hired by the BBC for a show investigating how people cope with bereavement.  The hour-long special includes footage of funerals and corpses in mortuaries. It is also thought to include photos of the dead taken by their relatives as keepsakes – a ghoulish practice considered normal by the Victorians.  mediawatch-uk branded the show “distasteful” and said the choice of host was inappropriate.  But Beeb chiefs insist the documentary – called Two Feet in the Grave – is “a sensitive exploration of attitudes towards death”.
The Sun 6/7/2009

“mediawatch-uk branded the show “distasteful” and said the choice of host was inappropriate.”

The show hasen’t even been made! But Mediawatch UK can brand it “distaseful”. They look into their crystal ball and see TV shows even before they have been made. Woooooooooooooooooooooo! Spooky!

Following in Beyer’s footsteps: 5 steps to being Mediawatch UK boss

Well John C Beyer has stepped down as director of everyone’s favourite self appointed moral guardians Mediawatch UK.

Now the self proclaimed crusaders against violence, sex and swearing on our airwaves and DVD players will be thinking about who should take his place.

Mediasnoops’ money is on David Turtle who often popped up as a replacement rent-a-quote for the tabloids whenever Beyer was unavaliable.

Or maybe either Miranda Suit or Pippa Smith who head up Mediawatch UK’s sister group Mediamarch.

Whoever takes over in the hot seat will need to follow these five steps to make sure they follow in Beyer’s footsteps……

1.Base all your views not on fact but on what you hear from Daily Mail journalists who are ringing you up looking for an outraged quote to make a story look more interesting.

2.Always react to what the tabloid press tell you about the latest violence/sex filled TV show/film/video game with total and utter outrage and condemnation without seeing said violence/sex filled TV show/film/video game yourself. Then without seeing said violence/sex filed TV/film/video game yourself demand that it be banned.

3.Always believe everything tabloid journalists tell you without checking it for yourself.

4.Demand that people who view adult consensual sexual entertainment are locked up at her Majesty’s pleasure for three years not because there is any actual evidence that such entertainment is harmful but because you find it disgusting and don’t think people should be allowed to look at it.

5.Have agenda against both the BBFC, which is allowing endless amounts of violent, sexually explicit pornographic filth (add on: always base your views on violent sexually explicit films on Christopher Tookey’s reviews in the Daily Mail) to be released and seen by children and the BBC which is run by lefty secular liberals who want to destroy the very moral fabric of our great Christian country.

Mediawatch UK’s summer briefs

Here’s Mediawatch UK’s summer newsbrief:

http://www.mediawatchuk.org.uk/images/stories/newsbrief_summer2009.pdf

Apart from Beyer announcing his retirement as director highlights include a report by a brave soul who’s on a one man campaign to put an end to internet porn.

After over hearing two teenagers talking about what they been looking
at on the internet the interepid warriror decided to search out porn websites and what he saw disgusted him. He then went and wrote to all the heads of the governments of the countries which supply the porn sites (including Australia, USA, Great Britain, China, Russia and Poland..WOAH!!!) and wrote to his local MP and MEP and reports that he got some very positive results.

He tells us that he has reviewed what his happening on the porn sites and has found that a number of them are longer accesible which he says is “fantastic news”.

Presuambly he believes that the heads of all those countries plus his local MP and MEP headed his calls and shut down those websites that he found so utterly disgusting. Yeah as if the heads of some of the world’s most powerful countries would close down internet porn sites just because some self appointed filth seeking moral guardian has written to them to vent his disgust. What an elevated sense of self importance these doo gooders have.

Essensially what this guy has done is gone onto the internet to search for porn websites, been disgusted by them and lobbied government leaders and his local MP to shut the sites down just because he found them disgusting. Oh great!

He tells us not to forgot there are hundred of other sites and if everyone did as he has done we can rid the world of this “cyber evil”.

Oh how great if everyone did as this self appointed crusader against net porn. Go onto the internet to seek out vile disgusting filth and then try to stop everyone else from looking at. Oh great indeed……NOT!
Then there’s a report on a sexually violent DVD which the BBFC has rejected for classification. Mediawatch UK applaud the decision (yes yes the BBFC’s only any good when it’s banning films Mediawatch UK dissaprove of) but asks the question “What sort of people want to make such a film and what sort of people want to watch it?” 

What sort of people want to watch it? People who should be locked up for three years eh?

An an end of an era as Beyer retires

Mediasnoops is sure that Mediawatch UK will find someone fitting to take over
leading the crusade to try and stop people watching things that they don’t like.

From the Melon Farmers:

Bye Bye Beyer Goodbye…

John Beyer steps down from Mediawatch-UK

A voice whingeing in
the wilderness

John Beyer has announced his retirement from Mediawatch-UK

“The many hundreds of responses from members to the news that I have decided to
retire from mediawatch-uk after 33 years were over whelming and very humbling.”
Speaking at the Annual General meeting in May, John Beyer said:

“There were just so many letters and messages that it was impossible to reply to
each one personally. The gifts that so many people sent were very generous and
the messages that accompanied some of them were very touching and will always be
greatly treasured. Above all, these showed that mediawatch-uk is rather like an
extended family with a unity of purpose that binds us all together.”

In his reflection on his time with mediawatch-uk John said: “The challenges now
are far greater than when Mary Whitehouse pioneered the campaign in the 1960s.
In those days there were just two TV channels and a handful of radio stations.
There was no internet, no computer games, no satellite or cable TV and video
recorders were confined to the TV studios.

The greatest difference then, however, is that there was a much stronger public
consensus of what was acceptable on TV and what was not. There was greater
certainty about what was good or bad taste and what was decent or indecent.
Sadly, all that has changed and broadcasting and film have contributed
significantly to the erosion of that consensus and the fragmenting of values.

“The ongoing challenge for everyone involved is to reverse the
responsibility-free attitudes and behaviour of the permissive 60s, which,
combined with a political ideology, had a huge impact on the social, moral and
economic development our society and culture. I am confident that mediawatch-uk
is up to the challenge. Please continue to support the new team”.

Goodbye Johnny Boy it’s been a blast! We’ll miss your rent-a-quotes of outrage in
the Daily Mail!

Hopefully your replacement will give us as much of a good laugh as you have
done.

We are sure he or she will remember to keep campaigining for those dirty filthy
porn viewers to be locked up for three years.

Bye bye Beyer!