Fat lady, gays and censorship

It's all over when the fat lady sings. I think we need a little bit of lightening up, don't you? And I don't mean hearing more about people's euphemistic dreams! They can dream on, but please don't bore us with them. Do try to come up with something more original!

The quip is about the new ban, in the UK, on any cigarette advertising on billboards and in newpapers and magazines.

The fat lady singing (in purple silk with a slit in the dress) was used to advertise Silk Cut cigarettes.

However, the fat lady was not coincidental. Last December, Gallaher, the maker of Silk Cut cigarettes, had enlisted the Saatchi brothers' agency to create a final advertising blitz before the total ban on tobacco ads was introduced on St Valentine's Day.

The day was appropriate since much of the advertising, especially in the Forties and Fifties, was aimed at young couples. There was no mention of diseases like emphysema and lung cancer - the ads promoted cigarettes as essential props to sophistication and sex appeal.

The tobacco giant put together the last press and poster push in tribute to its past successes, including its "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet" campaign and its iconic Silk Cut ads, which were famous for never mentioning or having a cigarette in sight, but usually had purple silk with a slit in it used in a multitude of creative designs.

Saatchi & Saatchi, whose agency was behind the original Silk Cut advertising, came up with ideas for the final campaign through their new agency. One idea for Silk Cut being: "It's not over till the fat lady sings".

As the ban on tobacco adverts came into force on Friday, a voluptuous soprano voiced their swansong. Sarah Jane Dale - draped in torn purple satin by the manufacturers of Silk Cut - offered passers-by in central London bursts from Bizet's Carmen, chosen, no doubt, because its heroine works in a cigarette factory, wrote Tania Branigan in The Guardian on Friday.

The British Medical Association welcomed the ban, but urged the government to now go on and prohibit smoking in public places. Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of BMA science and ethics, said: "It is fantastic news that from last Friday there will be no more tobacco advertising - Britain's doctors have been calling for this legislation for over 40 years."

Sir Richard Doll, the epidemiologist who first established the link with cancer, recalled a lack of enthusiasm in some governments over the years. "At one press conference on the risks of tobacco, the health minister of the day sat with a cigarette in his hand and one of our previous prime ministers became a consultant to the tobacco industry on retirement," he added.

The ban is the first stage of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 and also covers direct mail, Internet advertising and new promotions.

Bans on sponsorship, adverts at the point of sale and the use of non-tobacco products to advertise cigarettes will come into force later.

However, tobacco advertising has been in decline ever since the UK government made a pre-election pledge in 1997 to outlaw it.

Tobacco companies spent just £20.6 million on advertising in the UK last year. Instead, they have been working on alternative ways of marketing their products.

Marlboro now has a branded clothes range and other cigarette companies have launched entertainment Websites to direct young people to bars and clubs that sell their products.

Rothmans recently launched a competition with trivia questions inside cigarette packets. Smokers were invited to telephone in their answers to win a prize.

It is not clear when enforcement of new promotions, use of non tobacco products to advertise cigarettes and Internet advertising will come into force.

Bipartisan gays?

An e-mail from an outraged Labour gay person (name supplied) informed me on Friday that "one must be insensitive to see the notice outside the Labour Party club in Naxxar and not say anything.

"Unfortunately, those who are supposed to look after minorities' future well-being are instead using 'scare tactics' that if we join the European Union the gay minority will have the right to be treated without discrimination.

"It seems that this poster wants to give an assurance that if we stay out of the EU, rights such as those which enable gay partners to be recognised legally will be ignored. The assurance certainly was not addressed to the thousands of gay people who pay their taxes like everybody else", said the e-mail.

"This idea has been propounded recently by various left-wing exponents who are against joining the EU like Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Joe Brincat, and Anna Mallia... If that is what the left think... it makes you think what the right do!" concluded the gay correspondent.

Yesterday I got the same complaint in the form of a press release from the Malta Gay Rights Movement, which tried to redress the balance.

Firstly, it said that it strongly deplores the use of gay rights to influence people against joining the EU. Quite right too, but this is only one of a string of 'scary tactics' that the MLP have used against EU membership.

But it is not the principle of scary tactics like the ones on abortion and euthanasia that is worrying the gay fraternity, but that they should be put, as it were, in the same basket.

It then noted that the offensive billboard was removed immediately MLP headquarters heard about it. I can imagine Jimmy Magro getting really upset at the idea of using gays to scare the electorate.

We have had the foreign bombshells who will steal our men, and aliens who will take our jobs and homes with no qualms, but the fear of being overrun by married gays is definitely seen as politically incorrect by the MLP big boys.

The MGRM added that those who have used this (gay rights) ploy against joining the EU know that the EU does not oblige member states to automatically ensure that gay partners are recognised legally

On the other hand the EU does oblige member states and those with association agreements to eliminate all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation at the place of work.

However, despite various efforts by the MGRM to get the authorities to recognise this, the government has refused to implement this part of the acquis communautaire.

The government has also not specifically legalised against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, both in labour and gender equality laws in the workplace.

The government should stop giving the electorate the mistaken impression that it can somehow avoid this obligation on joining the EU.

If the government fails to make these changes in the law before joining the EU it will inevitably have to answer to charges in the European Court, MGRM claims.

Censorship

I got an urgent plea from Peppi Azzopardi to raise awareness on the Broadcasting Authority's demand to see the Xarabank programmes before they are aired.

Now although Xarabank is not a programme I can bear to watch for longer than a few minutes (I am one of a small minority, most people love it, apparently) and I have criticised it, the BA is not there to censor programmes.

Besides the fact that the message conveyed by this action is that the PBS board and management are not doing their job (airing balanced programmes), it is still not within the BA's remit to restrain, supress or check on broadcasters before a programme is aired. Keeping tabs on what is being aired is a station's responsibility.

It is up to the board and PBS management to be responsible for their programmes. If the BA feels they are failing, then they should take up the issue with them and not with Xarabank.

However, one must note that these daily Xarabank programmes are EU specials and therefore do come under 'political scheduling'. Which still does not entitle the BA to previews.

At a press conference yesterday Peppi said he will next week be naming programmes on Super 1 radio and television which broadcast unbalanced (not nutty, but pro-Labour and anti-Nationalist) material and/or statements.

Does this mean that Where's Everbody see the BA as a Labour-run institution? Besides, rather than turning this into a tit-for-tat issue, let's stick to the business of censorship.

Where's Everybody should know that they are not the only ones whom people with a political agenda try to shut up. At least they get a whole load more airtime than other people who never whinge and get on with it.

Seeing that Where's Everybody has a substantial chunk of airtime on PBS, it could perhaps raise awareness on the lack of free-minded programmes aired generally.