Time to abolish the Advertising Standards Authority

Some decades back Bernard Levin lauded the actions, the very existence, of the Advertising Standards Authority. There was a case where one of the crisps companies - Walkers, Smiths perhaps - used the tagline of “Britain’s Crunchiest Crisps” or some such. Another crisps company - Walkers, Smiths perhaps - complained. The ASA ruled that as there was no proof of crunchiest then to assert a fact which was not known to be a fact was in breach of the advertising regulations.

Levin lauded this not so much because having prodnoses determining advertising was wondrous but because of what else this told us about British society. We’d solved all the big problems - which to a large extent we had and have - like poverty, destitution, homelessness, war ravaging the domestic landscape and so on. Therefore we had the resources to place that little slice of cherry on the icing of the societal cake - concerning ourselves with irrelevant claims made by crisps manufacturers.

We now need to abolish the ASA:

HSBC has suffered a fresh blow to its green credentials after the UK advertising watchdog banned a series of misleading adverts and said any future campaigns must disclose the bank’s contribution to the climate crisis.

The ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) followed dozens of complaints over posters that appeared on high streets and bus stops in the lead-up to the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow last October.

The watchdog said the adverts, which highlighted how the bank had invested $1tn in climate-friendly initiatives such as tree-planting and helping clients hit climate targets, failed to acknowledge HSBC’s own contribution to emissions.

“Despite the initiatives highlighted in the ads … HSBC was continuing to significantly finance investments in businesses and industries that emitted notable levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses. We did not consider consumers would know that was the case,” the ASA said. “We concluded that the ads omitted material information and were therefore misleading.”

That’s not a simple ruling upon fact. That’s moving over into censorship of opinion. Therefore we need to remove the people who are able to censor in that manner.

The problem is not, in fact, the existence of the power to censor advertising. It’s that the power has existed for some time. For what happens to any such organisation is that whatever the original goal or strictures upon the deployment of power the existence of the organisation will attract those who wish to both deploy and extend that power. We find ourselves in a Mr. Creosote world, where there is that urging for just the one more, wafer thin, mint. Before, of course, the system explodes in a welter of viscera.

Once an organisation has soured like this there is no hope of reform - precisely and exactly because those who populate it are there so that they gain this power over society. Thus abolition is the only useful action.

There is, after all, a considerable difference between insisting that “as you have not proven “crunchiest” you cannot claim “crunchiest”” and “you must acknowledge your historical guilt before you may say anything”. The ASA has crossed that line - Goodbye ASA.

Ceteram censeo ASA esse delandam.