I’ve been told that follow on milk is a bit misleading, in that the contents are virtually identical to new baby formula milk, but is produced (or should that be “Specially formulated!) in order to get around new strict EU regulations prohibiting the advertising of formula milk to babies.

This is why the packets now have eg. big 1, 2 and 3 on the packets, so a product advertised as 3 will mean your mind will recognise 1 and 2 without advertising being necessary. Maybe I’m just being cynical but I’d check the ingredients/vitamin breakdown very carefully.

I can’t verify this, but it sounds plausible. It’s certainly true that it is illegal to advertise formula for babies up to 6 months old.

The National Childbirth Trust, Save The Children and Unicef say the current partial ban is not enough, and parents have been left confused.

They want the government to extend a ban on infant milk adverts to include “follow-on” milks for older babies.

I don’t really understand why the breastfeeding movement is so vehement. As far as I can tell, breast milk is slightly better for a baby than formula, but formula is a marvel of modern technology and perfectly good enough. Certainly a mother who prefers to use it for whatever reason shouldn’t feel guilty.

So why the scare-mongering and bansturbating?

Update: Lisa from All About the Voluntary responds.

Update: The music is from a band called Billie The Vision and The Dancers. The song is called Summercat from the album I Was So Unpopular In School and Now They’re Giving Me This Beautiful Bicycle. All the band’s music is free to download, but if you like it you can donate. You get more of what you reward, after all. The songs are available in the excellent FLAC format, too. This is a business model I really hope can be successful. Perhaps doing the beer advert will bring the band lots of trade. I hope so.

This product is intended for purchase and enjoyment to people of legal purchase age for alcohol beverages. Always drink responsibly.

My goodness.

I have one problem with contactless cards. The standard apparently doesn’t allow the reader to discriminate between cards. I used to leave my Oyster card in my wallet, but now my other contactless cards interfere with it, so I have to take it out.

No they won’t. What a load of old rubbish.

(Incidentally, this probably shouldn’t be on YouTube, but I can’t imagine it being so doing Mitchell and Webb anything but good.)

I tried to brush my tounge once. It made me gag.

The course attempts to show how principles of truth, love and service translate into policies for governments and economic planners and practical precepts for individual households and businesses.

Advice to students: don’t waste your time. Go and do a real course.

This is a poster advertising the Financial Times. The caption reads, “Business revolutionaries. Past, present and future.” Might not the FT be doing Richard Branson an injustice by associating him with a mass murderer?

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This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net.

Various TV commercials paid for by those with vested interests bash out the arguments for and against the propositions. The vote-yes-on-72 commercial has a old woman in an emergency room going on about poor people not having health care. The vote-no-on-72 commercial has a woman apparently running a small restaurant complaining that the proposition will cost her money and possibly put her out of business.

Many of the other proposition commercials follow the same pattern: bleeding heart liberal vs. hard-nosed business person. It seems to me that the hard-nosed-business people are missing a trick. They should use the same kind of emotive imagery as the lefties. For example, the vote-no-to-72 commercial should feature unemployed people crying and talking about how they lost their jobs when their employers couldn’t afford to pay their health insurance. Then people could feel warm and fuzzy about voting to let people spend their money as they wish.

I was convinced it was computer generated because of the part of the sequence in which three tyres roll up a slope. I didn’t believe the story that it took over six hundred takes in a studio to get right (despite this being stated on the Honda web site). However, while searching around for evidence to back up my opinion I found a Snopes article that verified the story and explained the apparent mockery of physical laws:

The sequence where the tyres roll up a slope looks particularly impressive but is very simple. Steiner [head of television at Wieden & Kennedy, the agency responsible for the advert] says that there is a weight [in each] tyre and when the tyre is knocked, the weight is displaced and in an attempt to rebalance itself, the tyre rolls up the slope.

Knowing that the contraption had to be painstakingly assembled out of real car parts makes the advert even more impressive.

It has, however, been displaced from the number one spot, because last night at the cinema I saw the 118 118 spoof. “Isn’t it nice when things just work?” becomes, “Isn’t nice when a directory enquires service just works, 118?” “It is, 118. Very nice indeed.”

This is no rough and ready parody; references to the original abound: From the rotating lollipop in place of the rotating windscreen wipers, to the music, to the squirty water bottle in the face in place of the windscreen washer water. By paying tribute in this way it inherits everything that was good about the Honda ad, with the added bonus that it’s hilarious. No doubt both companies will benefit from the mutual publicity of such a crossover. 118 118 may not be the cheapest directory enquiries service, but their advertising agency deserves every penny!

It seems the folks who came up with the name of the product had no such inhibitions: Vaginol.

Update: Speaking of euphemisms, Archsweet provides a link to this wonderful euphemism generator. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just get back to baking the bald-headed dolphin…