BABY
Written by James Ward
This advert appeared in the Birmingham Mail the other day:
Originally posted here: http://twitpic.com/42j5p0
She needs a new cardiac facility
NOT
an alternative voting systemOn 5th May you’ll be asked in a referendum whether you want to change our voting system to the Alternative Vote: a change that would cost our country at least £250million. Now is not the right time to be spending money that could be put to better use. Like a much-needed new Children’s Heart Centre at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Say NO to spending £250million on AV. Our country can’t afford it.
Now, I’m broadly in favour of voting reform but I’m pretty much against killing babies and this appears to be the choice we are being offered. I was going to vote “Yes”, but now I’m worried that by doing so, I would effectively be murdering this poor little girl. That makes me feel bad. I don’t want to murder a baby. That would be an awful thing to do.
It doesn’t really go into much detail about the girl. It doesn’t say what’s wrong with her or anything like that. She must be pretty poorly if she needs an entire hospital facility to be built. I don’t know how long it takes to plan and build a cardiac facility, probably quite a long time, so she can’t be in immediate danger, which is a relief, but I’d like to know a bit more about her condition before I decide whether or not to have her killed.
I decided to email the No2AV campaign:
Hi,
A couple of days ago, an advert for the No2AV campaign appeared in the Birmingham Mail featuring a picture of a baby girl and the message “She needs a new cardiac facility NOT an alternative voting system”.
The advert explained that the £250million which would be spent switching to AV could be better spent on a new Children’s Heart Centre at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. I was just wondering if you had any background information on who the baby is and what her condition is. I really don’t want the baby to die just because I voted “yes” and so I want to have all the facts at hand before I decide how to vote.
This is the deciding factor in whether I vote “yes” or “no”, so any information would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
James
I hope they reply soon, my vote hangs in the balance.
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
Excellent email. And I’m sure the £250 million would DEFINITELY be spent on a new hospital if AV got the No vote. Absolutely.
That is certainly the implication of the advert and I see no reason to doubt it.
There is another no2av advert with a picture of a soldier telling us he needs body armour. So it seems that – even if we don’t spend the money on AV – the money will still be up for grabs between the soldier and the baby, and I think we both know who would win that… :-|
The baby doesn’t even seem to be trying to convince me to vote against reform – lazy!
That soldier doesn’t stand a chance.
£650 billion to bail out the banks and protect their fat bonuses, as well as huge ongoing subsidies (see http://www.onegoodcut.org/ for more info)… £250 million to make our voting system vaguely representative of the views of the people. Hmm. I think we all know who’s in charge here.
Hopefully this advert will backfire because I’m not the only one who perceives it as a lame and clearly desperate campaign.
TinEye found six other instances of the same image: http://www.tineye.com/search/8ccef61cdea8c05f577db9fdacd7f94793ca6e69/
It appears to be originally from Getty Images, although, mysteriously, the Getty Images link says: “Item 92465521 is no longer available.”
It’s also on the third page if you do a Google image search for “premature baby”.
So she doesn’t need a new cardiac facility at all then. Do No2AV know this?
The photo is at least two years old. I’ve emailed Getty to ask when the photo was withdrawn and if they know how it was licensed for a press advert this week.
So, where’s the baby now, then? Some sort of broom cupboard?
I wonder why she can’t just go into an existing cardiac facility. Maybe, instead of needing the £250million to build a new unit, we could all just have a quick whip-round and buy some nice safari-inspired artwork to make an older one look a bit more palatable.
I’ve got 57p to get things started.
Who’s behind “no to AV”? Someone right wing, by any chance?
And if they’re that worried about baby hospitals and soldiers, why not spend their (presumably fairly considerable) advertising spend on that rather than wanky adverts full of misleading claptrap?
The No2AV campaign is headed by the head of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. The only political parties that have come out in favour of it are the BNP and the Tories. Think that probably answers your question.
It does indeed. Why am I not surprised??? It’s rather sad that their only argument against it is “it costs too much” without providing a break down of exactly how they came to their £250 million figure. People need information to make a reasonable, balanced judgement, not all this emotionally manipulative nonsense.
Oh my… I’ve seen another no2av advert, with another baby! This one needs a maternity ward… so that’s 2 babies and a soldier who are going to fight it out!
I’ve never seen anything with such pathos in it’s sheer desperation! I don’t understand where this 250M figure comes from either…cost of extra pencil leads in writing “1,2,3 etc…” maybe?
They’re adding together the cost of the referendum (which we’re paying whether it’s a yes or a no vote), the cost of the voting machines (which we’re not getting because we’re not America) and the cost of ‘re-educating’ voters (based on what it cost to educate Scottish voters about a completely different, more complicated, system which hadn’t previously been subject of a huge national media campaign).
Do they actually have any reasoned arguments against AV, or is all of their advertising going to be emotive but unrelated rubbish like this? I have yet to hear anyone from their campaign give a good reason why our existing system, which no recently created democracy from the Balkans to South Africa has chosen to adopt, should be kept.
Oooh Getty Images are VERY keen on chasing down people who use their images without permission, I wonder if they paid for this.
Has anyone asked No2AV who funds their advertising campaign, for how much, and whether this wouldn’t be better off donated to an NHS unit?
Maybe if we had an alternative voting system we would not be in the situation where recessionary cutbacks mean making difficult choices for public spending.
Genius. I have linked.
If I lived in Birmingham I would be asking some serious questions of the NO campaign as to why they thought Brummies were stupid enough to be taken in by such a pile of fictitious nonsense.