Home Offfice in bid to bring violent crime to your mobile, laptop, radio station . If you are not scared now you soon will be..

The “Get Unhooked” NHS anti smoking campaign last year was created by Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy. It ran across television, poster, national press and magazines, and online.It cost overall more than £8Mn.

The campaign triggered a record 774 complaints from the public under the The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) CAP Code - Rules FEAR AND DISTRESS

9.1 No marketing communication should cause fear or distress without good reason. Marketers should not use shocking claims or images merely to attract attention.

Faced with this unprecedented barrage of complaint the ASA adjudicated the campaign . They banned it - the first Government ads to be banned for 5 years.

It is therefore unbelievable that the Home Office have comitted £3 MN to a "hard hitting" campaign running on radio, websites and mobile phones,featuring;

1. Fake CCTV footage - featuring actors - of an artily chairoscuro shadowed and sinister brutal street fight and stabbing on a shopping street., creepily reminsicent of the droogs in Clockwork Orange which Director Kubrick wouldn't allow to be shown because he felt is encouraged violence.

2. Vivid scenes of , a man with a Swiss army knife and a screwdriver sticking out of his chest, exposed intestines which have emerged from a knife wound, a leg which has become gangrenous after a knife attack and deep wounds to the bone. All this blood and gore accompanied by a script overseen by a trauma surgeon.

3. Mothers will be targeted with ads, encouraging them to talk about the issue with their children.

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office Minister, is pleased that they have recruited children (unpaid ?) to contribute ideas, which is like Tesco asking their customers to devise their advertising.

The result is a campaign that makes dubious claims (see pic) * which will revolt many, upset more and prove like similiar "hard hitting" campaigns for hard drugs, to have zero on the behaviour of the target audience.

It does of course conform to the persistent Government / Police campaign to generate a carapace of fear over everyone who walks the streets at night. helping to justify yet more and insistent demands for "tough" legislation and increasing Police powers.

Sir Ian Blair, whose officers ** murdered Charles de Menezes in public with 7 shots at point blank range in his head welcomes the campaign and warns ..."You are now more likely to be stopped and searched..." . Of course you are.

If, after seeing the vulgar, grisly results of pissing away £3 Mn and you wish (along with Lord Patel) to complain to the ASA go here.

** Officers led by counter terrorism "expert" , Assistant Chief Constable "Randy" Andy Hayman who left the force abruptly after being found to have fiddled his exes and spent his time shagging his staff whose promotion he had secured.

* "The statistics on the extent of knife crime are extremely patchy – for instance the police have only started keeping figures for attempted murder, wounding and robbery involving knives since last April. " Independent todaythey add ...." Violent attacks using a knife remain statistically very rare events in Britain. The numbers of such assaults appear to have remained stable over the last decade "