Tory challenges free market
Originally posted by Peter Inson at 06:51, May 3 2013
Yesterday’s Times – Tory MP Laura Sandys challenges the trustworthiness of the so-called free market.
Yesterday’s BBC recalls the sexed-up dossier about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in an interview with Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, about the situation in Syria.
Recent questions about trustworthiness have also included: police, social services, Parliament, the media and celebrities.
Poor literacy standards, particularly those of young adults – a regular concern on the part of academics and employers – make it easier to mislead people, especially when, like the BBC, they fail to distinguish between convincing and persuading. If your children are persuaded to misbehave, that is one thing, but if they are convinced that they should misbehave then that is another.
Laura Sandys does not go far enough.
Why are advertising and promotional activity so much a part of marketing in a free market?
Why are the Conservatives friends of the free market?
Is this the so-called free market that we have now, or is it some genuinely free market in which consumer choices are accepted rather than perverted?
Why can advertising and promotional expenses allowable against tax?
Why is advertising targeted at children allowed?