Protests greeted a hard-hitting campaign by a British children’s charity on Wednesday as it published newspaper advertisements showing a cockroach crawling out of a new born baby’s mouth.
The advertisements, published on full pages in some newspapers, drew scores of protests to the watchdog body, the Advertising Standards Authority, which had received more than 60 complaints through its website in the hours following the launch of the campaign.
Other adverts in the series show new-borns with syringes and bottles of industrial alcohol in their mouths.
Those images contrast with a fourth advertisement, showing a happy infant with a silver spoon in its mouth.
The headline on the adverts says: ”There are no silver spoons for children born into poverty.”
The Barnardo’s charity said one in three children lives in poverty in Britain, launching a nationwide campaign to highlight their plight.
”Despite having the fourth largest economy in the world, the UK has one of the highest levels of child poverty of all industrialised countries, with 3,8-million children (one in three) living in poverty,” it said in a statement.
It said the impoverished children lived in families who survive on an income of less than 242 pounds (about 350 euros or 400 dollars) a week.
An ASA spokesperson said the complaints received so far were on the grounds that the adverts were ”offensive”.
It is not the first time a campaign for Barnardo’s has courted controversy.
Last year, the watchdog received 20 objections to adverts on the theme of child prostitution. In 2001, it had 15 complaints about adverts showing images of adult suicides and tragic deaths. But on both occasions the ASA rejected the complaints.
Andrew Nebel, director of marketing and communications at Barnardo’s, defended the latest adverts.
”They are deliberately attention-seeking,” he said. ”We deal in shocking issues so if we talk about our work it is going to be seen as controversial.
”That means breaking through some of the complacency among the public when it comes to child poverty because large numbers of people don’t know it exists at the level it does.
”But we have always worked with the ASA and made sure our advertising stays within the relevant code.”
Barnardo’s says in the report, entitled Poverty Wrecks Futures, that children living in poverty are more likely to end up homeless, have problems with drugs and alcohol and commit or become victims of crimes.
According to statistics cited by Barnado’s London has the highest percentage of children living in poverty at 48%, while in Wales the figure is 31% and in Scotland 30%.
However, official figures show that the number of children living below the poverty line has fallen by 500 000 since 1997, when Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government took office. – Sapa-AFP