In the 46 years that the ASA has been regulating advertising in the UK they have managed to successfully outlaw campaigns for containing either inaccurate, harmful or offensive material. This week the ASA ruled that the recent run of television commercials for Oasis Fruit Juice fell foul of these expectations.
The advert shows a young pregnant girl arguing with her mother before running...
We may take for granted now that the arts in this country are prone to relatively little external censorship. However, this has only really been the case since 1968, when the Theatre Act was passed by government to allow for freer artistic expression in British playhouses.
Before this time all play-scripts destined for production were required to be sent to the Lord Chamberlain for his...
Halloween is just around the corner, shops are loading their windows with witches hats, broomsticks, plastic spiders and all manner of ghoulish costumes. Here in the UK, scorn is poured on the holiday, mainly due to the fact the meaning of Halloween is largely unknown and often misunderstood.
Many consider it to be an Americanisation and to some extent it is, others simply do not want to...
Child proteges are nothing new: from Milton, to Mozart, to Michael Jackson, the artistic achievement of those so young has always brought great delight, and often great discomfort, to the establishment. However, let's stop before we get into comparing the achievements of the infant Mozart with the infant Jackson, or with say Shirley Temple for that matter - this is not a top ten 'kid geniuses'...
Today's musicians, it would seem, go to great lengths in order to promote new material: Radiohead initially released InRainbows via download only, Coldplay gave away downloads to promote their new album whilst Oasis employed the raw talent of street buskers in New York to promote their latest offering, Dig Out Your Soul.
Manchester's answer to the Beatles has really caused quite a stir with...
In the pleasantly safe and sterile modern world it is easy to assume that monsters only exist in the movies. We think that terrifying beasties are just the products of overactive Hollywood imaginations.
Giant sharks, enormous predatory insects, these are the things nightmares are made of. They appear in our nightmares for good reason, once upon a time they stalked, scuttled, swam and buzzed...
You may be forgiven for thinking that LHC is a new type of drug designed to be smoked in a pipe, but It is in fact the a piece of scientific equipment which will hopefully explain how we got here today.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest, most expensive science experiment the world has ever seen. Two years late and four times over budget, the LHC can be found 100 metres below...
RFID technology is something that most people would claim to know nothing about. The technology is not new, it has its roots as far back as 1946 and chances are, you are sitting within a few feet of an RFID device right now.
RFID, short for Radio Frequency Identification, is a umbrella term used to describe technologies that transmit the identity of a person, animal or object in the form...
Google (depending on where you read) is now ten years old, and has recently released its own version of a web browser to many mixed reviews. Is it world domination or just the demise of Microsoft that Google is trying to achieve?
Let's start by going back in time. In January 1996, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began work on a search engine called BackRub. Backrub revolutionised the...
Ever since broadband was set up and made readily available to the general public, illegal music downloads have gone through the roof. Today, approximately 95% of all downloads are illegal and some 6.5m broadband users illegally download music on a daily basis.
Earlier this year, the music industry decided that enough was enough and that this multi million pound purge needed to stop....
