Bad Posters

This horrible 'Pay Your Rent First' poster spread like a rash over the deprived areas of Glasgow in 2009. The poster shows a depressed white woman who is being urged to spend her money on paying her Glasgow Housing Association rent. Amazingly, people still regard Glasgow as a left-wing city, and yet posters such as this are put up and even manage to stay up for a while without being vandalised. This example is in Springburn on the road down to the Red Road Flats, where there is another one welcoming you into the complex.

Chip pan fires have traditionally been a major cause of fires in Glasgow's council housing. I spotted this portable hoarding in Kelvingrove Park. There must be a better way. . .

In 1983, Glasgow Council had the great idea of promoting the city by spending lots of money on an advertising campaign that proclaimed 'Glasgow's Miles Better'. This poster, a rare survival of a strange idea (better than what?) was still up in Tradeston in 2010. The 'Mr Happy' figure was regularly defaced: a popular amendment was 'Mr On-the Broo' (Unemployed and 'signing on' at the bureau for unemployment benefit). Mr Happy was always shown reading a Scotsman, which itself was odd, as the Glasgow Herald was the city's paper of choice. Presumably the Scotsman put some money into the campaign. The campaign is still widely regarded by marketing people as a huge success in 'rebranding',  but the deprivation remains. The current (2010) campaign is Glasgow: Scotland with Style, which features posters of merry Sex-in-the-City-ish women rushing round with shopping bags spending loadsamoney.

This consumerist poster of a greedy child appeared on Glasgow hoardings at Christmas 2009; this example was at Partick Cross.

In 2009 this poster - in Cowcaddens underground station - advertised the services of Stow College (just outside the station) by showing this Cool Black Dude in 'wassup' mode sprawling on a seat beside college music mixing equipment. He is not studying science or management, oh dearie me no. Organisations concerned with the welfare of young black men continually protest about the use of such stereotyopical images of young black men. The truth is, of course,  that such images are not aimed at young blacks anyway, but at white spotty-faced Kevin-the Teenager types - in this case to persuade them  that Stow College is 'edgy'.

This RBS advert was part of its 2009 campaign to demonstrate how authentically Scottish the disgraced bank was. The photograph shows an RBS blue van heading over an old (and disused) bridge at Sligachan on Skye (that's the lovely Marsco in the background). The road actually runs out just a few yards on from the bus and goes nowhere, just like this campaign. This example was on a bus shelter on Springburn road.