I’ve created the UGLY section on this site for ads that are evil, mendacious or especially manipulative.

This ad, in the November 28 edition of The Week, slides into this category with ease.

The suggestion is that British businesses are leaving it very late to get their act together for the Jan 1 deadline and new rules.  Yes, that is leaving it late – there’s only a month to go.  This implies that if companies have a problem after January 1 they only have themselves to blame. 

This is outrageously hypocritical.  How can companies check the rules and take the necessary actions when the rules are still totally up in the air? After how many months of government posturing and prevaricating and generally pissing about (I’ve lost count)?  After we were assured, long ago, that the deal was “oven ready”?  The line should read THERE ARE ACTIONS YOUR GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE TAKEN AGES AGO.

The word “transition” is also misleading.  This implies something smooth and orderly.  In your dreams Boris/Cummins/Gove. 

The three “tick” icons bottom right also suggest it’s easy for companies to make this “transition”.  Three easy steps.  Simples.  Bollocks.

Talking dreams, let’s consider the image – what was in the mind of the person who picked that picture?  It’s woke at work.  Why have a bloke in a boiler suit checking this lathe prior to export (I think this is what’s being suggested here – she’s not operating the machine but a tablet) when you can have a photogenic young lady of mixed race?

Think I’m imagining this wokeness?  Check out this other ad in the series.  Look closely at the picture.  The guy is missing an arm.  It suggests that there is some political correctness tsar ticking this stuff off (they like their ticks!).  Young people in jobs, tick, women and engineering, tick, ethnic diversity, tick, disability, tick. 

What is the purpose of these ads?  The government will say they are providing valuable information.  Not true, because the government has none to give – and it’s not like we don’t all know that the deadline is 1 Jan 2021.  The real purpose is propaganda.  The government is spending public money suggesting they have got their act together and that British industry is just dragging its feet.  They are using our taxes to lie to us at the same time as passing the buck to people they are screwing over.

Ugly.