Not in front of the kids Early Day Motion

jellyhead

while all the ads on these channels are dreadful they're not all as bad as each other. my son and his 9 year old friends watch boomerang, that's a bad one for those ads, so it doesn't only affect the up to 7's - jetix is really popular, sonic the hedgehog rules.

if the channels must have ads i don't mind those for car insurance, home insurance etc. and there are some that just say 'our mortgages are cheap', 'our bank account pays high interest' etc. - these just encourage shopping around. more of those to replace the bad ads might not have too much impact on children. but some ads are just really bad - the ones for debt consolidation that encourage extra lending for a holiday, new car etc. - those are just awful. yes we parents can ignore pester power and teach our children about finance and why only a muppet would respond to these ads - but not all parents watch TV with their children, some use the TV as a free babysitter for hours on end.

it's not pester power that infuriates me, it's the normalisation of extreme debt and continued borrowing for a holiday or a car to make the sun come out!! i take my hat off to martin, this campaign is really important. not so much for the pester power argument but because they normalise the debt, they teach children that it's commopn to be stupid with money, to keep consolidating and even to continue spending on things you want but can't afford. the ads saying 'borrow enough to cover the debts AND have enough left over for X, by preading the repayment over longer terms'. those need banning - there are enough people around now who don't have any financial sense, we don't want our children being even worse!

Edinburghlass_2

jawa1 wrote:

So Martin, What are your comments on the 'SPAM' email?
.....

"this needs forwarding to everyone you know "

Should the thousands of members of this forum forward the email to [email="Martin@moneysavingexpert.com"]Martin@moneysavingexpert.com[/email] ..... although I am sure you have a good spam filter :rolleyes:

As quoted every week in Martin's email:

As always my final word is to say please pass the word! If you save money then do recommend the site and more importantly this email to friends and family.

I guess you would consider this spamming too?

Personally I am quite happy to recommend the petition to my family and friends and don't consider I am spamming by doing so.

As I have a 14 year old I agree with Jellyhead on the debt consolidation and have a nice holiday type adverts :rolleyes:

MSE_Martin

OK let me address two points

1. Poll significance: Without the stats no one would talk about it. While 1,000 might not seem much, this is all about mathmatical significance, there is a 3% error ratio of a poll of 1,000 people. In other words the vast likely hood is that even if everyone in the country were polled the result would only vary by 3% on each one. Thats how the stats work.

2. Spamming

Actually I rather resent this accusation.

Spam - unwanted, unopted for unrequested email aimed at clogging up the internet or selling.

1. All MSE emails are sent to an opt in member - not one person has been bought, recurited, signed up, joined without entering their own email to do so

2. The request to forward is for people to send the information to their friends, not to spam the net, it is to 'forward to all you know' - a choice whether you do it or not - coming from someone you know.

3. The email has links to a recognised source in it. Real spam aimed at clogging up the email has no links or contacts in. This is full of links and content - a legit email from a legit source, referred to you by a friend who believes you should sign it.

4. This is an email aimed not at selling but informing. How do you want to pass the word? Were the emails about the lost child after the tsunami also spam (some were as there was no source, but those sourced by the Thai government were passing the info).

5. And if you forgive my bluntness at midnight when im writing.

Look at the bloody campaign, this is doing good, this is a campaign to stop a bunch of b*stards ruining the education of our children. I stand by it 100%, I stand by everyone knowing about it. There has been no coverage in national newspapers or commerical broadcasters, all of whom accept ads from the same people. Sometimes you need to take a stance, if spreading an email round the net is the cost. I'm willing to pay it. Simple as that.

Perhaps I should stop asking people to tell others about the site. Let's leave it to the companies to pay for £100000s of TVs ads for their loans, accounts, shopping at Tesco. The net is one of the few ways someone outside the mainstream can reach people. Spam is wrong, but asking people to tell their friends something they believe in, from a legit source, is both right, proper, and effective democracy.

So my stance on spam? I don't like it. I don't believe I did it, but if you define what i did as spam - then be prepared for me to spam again for other similar things. And if you don't like it - may i suggest you use the opt out of the email list - which is on every single page of the site - to make sure no one gets an email they don't want!

Martin

trafalgar_2

Jazzycat wrote:

Hi Traf,

You could increase the poll population but the results would be pretty accurate on a far smaller sample.

Hi Jazzycat,

thanks for your post ,I'm not sure what you mean by this could you elaborate please

MSE_Martin

Traf - this gets a bit mathematical, but the following is an explanation from about statistical significance in polling (i studied it years ago at uni)

The main problem with my poll is users of this site as a group of web users (50% of the population) are on average slightly more affluent that non-web users, which could skew the poll slightly. Anyway on to the maths

The following is a short extract from http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Polling_Methodology

Margin of Error
(see this this Margin of Error Calculator)

The margin of error in a poll is expressed as a percentage and is 1.96 times the standard deviation. This is also referred to as the 95% confidence level. That is, if the methodology is the same, the results will be within the margin of error 95 times out of 100.

Where n = sample size, the margin of error is 1.96 times the square root of the multiplied percentages of answers A and B which have been divided by the sample size.

1.96 x sqrt((A% x B%)/n)

For example - with a sample of 500 completed interviews, if candidate A is at 50% and candidate B is at 50% the formula is:

1.96 x (sqrt((50% x 50%)/500)) = 4.38% margin of error

Note the diminishing returns involved in larger samples. For instance, doubling the sample size (and doubling the number of interviews and work) does not halve the margin of error:

1.96 x (sqrt((50% x 50%)/1000)) = 3.10% margin of error (rounded up)

This is one reason why a larger sample size only marginally improves accuracy.

(back to me again now - martin)

This means that the cost effective sample size is 1000 people. IF you sampled 5,000 the error ratio would've been reduced to 1.4%. (actually the error ratio in the actual poll are higher because there's more than one option, but this indicates why a much bigger poll wouldn't actually have increased the accuracy too greatly)

Hope this makes sense !

foreverskint

I'm all for this and have been telling as many as I can to sign the petition. i don't believe it's spamming at all, and even if someone wants to call it spam, it's for a better cause than most of the junk I receive.

I've noticed that my two year old takes notice of two types of ads, That bl**dy frog and loan ads. They seem to attract her attention, whatever else she's doing. so I for one would like to see them off of kids channels:mad:

way to go Martin:beer:

trafalgar_2

thank you Martin and I understand that part it was the wording that threw me but thank you ,I still have niggly points to raise but not just now


lifes too short:D

but don't worry I'll be back ,things more pressing just now but trust me I will:rotfl:

jellyhead

my husband thinks if this campaign is successful there will be more of that frog and its associates advertising ... ho hum ... i still think the campaign's really important though.

Foxy

my daughter keep humming that frog tune grrrrrrrrrr

michaels

MSE_Martin wrote:

The main problem with my poll is users of this site as a group of web users (50% of the population) are on average slightly more affluent that non-web users, which could skew the poll slightly. Anyway on to the maths

Martin. I find this site very useful. However I cannot agree that a poll of any number of members of this site can in any way be taken as representative of the population as a whole. As we all know users of this site are a more discerning bunch than the general population and have different opinions on many financial issues (for example whether it is a good idea to pay 29.9% interest on a store card balance). Plus I am not certain if this was the case, but if the poll was also optional and the topic was announced prior to taking part a further 'self-selection' would take place, again skewing the result. As you note in your comments, the confidence interval for a sample to the population depends on the sample being a random selection from the population.

There are many TV ads aimed at children, encouraging unhealthy eating and many other 'undesirable' activities. The running of these 'credit' adverts is almost certainly not designed to encourage children to take debt when they are old enough to do so (imagine trying to persuade the company directors that an ad campaign is worth running now to increase loan take up for all companies in 8 - 18 years time) and I have no information on whether 'pester power' might make a parent more likely to purchase something - I think it is more likely that the adds are aimed at adults who are also watching.

Then we move on to the whole issue of whether credit is bad - the largest debt most people ever have is a mortgage - are mortgages a bad thing - and how about student debts which are an investment in future higher earnings, they tend to put of poorer students because they are 'frightened' of debt, hardly the attitude one would expect if they had grown up in a culture of easy money. Finally these loans are often pitched as consolidation so they will save people money. If those who use the reduction in monthly interest payments as a chance to go out and take more credit is it really the fault of the consolidators who have given them a better deal on existing credit?

So I have no problem with the idea of education and would be happy to sign a petition suggesting that financial education should be compulsory in schools, however I don't think we should restrict advertisers in one particular area.