Transport for London Censors

Transport for London (TfL) has ludicrously banned adverts for business premises provider Workspace for using a cheese company as example customer.

The posters put forward by Workspace featured three panels, reading: From crunching numbers to selling cheese online, it all happens at Workspace. The advert featured an image of a hand typing at a calculator and another of some cheese, alongside the names of two Workspace tenants - an accountancy company, and London-based online cheese shop Cheesegeek.

But the adverts were rejected by TfL under its censorship rules aimed at cutting obesity. TfL claimed the poster wasn't going to conform to their advertising rules because of the high saturated fat contained within cheese.

TfL's rules dictate an advert will not be approved if, among numerous other reasons, it promotes (directly or indirectly) food or non-alcoholic drink which is high in fat, salt and/or sugar, according to the Nutrient Profiling Model managed by Public Health England.

Cheesegeek founder and CEO Edward Hancock slammed the decision as ridiculous and said it wrongly categorises cheese alongside genuine junk food.

A poster for a West End play featuring a wedding cake was banned by Transport for London (TfL) ludicrously seen as promoting foods high in fat, salt and sugar.

The ad for Tony n' Tina's Wedding , a dinner show at Wonderville, Haymarket, featured a three-tier sponge cake.

The interactive show is set at an Italian-American wedding, with a three-course meal, live music and dancing. Producer Paul Gregg told BBC London they could not run the posters after they delivered them to TfL. He said of TfL:

They said 'you can't put these up, they've got cake on'. It was a bit of a surprise...

In early November the Transport for London (TfL) removed Free Balochistan adverts from London black cabs after pressure from the Pakistani government.

The World Baloch Organisation, which advocates for rights of the ethnic Balochs who live in the Balochistan regions straddling Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, launched its campaign on London's black cabs to highlight the war crimes and human rights abuses of the Islamabad government. The #FreeBalochistan adverts carry slogans saying Stop enforced disappearances and Save the Baloch people

The British High Commissioner in Islamabad was summoned to appear before the Pakistani Foreign Secretary, Tehmina Janjua, on Friday over the adverts which they said directly attack its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Unsurprisingly TfL were quick to get the adverts off their property and to apologise for the offence, and this seems to have done the trick for them.

The UK advert censors at ASA have also got caught up in international complaints resulting from the TfL campaign particularly as the adverts have now appeared more widely on advertising spaces that are not related to TfL.

Now clearly ASA don't want to get involved in the political content of campaign advertising so their rules are more about offence and honest claims about products. So ASA responded to complaints noting that the adverts did not breach their deliberately apolitical advertising rules. Unfortunately the subtlety of not breaking rules has been interpreted more as approving the adverts. As explained in an article from thehindu.com :

The High Commission of Pakistan and a member of the public had referred the advert to the ASA, arguing the slogan Free Balochistan was irresponsible and offensive to the Pakistani diaspora and an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan.

In a letter to the World Baloch Organisation, which is running the campaign in London, ASA confirmed that it would not pursue the matter any further as there did not appear to be a breach of the code. The advertiser had a right to express their views, despite the issue of Baloch independence being a politically sensitive issue. The ASA's role was to assess what appeared within the ads, rather than making a broader judgment about the intent of the ad, or the political cause, being advertised.

The ASA Council considered that the tagline '#FreeBalochistan' was an invitation to find out more about a particular political campaign itself, and the ad itself did not make any specific claim that threatened the territorial integrity or sovereignty of Pakistan... the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence to members of the public in general.

#FreeBalochistan campaigners were clearly delighted and hailed the decision by ASA to allow a billboard campaign by the organisation to remain in place. Bhawal Mengal, the WBO's London spokesperson said:

Justice has prevailed. The ASA has affirmed that our campaign is within the U.K.'s rules and regulations. Moreover it has proved that Pakistan's narrative to malign our campaign is baseless and deceitful.

Of course the Pakistan government is not so delighted: The Pakistan High Commission says it's reviewing the ASA's decision and article from thenews.com.pk reports a source sating that Pakistan High Commission will now launch legal action against the ASA.

A spokesman for the Pakistan High Commission said that the ASA's response has been received which is being reviewed. The spokesman said that further course of action will be announced soon. It is an ongoing matter and we are in touch with the ASA.

Transport for London (TfL) has removed Free Balochistan adverts from London black cabs after pressure from the Pakistani government

The World Baloch Organisation , which advocates for rights of the ethnic Balochs who live in the Balochistan regions straddling Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, launched its campaign on London's black cabs to highlight the war crimes and human rights abuses of the Islamabad government.

The #FreeBalochistan adverts carry slogans saying Stop enforced disappearances and Save the Baloch people

The British High Commissioner in Islamabad was summoned to appear before the Pakistani Foreign Secretary, Tehmina Janjua, on Friday over the adverts which they said directly attack its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Back in 2016, after a bit of a hoo-hah about a 'beach body ready' advert, London Mayor Sadiq Khan pressurised Transport For London (TfL) into introducing a PC ban for all adverts which didn't adhere to the notion of 'body positivity'.

And in the latest example of extreme PC censorship, Heist, a company which sells up-market tights, recently revealed that TfL forced it to cover-up a woman's naked back with a bandeau top in one of its adverts on the tube.

A representative from Exterion Media, the company which works on behalf of TfL and enforces its policy, told Heist:

Whilst I know this is only showing a bare back, it still depicts a 'topless model. If we could add a boob tube around the back I think this would be passed.'

It also looks as if the tights were photoshopped to darken them a little to hide a rather sharply outlined bottom.

... Read the critical comment in article from blogs.spectator.co.uk by Ella Whelan.

Even in their seventies, the Rolling Stones still have the power to get the establishment hot under the collar.  A poster for their new museum exhibition has been banned for being supposedly lewd.

The advert has their trademark logo of a cartoon mouth and protruding tongue covering the crotch of a woman's bikini bottom.

While it has already been used across social media, on news websites and by major companies such as Ticketmaster, bosses at Exterion Media, censors that approve posters to appear on the London Underground and at bus stops, insisted the logo be moved up to the woman's belly button before allowing it to go ahead.

This is despite the advert already being widely used by the band online to promote Exhibitionism , which opens at London's Saatchi Gallery next year.

A spokesman for the band said:

We are dumbfounded and perplexed at this rather silly decision. Perhaps the fact that it's the Rolling Stones and controversy seems to follow them everywhere.

Adverts for a Jewish play which received five-star reviews in one of the religion's newspapers have been banned from the London Underground because they could cause offence . Transport for London (TfL) decided that posters of Joshua Harmon's acclaimed production, Bad Jews , should be banned.

The poster for the comedy, which is about a family brought together after the death of their Holocaust-survivor grandfather, shows four characters in a quarrel on the floor.

One complaint was made to the the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) during the play's first campaign, but the advert censor concluded that the poster did not breach rules. However, TfL disagreed with the ASA's ruling and told the Evening Standard it would not clarify the precise reason for the rejection. A TfL spokesperson said:

The advert, Bad Jews, was previously displayed on our network as our advertising contractor approved it without consulting us. It was subsequently submitted for display again and has been rejected as it contravened our advertising policy, which states that adverts will not be approved if they may cause widespread or serious offence.

Producer Danny Moar has blasted TfL's decision, saying it seemed like censorship , despite the play winning a five-star review for the Jewish Chronicle.  He told the paper:

Half the cast are Jewish, I'm Jewish, the writer is Jewish and the word 'bad' in the title, in so far as it matters, doesn't mean 'evil' -- it means 'non-observant'.  This is a form of censorship which is so weird and ironic when, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo events, everyone marched against censorship. 

Posters for the revival of Kevin Elyot's play My Night with Reg have been banned from appearing at London Underground stations for featuring male nudity.

A Transport for London press officer told the Standard they hadn't seen the ad but: if it has been rejected it means that it doesn't meet the guidance that we have set.

The comedy is set in London's gay community in the mid-1980s, against the back drop of the mounting AIDS crisis.

A poster advertising a satirical play about the Monarchy and, showing Prince Charles gagged, has been censored by London Underground because it fears it could cause offence.

The advert for the critically acclaimed production of King Charles III features a punk-style portrait of the Prince with his mouth covered by white duct tape.

But despite the fact that the poster has been displayed across London since the play opened nearly three weeks ago, a nervous Transport for London has decided to pixelate Charles's face.

There appeared to be confusion over exactly why the poster had been censored. TfL laid the blame on the company that deals with adverts on the Tube:

We work with a company called Exterion Media, which handles our adverts on the Tube network and offers advice. They may say this or that could cause offence. Exterion may have said the poster doesn't fit with part of their policy. The decision was made without reference to us and does look to have been a little over-enthusiastic. We will speak to them about it.

There is an exhibition at St Marylebone Church of the work of 20 artists' representations of the Stations of the Cross. Throughout Lent, some of these have been approved by TfL to appear on the London Underground.

But not Antony Micallef's Kill Your Idol , a representation of the first station, where Jesus is condemned to death, this time by an X-Factor style panel of judges.

A spokesperson for TfL said the poster was rejected because it did not comply with the firm's advertising policy. She pointed to a clause that concerns causing widespread or serious offence to members of the public and another referring to advertisements that do not comply with the law or incite someone to break the law.

It is the view of St Marylebone's Rector, the Reverend Canon Stephen Evans, that this work raises:

Important contemporary questions about the fickleness and shallowness of fame and celebrity, success and failure. About who has the power to say just who is going to be a 'hit' and who a 'miss'.

It is not an image that could cause offence, it's not obscene; it is just a very, very strange decision.

But of course the decision is nothing to do with nuances of offence. It's just that everybody knows that religion and satire simply do not mix, and anything coming anywhere close is simply best avoided for fear of either violence or else a station load of moaning minnies. It seems that religion these days is not really very welcome in the normal world, it causes far too much trouble in the world.