Fish or Foul? The Covid Feeding Frenzy...

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I read with some interest in today's i that the company that came up with the 'Hands, Face, Space' Covid chant, among other similarly condescending and infantilising slogans, had a further contract awarded for such trite tosh for the second year on the trot; their remuneration now totalling some £77.3M - that's right, folks: £77.3 million quid to produce something that could have been farmed out to primary schools as a competition to produce.

The company in question is MullenLowe UK and they are not alone in trousering our cash during this pandemic, for 'advertising & media services'. To put it all in perspective - and these are government figures freely available to all, should one know where to look (the data certainly ain't trumpeted from the side of a bus) - in October 2020, four companies were variously engaged for 'advertising & media services' to the tune of £15,163,649.62* £15,421,588.37, spread over a large number of individual payments.

That's one month's Cabinet Office spending on 'advertising & media services' for Covid. Extrapolate that and you could arrive at an annual spend north of £180M. Makes you think. By the way, one of the companies listed as contracted by the government to the handy little tune of £13,312,019.09* £13,389,993.27 for that month, is listed on Companies House as having no appointed officers or filings (Manning Gottlieb OMD Ltd.): draw your own conclusions on the probity of that little lot, if you will.

*Addendum - spreadsheet errors corrected 14/12/21

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