The reason why there isn’t enough money for rape crisis centres
It seems that Boris Johnson needs to spend £600,000 on a logo instead:
“Londoners are being asked to help design a new logo for the city to rival New York’s “I ♥ NY” campaign. One of the firms bidding to design the logo, to be used globally in the run-up to the 2012 Games, called for ideas to be posted on Twitter, with hundreds of members of the public submitting artwork ideas.
Mayor Boris Johnson is spending £600,000 on the logo and a shortlist of six design firms will be drawn from more than 450 entries after tomorrow’s deadline for bids.”
It sounds like something that Ken Livingstone would do.
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Filed in: Sex equality
Though obviously Ken would mandate that no black colours were to be used in said logo.
Agreed Rumbold – there are more than enough good logos out there.
But it goes to show how silly it is to make a pledge to fund a worthy cause by making faux cuts in other budgets. Being fair, I guess that that promise was made by someone in Johnson’s office, not the man himself.
I don’t recall for sure, but I think it was bananabrain that made exactly the same point about the NHS.
I don’t actually think a Local Authority needs a logo at all. They could just letterhead:
From:
Boris Johnson,
GLC.
What’s so wrong with that?
I hope the money is in the post.
douglas clark (3) – There was not much wrong with a nice distinctive letterhead in any number of decent Word fonts.
Where it came from was this idea of ‘competition’ and the public sector needing a ‘visual identity’ to compete and be ‘distinct’ from its private ‘rivals.’ What this all had the effect of doing was convincing many in the public sector that this actually made any difference, that logos and branding were the same thing as competitiveness and professionalism.
The money may or may not be vast – I don’t know – but it is another side-effect of faux competition.
Whether the money should go to rape-centres or tax cuts is quite another matter.
MaidMarian,
Eh!
I am, kinda, obviously agreeing with you!
However, yet again, the private sector are the mugs that bought into this ‘branding’ shite first.
You now have a frigging industry, private sector led, preaching the absolute neccessity of a frigging logo.
Yet another example of the feeding frenzy of parasites on the public sector. And an incompetent, perhaps corrupted, public sector failing to tell them to ‘fuck off’.
Bastards!
The lot of them.
Err, no it isn’t.
London’s public sector does have an 80-odd year history of logos, in the form of the London Transport roundel, which is one of the most recognised brands in the world.
“Though obviously Ken would mandate that no black colours were to be used in said logo”
Because it’s an arm of government not a funeral parlour? Or are you just making a snide fact-free PC rant?
[the old GLA 'LONDON' logo was, of course, blue and red on a white background - Boris has already spent ~£40k removing the red, if memory serves]
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb-e-gla.html gives some interesting background on the official logos previously used on flags, although I’m unsure precisely what Boris is proposing to spend the money on replacing.
In defence, the “I ♥ NY” has been one of the most brilliant and pervasive logo designs ever. Never underestimate the power of advertising.
Now, if Boris is spending a whopping £600,000 of tax payers money on a f**** logo for the City, it better be good. If it were the equivalent of “I ♥ NY”, then it would be money well spent. But if it’s shit, like the olympic logo, then it will have been an utter stupid twatting waste of money.
“The reason why there isn’t enough money for rape crisis centres
You would have to have read up on some things that are being done, like this link, no?
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/crime/vaw/docs/the-way-forward.pdf
There is so much in that to get behind and support, with a lot of attention paid to many of the issues often posted here.
But I can never figure out why some people instead choose to focus on finding something to protest?
I rather like Mr. Johnson, and I like him for the fact he really puts a lot of thought into his actions. I suppose he could have just given the money right out the gate for building crisis centers ….. as good as that sounds I can’t agree it was the solution to any thing, let alone the only option.
I also think this logo is a good idea. I never knew there was a story behind the I love NY ….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_New_York
it has become a symbol of unity for new yorkers ….
could do good for London as well, and I thought picklers were all about unity?
I would use London bridge somehow
on a side note…here in NY I see more union jack flags daily then I can count! from t-shits, to hats and bags and posters,etc …. love it!
“I like him for the fact he really puts a lot of thought into his actions”
Should have gone to SpecSavers. Listen, we *know* the degree to which spin is being used to turn cuts into ‘investment’, we’ve been *watching* him. Look at the amount of money and prestige in Guto Harri’s communications directorate.
“I suppose he could have just given the money right out the gate for building crisis centers”
I suppose he could have put some thought into his rape crisis centre campaign promise before making it, but he didn’t, did he, which rather ruins your first point.
well you’re right …. should’a could’a.
It’s funny, during the Obama campaign the thing he said I respected most ..was that he didn’t know what he would do in some areas until after election as he did not have full access to all information …
… and that very statement caused in others the opposite reaction to mine.
I don’t think my point was ruined at all.
What is it about so many politicians who just seem to forget that it is other people’s money?
Its more than £600k the whole rebrand is costing £2m :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23703522-details/Boris+launches+2m+drive+to+rebrand+London/article.do
there is such a thing as wasting money on branding, of course, as per my examples in the NHS. on the other hand, i would submit that not only does the olympics need a brand (and remember the furore over it when it was revealed) i would say that london would do well to have one. of course, a decent brand would make use of existing social capital in the capital, everything from the gherkin to london bridge to the tube roundel. i’m not sure about the pricing, i remember being told that pricewaterhousecoopers spent between £150k-200k on their much-derided post-merger rebrand, so for a city the size of london and with as much riding on tourism as you would think, i don’t think £600k for a logo and £2m for a rebrand is completely out of the ball-park. however, i’d expect the amount spent by a local authority to be considerably smaller than the amount spent on a huge city, probably closer to the size of a branding budget for a large blue-chip like PwC. for a *health* authority, i’d expect it to be considerably less again.
it is a matter of proportionate spending, which was my criticism of the NHS. if you have any idea of the amount of money spent on transport in this city, what is spent on branding is a mere drop in the bucket.
nonetheless, the idea that the branding money came out of the rape crisis centre budget is almost certainly complete and utter bumwash. i expect before making comments like this, someone should actually go and look at the budget:
http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/budget/current_budget.jsp
b’shalom
bananabrain
Bananabrain:
No it is not. I think that much more needs to be done when talking about waste (and this si an example of waste). At the moment discussions about waste are treated in an abstract way by most on the left- they tend to care more about criticising those who expose waste (see Liberal Conspiracy on the Taxpayers’ Alliance). What I want to do is to make state waste unacceptable amongst those on the left as well by pointing out what the money could and should be used for.
Sorry – bit of a pedanctic aside – but do you (8&13) mean Tower Bridge rather than London Bridge?
rumbold:
i’ve explained why i think spending money on branding for london isn’t waste – i think that comes from a lack of understanding on the purpose and benefits of branding to give value to the customer. like i said, i don’t think – proportionately – that this is a million miles out of the ballpark, although i do think it would be worth understanding the comparatives. what i do object to is this facile idea that money has been taken away from abused women and given to branding consultants instead. it’s the same argument that is made about “wasting money on administrators instead of front-line medical staff”. where is the evidence? if these two are in the same budget item, then you can say one has been raided for the other. if these two were in separate budgets to start with, then the money will have been allocated to something else in the original budget, not to a completely different budget. i would find it extraordinary if the same person was managing both the budget for a central function like branding and the budget for an operational unit like a crisis centre. otherwise this is just sloppy thinking and i’d like to think i know you better than to think you a sloppy thinker.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Bananabrain:
This is how I view state spending. All money that the state spends is someone else’s. The explicit bargain between taxpayer and state is that the state will tax in order spend spend money on necessary/highly desirable projects (such as defence, healthcare or rape crisis centres), which really can’t be met by the private sector. All other spending is some form of waste, and so should either be diverted to necessary projects (if said prjoects are underfunded), or given back to its rightful owners.
I don’t care whether or not ‘branding’ is successful. I don’t think it is, and it can be done for free. But my main objection is that this is an area that the state should not be interfering in.
Look at it in terms of a household’s budget. Let’s say you and I live together, and I control the purse strings. Our toilet is broken, but I tell you that there isn’t the money to fix it. I then go and spend £300 on Chas and Dave’s greatest hits. You would presumably ask why the money wasn’t spent on the toilet instead. That is the connection I make when I see money spent on things that don’t need to be state funded, while other necessary projects are underfunded.
Rumbold,
did you read the link I offered above to the Boris package that is being proposed?
if not how can you expect to have any conversation on this topic at all?
and here – right on schedule – is the response …
in it asks that in the October report a complete budget be included ….. http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/reports/health/response-way-forward-310709.pdf
so even if in his campaign he wrongfully pledged money towards rape crisis centers, and has so far not delivered …. he is however it would seem, attempting to do much more that would serve a greater benefit in the long term.
Like I have asked already, why the focus on what was not done rather than participation in what is being put on the table?
In your toilet analogy …. do you have a link to where it has been said there is not enough money to fix the broken toilet? Honestly I think this ad plan for London could be seen as redoing the entire bathroom (“new” toilet and all)
The Queen of Fiddlesticks:
I did read through the document (and participated in the consultant leading up to it, incidentally). Yes, it has some good proposals in there, no doubt. But it will be interesting to see how many of them come into practice (aside from the ones already there, like the Sapphire teams).
You ask why I focus on the negatives rather than the positives. Because it is my money. Boris (whom I voted for) is spending money on logos rather than on rape crisis centres. They are needed- Boris continues to say that they are needed. So why spend my money on a logo? If he wants to spend his own money that is fine. But when I see necessary projects not being funded while frivolity is paid for, I will complain.