Adverts

I pay what for me is a significant sum each month for access to the online version of the Financial Times. An online version which is, to be fair, reasonably free of advertisements, and such as there are are mostly for luxury goods of one sort of another, all terribly glossy and tasteful.

However, this morning, the advertisement snapped above has been shown me perhaps a dozen times. The Financial Times appears to be resorting to the advertisement push tactics of a Google or a Microsoft.

This despite an article appearing yesterday (reference 1) about all the fat Tory snouts in the trough of public money which would not have been out of place in the New Statesman of old, the one that still remembered the days of Kingsley Martin. 

To be fair, the question asked by the advertisement is fair enough - what is objectionable is the way that it is being put.

PS 1: on a quite different matter, I am reminded by the coverage of Russia's use of convicts in its invasion of the Ukraine, of all the convicts that found their way into the army and navy which helped bring Napoleon down. From reference 4 we have: 'The expression “scum of the earth” uttered by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, has become etched in history as a great commander’s miserable opinion of his men. In a letter to Henry, Third Earl Bathurst, from Huarte Spain, on 2 July, 1813, Wellington wrote, “we have in the service the scum of the Earth as common soldiers.”...'. The article goes on to explain that a lot of them had been unemployed and that a lot of them were Irish.

PS 2: Sunday morning: copies of this same advertisement are still coming through, thick and fast. Maybe it is a programming glitch.

References

Reference 1: Sunak’s failure to sack Zahawi adds insult to all our injuries: Tax avoidance and asset-boosting policies contribute to the widespread view that politicians can’t be trusted - Camilla Cavendish, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Statesman.

Reference 3: https://swimmingwiththemanatees.com/. One of this morning's holiday offerings from Google. At least I have now discovered that if you open the advertisement, you are then able to delete it.

Reference 4: https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/book-review-all-for-the-kings-shilling-the-british-soldier-under-wellington-1808-1814/.