Somebody PLEASE tell me this IS a Newsthump pisstake

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/28/campaign-deter-romanian-bulgarian-immigrants-farcical

The Skin

[dipsydoodle]

1. You might very well think that

[LeftishBrit]

2. I hadn't thought of it this way before...

but maybe the government's policies have a method in their madness: they want to make this country so unattractive that no one will want to immigrate here. If they carry on much longer, it will be the Brits trying to get into Bulgaria and Romania!

[dipsydoodle]

3. I concluded long ago

that if sufficient of the population of a country with a pleasant enough climate wanted to migrate here then it could make sense for us to shut down here totally and ship off to their country.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Did you notice the cross link ?

It's a task to which the British temperament is uniquely suited: a campaign to sell Britain short. With a year to go before the UK's current migration restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian people are lifted, government ministers are considering mounting an advertising campaign in both countries to highlight the downsides of life in Britain, with a view to discouraging any would-be immigrants.

No one, it seems, can predict – or even vaguely estimate – what proportion of the 29 million Bulgarian and Romanian citizens might drop in once they are free to do so, but one unnamed minister suggested that a bit of negative advertising might at least "correct the impression that the streets here are paved with gold".

One of the major difficulties a campaign trumpeting the nation's less attractive qualities faces is the need to counteract decades of expensive tourist initiatives portraying Britain as both welcoming and worth a visit. The easy part is, it's easy. As lovely as this place is, once you start listing reasons not to come to Britain, it's hard to stop:

▶ England – Since the Drought, It Hasn't Stopped Raining.

▶ Come to the 2013 European Capital of Obesity. It's Contagious!

▶ The Streets Aren't Paved With Gold, Even Under All the Vomit.

forward dear reader................

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/shortcuts/2013/jan/28/negative-ads-about-britain?intcmp=239

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. PM listeners' ideas for the ads, read by Norman Lovett

(the original Holly on Red Dwarf):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01q8lhp starting at 26:30

Sample: "Noel Edmonds is still on the telly"

[T_i_B]

6. Well here's the Daily Mash piss-take

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/im-great-apart-from-all-the-humans-says-england-2013012957900

As to the actual "marketing" campaign in Eastern Europe, it's just one of those stupid things that will make Mail & Express readers a bit less grumpy for a few seconds. I suspect that's the entire point of the operation.