HM Govt You Decide Adverts on this site

[Perihelion]

MN, why are these HM Govt political propaganda adverts all over the place on your site?
I'm not clicking on them, but from their other stuff I've seen and had put through my door, the "you decide" is really part of the campain to vote No in the Scottish independence referendum in September.
Does MN support the No vote?? Or are you happy to advertise any political shite? I'm not aware of any other blatent political advertising on here before.

[RumAppleGinger]

I was about to ask the same question. Shame no one has bothered to reply to you. I can't remember seeing any political advertisements before this but happy to be corrected.

[Perihelion]

Been away for a week. Are these banner ads still showing? Why did you accept them?

[KateSMumsnet]

Hullo all,

Sorry for the delay in responding to this. Do you you have a screenshot of the ad? It will help us track it down and take a closer look.

[Perihelion]

Just seen it again. Big moving colour one at the top of the pages. At least it's now moved on from the inocuous "You Decide", to saying what it means, by all the benefits of being a part of the UK/Britain. Not technical enough to do a screenshot. I don't think that just because it looks very official and is put out by HM Govt that it is okay to be advertised here.

What I had through my door, at first glance looked like a brochure for Scottish tourism..........Stupid fannies......I'm actually undecided, but all this sort of pish, nudges me in the Yes direction.

[TheWildRumpyPumpus]

I've seen Labour advertising on MN in the past - I think that the ad slots are handled by external companies so MNHQ won't know who is appearing day to day (although probably have a veto list somewhere).

[cozietoesie]

Screenshotted this morning. (The top of the page banner.)

[cozietoesie]

It's also appearing on the right hand sidebar.

[cozietoesie]

As in this. (I take it that's enough screen shots?)

[EllenMumsnet]

Morning all. Yes TheWildRumpyPumpus is right that MN has hosted political advertising before.

The You Decide ads are purely commercial - MN itself has no position on the referendum. Had the Yes campaign asked us to host their ads we would happily do so.

Hope this clears things up.

[cozietoesie]

I think that that response raises more questions than it answers, Ellen. I've no wish to go into the issue of the referendum on this particular board but surely you're not implying that Mumsnet makes no judgement on what particular political campaigns it gives its (tacit) blessing to and that the only thing of concern to MN is the revenue stream?

[RowanMumsnet]

Hi cozie

When we accept ads from organisations or companies, we don't see it as giving 'tacit blessing' - as we said, we'd very happily run ads from the 'Yes' campaign if they wanted to spend their money with us. We've accepted political ads in the past from other parties/causes, and we really don't see it as implying that MNHQ 'backs' those particular causes at all.

We've said in the past that there are certain parties we wouldn't take money from - the BNP was the example we used then - but that doesn't mean that we are editorially endorsing the ones whose ads we are happy to host.

We've got lots of in-house editorial on the referendum coming up, and we're doing our best to get a webchat in with representatives from both sides. MNHQ itself is taking absolutely no position on the referendum outcome, just as we wouldn't take a position in a General Election.

[Numanoid]

Hi MN, I know this thread is old but I have a question.

You say you have no official stance on Scottish independence, yet on a previous thread opened by MN, MNHQ closed it with a post saying there will be various discussions, etc. on the run-up to the referendum. You then closed with links to the extremely biased government material full of information about how we'd be "better together". The links given are also full of No campaign propaganda.

HM government are notoriously biased, would it not have been better to remove their links? It's bad enough they use taxpayer funding to send out their propaganda to Scottish households.