Bring back public information films!

[Glitterbiscuits]

I think we seriously need a return of basic common sense guidance in the UK — more help, less confusion, and less reliance on unreliable social media posts.

It feels like proper public information films have basically disappeared. The most recent one I can even remember is the CPR campaign with Vinnie Jones, teaching chest compressions to the tune of Staying Alive.

Maybe the big soap operas could even cover some of these issues, because people genuinely don’t know things they should know. For example, I’ve met several people who have no idea we should be taking vitamin D supplements over winter in the UK.
I’ve sat in concerts with people still wearing their hats!
I honestly think this reluctance to be seen as a “nanny state” isn’t helping anyone.
We could easily have public information films covering things like:
Washing your hands! It’s incredible to think people needed to be told this during COVID.
Avoiding online scams
Bank security and spotting fake texts
Basic food hygiene
Everyday courtesy (letting people off the train before you push on, not blocking doorways, etc.)
Keep Britain Tidy-style campaigns

Not preachy. Just practical. A bit of guidance would make daily life better for everyone.

Damn that I'm not teaching any more, getting teenagers to make their own public information films. That would be fab.

I’d like to see something advising joggers and walkers not to wear headphones and to run on the side of the road facing oncoming traffic so they can see what’s coming.

I left school early 80s and all I can recall are films telling us all what not to do ! It’s strange how I can remember them so well, they made an impact ( on me anyway )

The one that affected me the most as a child was:

‘Hit me at 30, there’s a 90% chance I’ll live. Hit me at 40… there’s a 90% chance I’ll die’. And the little girl slumped by the tree bleeding out.

Horrific.

Maybe instead of that Annoying Dommino Hoo Hoo that is played every time I want to watch classic corrie on ITV X?

And 90,s one where it began with Julie ( or whatever she was called knew her killer, and showed a car crash and her son jerking forward on the back of the car causing her to smash her head on the dash board killing her
Horrific i had to turn it off everytime it came on

True. Maybe we could have a PIF about what to do if someone you know says Dominoes Hoo Hoo and how to have them arrested?

Teens and 20 somethings don’t watch tv as we used to.
Ds2 rarely watches any tv at all.
It would have to be a school time or college watch I suppose.
I bet people wouldn’t be happy with this though!

@Glitterbiscuits

I think we seriously need a return of basic common sense guidance in the UK — more help, less confusion, and less reliance on unreliable social media posts.

I agree and said the same during covid. It IS very worrying that people needed to be told to wash their hands regularly and cough/sneeze into tissues. We really do, as a society, seem to have lost our grip on common sense, etc.

Same with the idiots who go mountain climbing or pot holing without equipment, or those who go on promenades during storms and risk getting washed out by waves. You'd think it'd be common sense, but apparently it isn't!

I remember as a child lots of public information "cartoons" during children's tv such as the one with someone frantically waving from a rubber dingy going out to sea, etc.

I’ve always liked that one.

Vinnie Jones and the BeeGees and CPR can feck right off. CPR is tantamount to assault and, on the do as you would be done by principle, I would never perform it. There ought to be some medibracelet or tattoo declining the procedure and severe penalties for those who ignore them. In the majority of of cases it is futile and increases suffering.

They could be obligatory "shorts" during social media, i.e. during YouTube videos or breaks in tik-tok, or Facebook, Twitter, even Sky/Virgin TV etc., where the user has to watch the short before they can click on something else. It's be a bit pointless to put them on mainstream TV that fewer and fewer people bother watching and which can be fast forwarded through if you're not watching live.

Yeah, I suppose the ones putting it out would have to find a way of not getting around not watching it !

What happens when they don't? Who picks up the pieces in terms of damage, costs, etc?

I totally agree. Then our local RNLI wouldn’t spend half their time and risking their lives rescuing idiots who think the ‘DANGER sinking sand’ boards don’t apply to them. If it weren’t for the RNLI at least the idiot-gene pool would be severely reduced.

Sometimes I say to myself, "Look right, look left, look right again. If the road is clear, quick march." Was that the green cross code and would it have been a public information film?

There was a really hard hitting one a few years ago - I think drunk driving where the child who was killed ‘appeared’ in different places around the man’s home

Or that AIDs one with the gravestone.

It certainly worked, it scared the bejesus out of me.

@Badbadbunny I agree. I also think of the idiots who tombstone off bridges and piers when it gets hot. Bring back the spirit of Dark and lonely water I say.
And the numpties who play chicken on railway lines

I’d rather someone tried on the v small chance of reviving me than just shrugged and walked away!!

I wish I'd brought me brolly.
70s kids will recognise this one.

omg I still think of the rubber boot being sucked into the edge of the escalator... I am always moving my kids feet to the centre of the step so they don't get eaten by the moving stairs! these things stay with you....

I remember one about wearing seatbelts in the back of the car. Showed the driver and said she knew her killer. It was her son who was in the back of the car with no seatbelt on and when she stopped suddenly he went into her and she died. And then he sat back down.

Casualty covered blood donation last year.

Presumably public info films are paid for by the public purse. The public body I work for manages a lot of public risk, but our advertising budget disappeared about 15 years ago.

I remember being shown them at school - one where a boy ends up permanently injuried and his sister who was with him never speaks again. What I mainly remember is the indignation I felt aged six or seven when the man who showed us the film and talked about it said that the sister did what girls usually did and screamed. 40 years on and my main takeaway was that he was sexist!

I watched Apaches (the farm one) on youtube a decade or so ago. Horrifying - can't believe it was made for children. One of the deaths is a child screaming in agony some time after accidentally drinking a chemical.

Petunia was way ahead of her time with lip fillers. Every time I see someone with a duck bill she immediately springs to mind. My DSis and I refer to them as Petunias, totally lost on the younger generations so we get away with it. We are both dentists so can spot a filled lip from at 40 paces.