Advert causes controversy - Pope also Catholic

I see, according to this morning's Guardian, Channel 4 has agreed to show an advert for a charity that offers hoovering and knitting needle services, and it's caused some praise and outrage in equal measure.

Apologies, when I say 'hoovering and knitting needle services" what I actually mean is abortions - unfortunately it's early and the synaptic pathways in my head are having problems with being tasteful, such is life.

Anyhow, I digress. Yes, we're going to have an advert for abortions from some charity called Marie Stopes. According to the charity's Chief Executive, they received 350,000 calls last year to their 24 hour "how to fall down the stairs" helpline, thus an advert is required because "there are hundreds of thousands of women who want and need sexual health information and advice, and access to services."

I can understand this, after all, it's pretty clear isn't it that if you're non-geographic local fixed-rate helpline is only receiving just over one call every two minutes 24/7 then your brand and market penetration is in much need of a boost, especially when the number of abortions actually taking place in a year is only 57% of the calls you receive - the hit rate just needs to increase!

As the campaign coordinator for Abortion Rights told the Guardian, such an advert is an "important breakthrough" for women's services, and I'd have to say that they're right. It's pretty evident that women don't know about these services because the call rate is so low and the number of abortions has been falling whilst the the call rate has increased.

Of course, this advert has caused moral panic amongst the God-fearing nation, as you'd expect. Words such as "grotesque" have been uttered, and n doubt they will be pilloried by their zealot equivalents on the fanatically pro-choice side of the argument. Such is the wonderment of the abortion debate, it produces idiots on both sides screaming and shouting.

Oh sorry, what's my opinion on the advert? Oh I don't really care that much. It's rather clear, as my sarcasm above suggested, that there are less abortions each year by an order of magnitude compared to the number of woman already ringing this helpline. At the same time the helpline is clearly well known already, I expect the impact of the advert to be the square root of zero.

What does bother me though is this apparent loophole that allows a charity to advertise such services but not a private clinic which operates for profit. Business is business after all, so why shouldn't they be able to promote their own unique private hoovers? That is the truly outrageous aspect of this whole thing really.

Of course, what I'm really looking forward too is in the incendiary online arguments as the zealots on each side go at each other.

Now, anyone know where I can buy some ferrets? I have a business idea.