I’d call it a misuse of government funding because it is! This shameless promo ignores the government brief and is targeted at promoting Labour developments. To go along with its recent public funded self promotion letter Oldham Labour Council has now used money from the governments “Reopening High Streets Safely Fund” to commission an animation clearly targeted to promote their indoor market and Spindles developments in a positive light ahead of the local elections. The fund is wholly intended to promote the safe opening of the high street under 4 activity strands. 1. Support to develop an action plan for how the local authority may begin to safely reopen their local economies. 2. Communications and public information activity to ensure that reopening of local economies can be managed successfully and safely. 3. Business-facing awareness raising activities to ensure that reopening of local economies can be managed successfully and safely. 4. Temporary public realm changes to ensure that reopening of local economies can be managed successfully and safely. What you get is the first 50 seconds of this 1 minute 36 second animation talking about the history of the indoor market, then you get hands, face, space the first reference to retail safety and 16 seconds later the safety message is dumped to promote the future changing look of the Spindles and a shopkeeper looking forward to what will be a forced move from the marked for demolition market to his new shop In the Spindles. That’s 16 seconds of safety messages and 1 minute 20 of Labour rose tinted self promotion.
