I saw this on television yesterday but couldn’t find anything about it online — although the video is here. Now Robert Sharp has directed me to a couple of pages on this issue.

It seems as though the regulations surrounding advertising junk food are about to be tightened further. Yesterday adverts for junk food were banned during programmes aimed at 16-year-olds and under.

But Netmums reckon this isn’t enough — they want such adverts to be banned until after 9pm! That’s right. Tomato ketchup is on an equal footing with blood and guts. Baps with burgers in them are now as offensive as bare baps.

An incredible fact appears in the Telegraph article as well. If breast milk were to be advertised, it would also be classed as junk food. These new regulations are not intended to do any real good at all. They are just designed to placate the authoritarian parents who think the answer to the world’s ills is more government legislation.

This ban will be completely counter-productive. It is against the interests of children. It is estimated that children’s channels could lose as much as 15% of their revenue as a result. Children’s programming has already seen an appreciable decline in quality. Terrestrial channels have begun to shunt off their children’s programming to various graveyard slots like 5am, to begrudgingly meet the quota.

The new advertising restrictions will accelerate this trend. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some children’s channels begin to go out of business. No doubt Netmums would then be complaining about the lack of decent children’s programming, but it would be partly their fault.

I don’t doubt that junk food is a problem. But is it caused by advertising? Surely only tangentially.

I have always been sceptical about the power of advertising. I spent a huge chunk of my childhood obsessively watching Formula 1 and I never became a smoker or a problem drinker. I’m sure advertising works — otherwise firms wouldn’t do it. But surely it is more about brand recognition than forming habits.

The real cause of the junk food problem is right under parents’ noses — but they can’t bear to accept it. If parents are worried about junk food, there is a simple solution that they can all apply. Don’t feed your children junk food.

It shouldn’t be difficult. If you are too weak-willed say “no” to your child’s requests for junk food, you are not doing your job as a parent.

The Netmums campaign is symptomatic of a wider problem with society. There is not a hint of Netmums suggesting that parents take personal responsibility for the upbringing of their children. Instead, they lobby the government to ensure that their preferred solutions are imposed on everyone — regardless of anyone else’s views on the matter.

The approach is summed up by a quote on the Netmums website.

The amount of ‘junk’ food advertising aimed specifically at children (especially during children’s programmes) is of particular concern to me. This advertising does work (with brand recognition), as my children ask me to buy the foods they have seen advertised.

Oh, and I take it you said no to your children? If not, then take some responsibility and do your job as a parent. If so, then congratulations! You have solved the problem yourself — without having to resort to yet more needless and counter-productive government legislation.

I would like to see a total ban on highly processed foods being promoted to young children (in shops and in the media) and instead see healthy foods advertised (fruit, vegetables, wholemeal bread etc.) using the same type of well-known characters, catchy jingles etc.

So not only does this person want to force junk food manufacturers to stop promoting their products (even in shops!), she also wants to force healthy food companies to advertise!

Nice try getting that to work, but some economic realities are working against you there. If fruit companies found it beneficial to advertise with catchy jingles, they would be doing it already. Perhaps if it is such a great — and financially viable — idea, then Netmums could buy the slots and advertise healthy foods themselves.

The reality? The junk food ban means that children’s television channels are now courting car manufacturers to fill the rather hefty gap (ahem) left by the junk food companies.

As Robert Sharp suggests though, developments in the future (and even in the present) will be even more sinister. Companies will start to resort to more subliminal (and therefore harder to police) forms of advertising such as product placement. And junk food manufacturers are now diverting their substantial advertising budgets (which won’t disappear just because Netmums would like them to) to the increasingly popular children’s websites.

Blue Peter is in the news at the moment because it is losing a show per week. So it will be going back to two programmes per week, just like it was up until the mid-1990s. And this is not long after it went down from five shows per week.

Of course, like most decent people, I am outraged. But if I was in the programme’s target audience, would I give a monkey’s? Probably not.

When I was actually in Blue Peter’s target audience, I thought Blue Peter was one of the most boring programmes in the world. I just couldn’t understand the appeal.

There were only two different things that ever happened on Blue Peter. The first type involved a twatty presenter abseiling — and the presenters of my era were twatty. Take your pick from Tim Vincent, Stuart Miles or — worst of all — Katy Hill. No bloody wonder I didn’t watch it.

The other type involved making some rubbish makeshift doll’s house out of a bunch of ropey catchphrases. Here’s one I made earlier, sticky back plastic, yes, yes I get it. Ha ha ha.

Apart from that, I have no real memories of the programme from my childhood. In fact, all of my strongest memories of the programme are from when I was in my mid-teens.

Now I am more mature, and I think that Blue Peter is an important institution which is what puts the Great in Great Britain, or something like that. But here is the problem with Blue Peter: it is not aimed at children at all. It is aimed at adults or, more specifically, parents.

Most children’s programmes are, actually. You only had to look at the reaction to Dick and Dom In Da Bungalow, which split people into two camps: children and parents. The parents were shocked that Dick and Dom did not educate, and raised their arms in horror at the ‘Bogies’ game.

But these elements of no-holds-barred immaturity — and the fact that it didn’t provide advertising slots for the shit boy bands that are usually the staple of Saturday morning television — were precisely what kids found entertaining. As for me, the first time I saw it I was actually crying with laughter. I think it would be a sad state of affairs if po-faced parents banned children from being children.

That is why I am suspicious about the Blue Peter institution. I don’t find it offensive, but I think the reason it exists is to keep adults happy. Blue Peter is mostly about mythology and nostalgia more than anything else. It’s about watching the new presenter fail to flip a pancake. It’s about sticky back plastic and “here’s one I made earlier”. It’s about “what a lovely pair of knockers”. It’s about that elephant that did a massive shit on the floor.

But children don’t care about any of that stuff. If children like it as much as adults do, then that’s fair enough. But I suspect that they don’t. Part of me hopes that Blue Peter exists for as long as television exists. Part of me suspects that it really ought to be consigned to nostalgic clip shows.