* Transport for London
* The Met Office
* A bunch of local councils
TfL has been partially advertising-funded for decades, going right back to the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s. They've always had adverts on the outside and inside of buses and on the inside of Underground trains. Although the difference here is the privacy issues relating to third-party cookies.
The Met Office has been forced into partially funding itself commercially.
Local councils have no money due to central government piling on additional unfunded obligations, and sharply reducing their central grant-in-aid, over the past 14 years.
Councils have been essentially unable to increase their council tax rates to compensate for the above. It is illegal for them to increase rates above the Government-imposed cap, without holding and winning a local referendum. That referendum must be held at the same time as the local elections, and the council must prepare two budgets: one with the amount they want to raise by, and one staying within the cap. If they lose the referendum then the capped budget is automatically imposed.
Realistically the party currently in local opposition will campaign for 'No' in the local referendum. It's just too tempting to use the political capital to win support in the actual election, compared to supporting their opposition's increased budget.
Further, Council Tax is regressive. Left-leaning parties don't want to increase it because the poorest will see a higher proportion of their income going on Council Tax.
Between 2012 and 2016, central government performed a bait-and-switch approach, where councils could gain an extra 1% central funding - if they didn't increase their council tax rates. (While inflation was running higher than 1%, making it a real-terms cut.) This freeze has of course been compounded.
Ultimately the referendum system is a pretence. It pretends that the previous hard capping scheme now has an escape clause, while making it practically impossible to actually exercise it.
Was flabbergasted by this as well. Anyone know any other countries that allow ads on government websites? This is the first time I'm hearing about this.
I feel like this article just talk about a tiny tiny part from a giant puzzle.
>Total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and China was
£100.9 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023, a decrease of 4.8% or £5.1 billion in
current prices from the four quarters to the end of Q3 2022.
Legitimately insane. The byline asks the right question, but what is actually going on here? I assume some part of the government has to have green lit advertising on their government page, how does that happen?
Did literally no one from the government look at their own pages?
Remember Grant Shapps the previous industrial strategy minister and current defence minister used to sell courses on how to make £20,000 on the internet in a month. £400 for the course. So this is not really that surprising.
Because its the national government that is bothered by China, and its local government authorities and agencies that are adding the ads (presumably because of diminished budgets)
No one can resist that sweet internet ad money. If there exists large audience and some manager sees projection of ad revenue, it's too tempting. Think of it as an analogy to lobbying, except with ads it's obviously noticable and provable.
