It's difficult to talk about the UK at the moment because, and it's hard to give this enough emphasis, IT'S AN ENORMOUS CLUSTER-FUCK AND EVERYTHING IS AWFUL.

To give you some idea, Truss is currently less popular than Putin and is the least popular PM the UK has ever had (in the years that we measured).

There's a bill going through tonight about fracking. But it's been turned into a confidence motion on Liz Truss, and it has full hard /// three line whip, slips withdrawn. (basically, members of the Conservative Party have been instructed to vote in accordance with their party's wishes, and not doing so is serious, and can lead to the MP effectively being expelled from their party.) And the three line whip is against their 2019 manifesto pledge.

Normally, we'd expect to see MPs rebelling against this. Certainly, at the moment, a bunch of them are in the mood to do so.

There's an additional complication here though - a bunch of MPs have sent in letters of no confidence, and that could trigger Yet Another Leadership Race (they've already met the threshold, but they've raised the bar to be half the party needs to send the letters because lol who cares about rules). But, if an MP is expelled their letter no longer counts. So a bunch of MPs are openly saying they're only voting for this fracking bill because they think Truss is hopeless and needs to go.

https://twitter.com/BethRigby/status/1582672374369226753

https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1582762437954375680

Also, Suella Braverman (who managed to be a crueller home secretary than any who've been before her which is remarkable considering the list of utterly hateful cunts who've had the job) was sacked / resigned today.

So, if there's not much talk here from people in the UK it's because nothing makes any sense and everything's changing every day.

As far as I can make out, every country has public information films. They rarely pull punches, which is pretty important as their messages are usually important. I remember being terrified by Monolith as a child. I still think about It's Thirty For a Reason whenever I drive in suburban areas, and I've seen similar things from New Zealand, Canada and so on. Creative agencies love PIF gigs because you can do so much more than a normal advert/TV spot would allow. People can, and do, go all out on them. They're also ripe for parody

However, back in the seventies, that's when the UK government went a little... well.. overboard. Imagine showing Lonely Water to actual children. Or Stand Steady, or even Frisbee? I remember being shown films like these at school, from scratchy old VHS tapes on clunky old school TVs. I remember them being broadcast during children's programming time. I remember being irrationally terrified of old fridges even though I've never see a fridge with a lock in my entire life.

But sure, they're scary topics and sometimes you do need to scare people into not doing stupid stuff that might kill them. There are plenty of examples of scary short PIFs aimed at all ages from their invention right up to the present day. But then there are the longer form movies about safety for children. That's what this post is really about. Let's call these the "unholy trinity" of PIF terror:

There's the weird time-loop slaughter fest of Building Sites Bite (unfortunately the only copy I could find was a 'reacts' video but it's worth watching)

Ignoring the of-it's-time but now recognised as problematic "Cowboys and Indians" conceit, Apaches is utterly horrifying.

Then there's the dystopian awfulness of The Finishing Line

These films were rated PG (aka safe for kids). They were shown in schools. Not just high schools, but primary (elementary) schools. Although to be fair, someone did get a clue fairly quickly and The Finishing Line was banned and withdrawn in under a year because holy shit.

I'd be interested to see some of your favourite public information films, please do link them if you have any.