Local media don't really get that much news happening in areas and therefore have to run with silly stories about how a lost cat found its way home after 10 years, or an old women has just completed her black belt at the age of 97. One story that they always love, especially local papers, is the releasing of balloons, whether that's people releasing balloons for charity, in memory of someone who died or just to highlight a new campaign. So if you want some local coverage about an event just release some balloons and the local papers are bound to turn up. The subject of balloons came to my mind some months ago when balloons where released to highlight a local campaign for people to shop locally in St. Helens. I'm not going to go into my dislike of St Helens here, as anyone who knows me or even reads some of this blog will know this fact straight away, and how the campaign is likely to fail but I will talk about balloon releasing. I just don't understand why people release balloons to signify the start of a campaign, before I go on I would say that the only form of balloon releasing I don't understand is when it is done for for commercial campaign reasons, I can see why they do it for charity etc. Getting people to shop locally isn't helped by the council releasing balloons, maybe if they spent some money improving the town centre, offering free car parking or actually doing something to benefit shoppers maybe people would take note. I can just see in my mind two little old ladies "Lets go shopping in St. Helens" one says, the other replies "why have they got some better shops or improved the town centre?", "No they have just released some balloons and I thought we should go". I just don't see how it does anything!!!! Anyway this issue of balloons slipped my mind for a while but they have made a huge come back this week. Firstly there was the story of a balloon, which was released by a kid from a school event with his details attached, this balloon was found by the Queen and she sent him back a letter to let him know that she had found it. The disappointing part of the story was that the school was only a few miles down the road, it would have been much better if the kid had set the balloon off from Australia and the Queen found it in the gardens of Windsor Castle. Second we had the story of the kid being trapped in the runaway weather balloon, which we now know was probably faked as the parents of the child are media whores. Thirdly and most importantly we had the beach ball at Sunderland! All I can say to this is that its time we kicked beach balls out of football, we need to start a campaign to rid football of this menace!! Maybe we could have a balloon release to bring attention to this new campaign!
La Casa de Carlota
3 years ago
