The Danish road safety campaign hit its target market.
The Danish road safety campaign hit its target market.
KEY POINTS:
A storm has erupted over a video on National Wellington Central candidate Stephen Franks' blogsite which features topless women.
The video has outraged Adam Prouse, who emailed Mr Franks, senior National staff and the Herald to complain about a video he claimed bordered on the pornographic.
The clipwas produced by Denmark's Road Safety Council two years ago to highlight concerns about speeding. It is a two-minute-long spoof news item about a campaign using topless women to hold 50km/h roadsigns up at crash blackspots as a way of drawing attention to the speed limit.
In 2006, a council spokeswoman told the BBC that the campaign - which swiftly registered more than one million hits on its website - had been an effective way of reaching its target market and made many of them think about the dangers of speeding.
But Mr Prouse was not amused.
"I am a long-time National voter but I am disgusted by some of the content posted by Stephen Franks on his blogsite," Mr Prouse said.
"Mr Franks spuriously suggests this may be an effective way of reducing speeding. Do you believe it is appropriate for a National party candidate to post videos of topless women on the internet?"
The clip was posted by Mr Franks yesterday. The posting contains no screen shots, and has a warning on it that the link should not be clicked if the Danish lewd sense of humour could offend.
David Farrar's widely-read Kiwiblog site picked up the clip and also posted a link to it, sparking a heated debate on the site as to its appropriateness.
Mr Franks was unapologetic yesterday.
"When I put it on, I was thinking about the complaints people have about the graphic television road safety ads, and the person who sent it to me said 'Do you think this would cause the same level of complaint?'
"It was intended to be a contrast of one sort of thing that upsets people with another ... As I put it up I thought, 'If that upsets them they don't have very much to worry about'.
" If I thought it was going to cause real offence I wouldn't have put it up. I've got bigger fish to fry than just deliberately causing people offence."
