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Little England award for the week goes to Cambridge City Council and
its Labour leader, Simon Sedgwick-Jell. According to an article in the
Cambridge Evening News, headlined ‘You’re Not Wellcome!’, Sedgwick-Jell
is not happy about the plans of the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research
Council to set up a major gene-sequencing centre in the city.

The centre is a bid to keep work on the human genome in Britain. But
Sedgwick-Jell says the council will not approve the project unless the Wellcome
Trust contributes money towards low-cost housing in the city. ‘As far as
the people of Cambridge are concerned,’ he says, ‘having a high-prestige
institute here, if it contributes to a lot of extra social problems, is
not worth the candle.’

The newspaper’s editor, obviously embarrassed by this unwelcoming approach,
felt obliged to respond with a leader taking Sedgwick-Jell to task for his
‘outrageous’ comments. ‘If he will not say it, we will. The Wellcome Foundation
is welcome in Cambridge,’ it declared.

It meant the Wellcome Trust, of course – the charity, not the pharmaceuticals
company – but let that pass . . .

* * *

Barclaycard’s medical assistance is, we are sure, second to none. The
television advertisements leave us in no doubt. Who else but Barclaycard
would use a helicopter to fly in medical aid after Rowan Atkinson declines
to suck venom out of the nether regions of a colleague?

Somewhat less convincing is the ‘insect poison extractor which is advertised
in the Barclaycard collection – that curious compendium of devices that
arrives with your credit card bill and reads like the runner-up entries
in the Feedback summer competition.

The advertising copy claims that ‘bites and stings are all easily and
painlessly relieved . . . the vacuum pump sucks out any poison or venom
in seconds. . . Vital for the first aid kit.’

Highly efficacious, no doubt. But after any unfortunate encounter with
a black widow spider, our advice is: ‘This is unlikely to relieve the parts
that Atkinson will not reach.’

* * *

Another item in the Barclaycard collection also caught our eye. At least
this claim is unlikely to trouble the Advertising Standards Authority. The
advertisement was for a solar-powered watch. And the claim? ‘Timeless accuracy.’

* * *

Europe’s three main consumer electronics companies, Nokia, Philips and
Thomson, have spent the past few years promising us that the Barcelona Olympics
would be the launch pad for Europe’s high-definition TV system. Public viewing
sites, with live pictures from Spain, would give people their first taste
of widescreen HDTV.

All three companies assure us that there were plenty of sites round
Europe. Perhaps so, but there were pitifully few in Britain, and little
or no attempt was made to advertise them.

Finnish company Nokia had three sites, described as ‘a superb opportunity
to showcase the future of television to the general public’. One was in
the BBC’s TV Centre at White City and one in the British Airways Executive
Lounge at Gatwick airport – hardly locations the general public habitually
frequents.

French company Thomson promised 10 sites, around half of them public.
Mysteriously these also included the BBC’s TV Centre. Another was the Chukka
Bar in the Langham Hilton Hotel. Feedback took one look at the price of
drinks, made an excuse and left.

Philips had eight sites, including one at Thames TV studios in Euston.
Feedback went there, was grudgingly allowed in and taken to an almost empty
room by a burly security guard who sat behind throughout the showing. It
was not a relaxing way to see the future of television.

* * *

Any readers browsing through a recent issue of the reputable Journal
of the American Medical Association might be surprised by one of the advertising
campaigns.

Where one might expect to find a pharmaceuticals company promoting its
recombinant human insulin, there is instead a two-page spread advertising
a well-known international fast-food chain.

In the advertisement, the company tries very hard to convince the medical
profession that its products really aren’t so bad for us after all, and
that it keeps modifying them to make them even healthier. Doctors are invited
to apply for brochures to guide their patients through their junk-food diets.

So don’t be too surprised if one of these days your GP prescribes you
two cheeseburgers with French fries, washed down with a large cup of cola.

* * *

Love the band, not so sure about their latest good cause.

The Beach Boys have given their support to a number of environmental
campaigns in recent years, and good luck to them. But now they have pledged
$100 000 from their future concerts ‘to help provide 1000 video cameras
to enable indigenous and environmental groups around the world to film
their own local environmental problems and solutions’.

Is Feedback being excessively cynical in feeling that on this occasion
the dear old lads have slightly missed the point?

* * *

A psychologist once confided that when he told people his profession,
they invariably replied, ‘Oh, you’re not going to analyse me are you?’
Policemen, apparently, frequently get the response ‘Don’t nick me, I didn’t
do it.’ Ask various professionals, and the chances are there is a very limited
list of responses which people come up with on learning what field they
work in.

We’re not sure what the standard response to a metallurgist is, but
almost certainly it is not the one that we overhead on a golf course last
week. A golfer, on hearing that one of his fellow players was a metallurgist,
quickly chipped in with: ‘Pity you’ve not been getting your weather forecasts
right recently.’