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The Central Office of Information has come under fire for encouraging

people to experiment with guns in an ad for the Territorial Army.

The latest Advertising Standards Authority report attacks the Saatchi

and Saatchi poster - which showed a picture of a rifle with the

headline: ‘Dustmen, could you empty one of these?’ - on the grounds that

the ad was ‘likely to offend and encourage an anti-social attitude

towards firearms’.

The case highlights the sensitivity to the use of gun imagery in the

light of the recent Dunblane and Tasmania massacres.

The ASA report also records a host of complaints against ads for their

sexual content. Carlsberg Tetley has been upbraided by a church group

for an Arrol’s 80 poster showing a cartoon of a woman in her underwear

peering between her partner’s legs with a magnifying glass. The ASA

threw out the complaints, saying that the ad was unlikely to cause

widespread offence.

Complaints about a Daihatsu ad that featured a man and five women in a

Daihatsu car with the strapline: ‘Picks up five times more women than a

Lamborghini’ were also rejected.

Meanwhile, Mirror Group Newspapers was attacked on two counts for its

reader offers. One front-page flash on the Sunday Mirror promised a free

CD, but did not state that other goods would be sent to readers on

approval. The other promotion, in the Daily Mirror, offered readers the

chance to sail to France twice for pounds 1 but failed to specify that

the offer did not begin until the following day. Both complaints were

upheld.