Scare stories
What are government warnings really doing?
RARELY does the British government speak directly to the citizenry. The last mailing to every household was about the millennium bug. “Preparing for Emergencies: What You Need to Know”, which will land on every British doormat in the next few weeks, is also rare for another reason: it is the first attempt to address fears of foreign threats since the much-ridiculed “Protect and Survive” pamphlet of 1980, which advised householders to whitewash their windows against radiation burns and explained how to build a bomb shelter.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Scare stories”
From the July 31st 2004 edition
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