Greenpeace 'Brexit' Bus

https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/press-releases/boris-johnsons-vote-leave-battle-bus-re-branded-outside-parliament-20160718/

"The famous ‘Vote Leave’ battle bus has been acquired by Greenpeace and is being re-branded outside Parliament. The bogus £350m NHS claim is being covered over with thousands of questions for the new government from Leave and Remain voters – many of them about what Brexit means for the environment. The questions, written on stickers, are forming a montage that will spell out the words ‘TIME FOR TRUTH’ in huge white letters on the side of the bus."

"The referendum campaign was marred by exaggerations and lies, but now we need the truth.  That’s why we’re covering Boris Johnson’s battle bus with thousands of questions for the new government from Leave and Remain voters. People want to know what ministers will do to keep our rivers and beaches clean once EU environment laws no longer apply in Britain. They want to know what the government will do about air pollution and climate change after we Brexit. Some just want to know if their European friends will be allowed to stay here. Only 329 MPs got to vote on who the next Prime Minister would be. The public didn’t get a say, they want answers about the future, and this time they want the truth." - John Sauven

http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2017/07/21/signs-society-brexit-bus/

"[A] blog postabout the ‘Go Home Van’. This van combined visibility and mobility to tell migrants in London, framed as illegal criminals, to go home – wherever that might (im)possibly be. Roda and Vivienne Lowndes have also written an article about the van as a symbolic policy object. They have looked at its various meanings and they have pointed out that: “Migrants sought to resist the van through hiding, while support organisations rejected dominant meanings and crafted alternatives.”

"The bus then delivers its punch line asking everybody to join in taking back control (from the EU) (“Let’s”). The last part is important, as this implies that by joining the EU we have lost control (over our borders, budgets, laws, sovereignty and so on)."

"Most notoriously it was repainted by Greenpeace challenging what they saw as the ‘lies’ and ‘exaggerations’ propagated by the bus and asking for ‘truth’ (“Time for Truth”) in what soon came to known as post-truth times."

"Buses routinely carry advertising slogans. Such slogans must comply with the standards set by the Advertising Standards Agency. However, as their website says: “For reasons of freedom of speech, we do not have remit over non-broadcast ads where the purpose of the ad is to persuade voters in a local, national or international electoral referendum.” As a New Statesman article, quoting this statement, points out: “In other words, political advertising is exempt from the regulation that would otherwise bar false claims and outrageous promises. You can’t claim that a herbal diet drink will make customers thinner, but you can claim that £350m a week will go to the NHS instead of the European Union.”

"[Brexit Bus] reinforced, exploited and entrenched various ‘myths’ about the EU and about what it means to leave the EU."

"As Barthes wrote: “myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions… Things appear to mean something by themselves…” – in this instance that thing was the bus."