larryni.me.uk

Well, that didn’t take long. Yesterday I posted a scan of the Ryanair ad from the Irish News featuring Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, and I was wondering what he reaction was gonna be. I thought it would me someone from the DUP to complain first. Looks like I was wrong, the UUP’s Michael Copeland was faster off the mark:

A unionist politician has hit out at budget airline Ryanair over its latest ad campaign describing it as “crass and offensive” to those who served in the military.

UUP east Belfast representative Michael Copeland believes the new advertisement which capitalises on the recent withdrawal of British troops from the province “was scraping the barrel” and alienated a large section of the Northern Ireland travelling public.

The tongue-in-cheek advert for the budget airline’s new Belfast routes features a Private Eye-style photo of Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness proclaiming “Ryanair fares are so low even the British Army flew home” while Sinn Fein party president Gerry Adams looks on in the distance.

Mr Copeland said the advert was deliberately provocative and insensitive to those, like himself, who served in the Army.

Catch yourself on, Michael. It’s supposed to be light-hearted. Ryanair thinks so too:

A spokesman from Ryanair told the Belfast Telegraph last night that they thought the Ulster Unionist should book one of its cheap flights.

It’s not the first time that Ryanair used ‘controversial’ ads, in 2005 they used Churchill which got a number of complaints:

The campaign featured the wartime PM declaring: “We shall fly them to the beaches, we shall fly them to the hills, we shall fly them to London!”

The advertisement ran in the aftermath of the London July 2005 bombings.

Ryanair insisted at the time the campaign was intended to encourage the public to continue to travel as normal in the wake of the attacks, and the complaints were not upheld by the ASA.

And last year in August they posted the following picture on the front page of their site to protest the introduction of ridiculously strict anti-terror procedures:

I like Ryanair’s ads.