Why it's time for some bloody simple advice...
Australians like to tell it as it is. In 1989 when the Transport Accident Commission wanted a powerful road safety campaign to emphasize the personal costs of drink driving they came up with possibly the best advertising slogan ever: ‘If you drink, then drive, you’re a bloody idiot.’ In that year there were 776 deaths on Australian roads; by 2012 it had fallen to 303. Anyone who’s been to Australia in the last decade will have heard that phrase; it’s still used as a friendly warning in pubs all the time. So when the Foreign Office launched a public consultation on its travel advice and said it was looking at the Australian system I was immediately keen to know exactly how it worked. I have to be honest, deep down I was hoping that somewhere on the Aussie Government website I’d find the phrase ‘If you go to North Korea, you’re a bloody idiot.’ Sadly, that’s not the case but as I expected, their advice is clearer and stronger. The website is just called Smartraveller, nic...