Lego will stop advertising its products in the Daily Mail, following a public campaign calling on big companies to drop adverts from newspapers accused of promoting “hatred, discrimination and demonisation”, the company has announced. The Danish firm, which has previously run free giveaways in the newspaper, responded to social media campaigners Stop Funding Hate by tweeting: “We have finished the agreement with the Daily Mail and are not planning any future promotional activity with the newspaper." Stop Funding Hate urges advertisers to rethink their ‘support’ for rightwing newspapers over what it sees as misleading headlines about child refugees, and the recent ruling by High Court judges that Parliament must be consulted before Article 50 is triggered. A spokesperson for the campaign said: "Stop Funding Hate welcomes the decision from Lego. We are asking brands to listen to their customers when they tell them they want to stop funding hate, and that is what they've done.
"People are becoming more aware that the money they spend could end up supporting publications whose stories, language or portrayal of certain people, fuels division. This urgently needs to addressed. These headlines harm people." Lego is the first big company to agree to the campaigners’ demands. @StopFundingHate We have finished the agreement with The Daily Mail and are not planning any future promotional activity with the newspaper — LEGO (@LEGO_Group) November 12, 2016 The Co-Op Group has said it is ‘reviewing’ its advertising but other companies have, until now, refused to withdraw their adverts. John Lewis, another key target of the campaign said: “We fully appreciate the strength of feeling on this issue but we never make an editorial judgement on a particular newspaper.” Waitrose and Marks & Spencer are also being urged to drop their Christmas advertising in certain tabloids. Lego spokesperson Roar Rude Trangbaek told The Independent: "We spend a lot of time listening to what children have to say.
And when parents and grandparents take the time to let us know how they feel, we always listen just as carefully. "We are both humbled and honoured to see how much consumers all over the world express their care for our company and our brand. And we will continuously do our very best to live up to the trust and faith that people all around the world show us every day. "The agreement with The Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future." The announcement was welcomed by BBC presenter Gary Lineker, who has backed the Stop the Hate campaign and today announced he had spoken to Walkers, whose crisps he promotes, about withdrawing their adverts from the Sun. Brick by brick..... https://t.co/nEJMII9W66 — Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) November 12, 2016 A Daily Mail spokesman said: "Our agreement with Lego has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with Lego in the foreseeable future."
The original agreement had been for a promotional campaign of free giveaways rather than an advert, he added. It comes a week after a British father’s letter to Lego regarding their links with the Daily Mail went viral. Bob Jones, who said his six-year-old son ‘loves’ Lego, wrote an open letter to the company after the Daily Mail ran a controversial front page calling the High Court judges who ruled Parliament must be given a say on Brexit “enemies of the country”. He wrote: "I love Lego. My 6 year old son loves Lego. He inherited all of mine three years ago and his collection has multiplied many times since...It seems you can do no wrong.For a few years now you have done free giveaways in the Daily Mail newspaper... But I'm afraid to say I can no longer do it." I love Lego: Celebrating 50 years of the tiny building blocks Mr Jones said the paper's recent headlines had gone too far and did “nothing but create distrust of foreigners, blame immigrants for everything, and as of yesterday are now having a go at top judges in the UK for being gay while making a legal judgment.”
He added: “Lego, to me has always been an inclusive product. Breaking barriers between gender, building children's imagination and confidence to do their own thing. Something adults and children can and do, bond over. “Your links to the Daily Mail are wrong. And a company like yours shouldn't be supporting them. And as crap as I feel telling my son he can't have the free Lego kit that he sees on the front of the paper in the store, I have explained to him that the paper it is attached to is the sort of paper that tells lies about people, like some of his friends from school. Even my six-year-old understands that what they print is wrong.” The Stop Funding Hate campaign was founded in August following what it said was “hatred, discrimination and demonisation” being promoted by some newspapers.News HomeJust InAustraliaWorldTrump's AmericaBusinessSportArtsAnalysis & OpinionProgramsMore Sydney gets turned into a Lego city Johanna Nicholson meets Lego artist Ryan McNaught to talk about about his playful new exhibition
These are the people who could determine what happens following the revelation about US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions' conversations with Russia's ambassador. We talked to two experts about how prices can keep rising, if a price drop is inevitable — and whether it will cause a US-style collapse. Are you guilty of weeing in the pool? Well, scientists now know how to accurately measure it.Here are my Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins tips to find all the collectables and complete the game. But first, a couple of ingenious suggestions from my kids -- now how did they get better than me at this video gaming lark? After all I have more experience, knowledge and strategies than they do. Surely it can't all be down to faster reaction times?I took the time to watch them play Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins on their 3DS XL while we toured New Zealand last month -- being able to download it while we were out there made for some ideal on-the-go entertainment. What I noticed was that they played the game very differently from me.
While I worked through the various fetch quests, fights and collecting tasks they were much more haphazard. In many ways they didn't play by "the rules" at all, certainly not how I imagine the game developers expected the game to be played.Rather than following the suggested route, or using the provided vehicles, they often went their own way or made up their own challenges. Things like seeing how far they could drive without bumping other cars or running red lights or endlessly practicing skids in each of the vehicles.This approach had its downsides, I've even seen the game crash while they played and it's never done that for me, but it also yielded benefits. They stumble upon functionality that I remained oblivious to even after completing the game. Their lackadaisical approach to progression meant that they experimented with buttons, touch-screen and environment, and discovered some nice little ways to play.As you can see in my separate tips video, there are two of these that I thought would be worth sharing, before running down my more systematically discovered tips forLego City Undercover: The Chase Begins.Car Surfing Tip: A few days into playing the kids realised that you could stand on cars as well as get into them.
This led to not a few hours touring the city on the roof of various automobiles, and quickly turned into a competition about who could get atop the biggest truck.Watching them play like this, letting the game drive them round the streets of Auburn I noticed they would keep a finger poised over the scanner button. They had realised that this was not only a fun way to get around but also the best way to find all the side quests.You see, if you get into a car to hunt down the various collectibles the scanner option disappears, you have to get out to use it -- and this means you can't see when it is flashing to tell you there is something nearby to discover. Riding on top of a car this problem goes away as you tour the world while still have the scanner icon visible. Camera Control: I'm often berating my youngest for returning my 3DS XL covered in sticky finger prints. On Lego City Undercover you don't have to touch the lower screen so I had respectfully asked them to keep their grubby paws off.
So, when I received the handheld back with the lower screen covered in goo I started on a bit of a rant. "But Dad, you need to touch the bottom screen to control the camera" was their stereo response. After a bit of investigating I too discovered that while the Left and Right triggers will pan your view left and right you can also hold a (preferably clean) finger on the lower screen to gain full control of where you are looking - both horizontally and vertically, just like you do with dual stick controls.This is not only a useful way to see what's going on but also means you can scan around to find the best routes onto high buildings for those hard-to-reach collectables. They also discovered that you don't have to hold your 3DS up like a berk when using your scanner, the Circle Pad also lets you look around the environment.So now you've had the kid's Lego City Undercover wisdom, here's my accumulated tips and tricks for the Wii U and 3DS game:Red Bricks First: Aim to collect and unlock the Red Bricks that offer stud and collectable multipliers first as this enables you to ramp up your collecting and purchasing of other items.
Smashing: If you're stuck, trying smashing up everything around you -- more often than not, you'll discover an object to build.Police Station: Don't forget that you need to return to the Police Station to unlock bonuses and extras you have collected. With the open world nature of the game it is easy to avoid going back to the game hub for a long time, this just slows your progress down.Vehicle Flipping: If you flip your vehicle over you can shake the Wii U Gamepad to get yourself back to normal. On the 3DS if you get stuck just hold down A until you over-rev and get repositioned back on track.Be Diverted: In Lego City Undercover more than any Lego video game it pays to go wondering. Don't be too objective-focused otherwise you will miss intricacies of the game.Save Up: It is worth destroying everything in sight for those all important studs and bricks. Also, don't be in a rush to spend your studs or bricks. Take particular care of which super builds you complete first, some are important and part of the main quests while others are optional (like the ramps).