Love it or hate it

There is a lot of work to do for me today as it's our "day off" and we've already received three assignments. The first one consists of three parts. We are asked to submit a personal statement about ourselves, to write a news story for a regional newspaper about two boys that nearly drowned when canoeing on a river, and to suggest some more follow-up stories about this event.

This first exercise is for training purposes only, but all following assignments will be graded and therefore relevant for the diploma.

Just to give you another insight into the campaign for the election on 6 May, I took a picture of all the material that has been thrown into the letterbox of our flat. It's material from all big and some small parties.

The picture of British National Party chairman Nick Griffin and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (see bottom right) caught my eyes today so I did some research on the BNP (no link here as I don't want you all to visit their website and by doing so increasing their traffic). The party uses the image of Churchill and some of his quotes. They ask the voters: "What would our war heroes think? They fought for keeping Britain British!" Family members of Winston Churchill have already complained and are quoted that Churchill wouldn't have supported the BNP's goals.

Doing my research, I came across a legal procedure going on between Unilever and the BNP. Unilever is running an advertisement campaign for Marmite, a (horrid) traditional bread spread in the English speaking world, titled "Love it or hate it." One of the TV ads shows the fictitious Hate Party that speaks out against Marmite and all Marmite lovers. BNP said that the man in the video looks very much the same as Nick Griffin and that the table and the wall with pictures and logos are very simular to the ones in the room where their video for the 2010 election was taken. In answer to the ad of Unilever, the BNP has recently integrated the picture of a glass of Marmite in BNP's election video. They now go to court as Unilever has sued the BNP.