The last few days

Ok, anyone who lives in the UK, and has been taking notice of the news lately, will surely be aware of the riots that have been going on in London of late. But now it’s no longer in London. Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham have also been affected, with scores of thugs and looters coming out to riot like it’s the 1980’s. The low-down is that a chap was shot in a drugs bust, and there was a peaceful protest by members of his family against the shooting. That kicked off, and now present-day London greatly resembles that of the 1940’s. In other words, shit has gone down, hitting the fan, and getting royally fucked in the process. What started as a spat between police and a handful of protestors has turned into an excuse for every anarchist to get together and fuck shit up like there’s no tomorrow. But when I say anarchist, I don’t mean someone defying government to support a common cause. Well, in a way I do, since every ‘oppressed’ teen has taken the shooting of a drugs-dealer as an excuse to rampage through most major cities in Britain and take whatever the damn well want. And these people have been saying repeatedly ‘The police don’t respect us’, ‘They don’t like us because we’re poor’, ‘We wnt 2 b treeted gd, u no?, (Yes, actually talking in text-speak here). Well guys, you’re doing the right thing towards getting that respect. No seriously, well done.

And what do the media blame for this? Do they blame the government spending cuts? Do they blame the lack of a decent system that encourages these people to get off the job-seekers and actually make something for themselves? Do they blame three decades of pussy-footed policing and no intention to tell these people ‘You can’t do these things, you WILL go to jail’? No. No, the media has decided that, in keeping with the tradition of using video games as a scapegoat to blame adolescent violence on, that the games industry is the villain in this. Apparently the Grand Theft Auto series is responsible for the amount of violence going on up and down our country. How the deuce can you come to that conclusion? Do they think that all the rioters were playing away on their Xboxes the previous night and all thought ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if this was in real life? Let’s all go out and cause a riot just like in the game, because there’s nothing else that could prompt such an outburst’.
The offending article is here:. Reading through it you can really get an idea of how the media is simply clutching at straws here. The notion that video games corrupt minds is one that has been used so many times in the past, and frankly guys, it’s getting old. Either make a valid argument, with evidence to back it up, or GTFO n00b.

Regards, The Beard.