Prime Minister Gordon Brown Has A Pop At Games

Britain’s rather wonderful new Prime-Minister-Without-Mandate, Gordon Brown had his own little pop at videogame makers earlier this week.

Speaking a press conference at his amazing and free central London pad (10 Downing Street) yesterday, Gordy was asked directly, “Yesterday you launched a consultation into the effects of violent video games, what is your message to the makers of these video games and do your concerns extend to violent rap or hip-hop lyrics?”

To which, the Prime Minister replied:

“They do. I have said before that parents in the modern world, and I count myself one of them, feel under enormous pressure because whereas the sources of authority and the sources of information even for previous generations were often the parents, the school, the peer group, voluntary organisations, the sources of information for children at a very young age now are the internet or television, commercial advertising. And that is a good thing in so many different ways, but where there is pornographic or violent material any parent is going to be concerned about the impact, and any parent wants the reassurance that everything possible is being done when they can't see in almost every occasion the point at which their son or their daughter is watching some of these Internet materials either through a telephone or through other
media of communication, they want reassurance that we are doing everything in our power."

We appear to have moved away from the questioner's regarding hip-hop and rap lyrics, let alone videogames here. Brown appears to be thrashing around in a cesspool of porn. Maybe a popular TV psychologist could help? Or maybe SPOnG is deliberately missing the point in order instead to talk about our own populist agenda?

"Now I think we have got to look at this as a society. I hope this is one of the areas where there can be common ground between all parties. I am not interested in censorship at all, but I think we do need rules governing some aspects of the internet and videos where children are involved and the whole purpose of this review would be to draw on the advice of all sources so that we can look at this in a sensible way. This is a challenge of modern society as a result of the explosive development of the internet, new forms of media, multimedia forms of communication. Brown continues...

"And of course at an earlier age than ever before children have access to all these materials and I think every parent here, but every parent in the country would be concerned that we do what we can. So we will set up this review, we will announce the details of it tomorrow and I hope that from the media itself there will be large numbers of people who will want to be involved in this exercise. I think it is a common if you like endeavour of our society to make sure that our children, while given every opportunity to benefit from new technology and the new media, are also protected against some of the malign influences that are trying to operate through that media.”

Right! That's it, we're now instigating our own witch hunt... sorry, enquiry, into the 'malign influences' within video game development in the UK. Actually, we're too busy and can't be bothered to keep an eye on it all, so we'll slip into complacency and let the government do it for us.

^{source: egovmonitor.com}