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I decided to write about rioting.
This has been an odd thing to get round to writing. I’ve been thinking about it for days but everytime I’ve gone to start typing I’ve read something that eloquently sums up my views far better than I can myself.
A case in point being Russell Brand’s excellent thing in the Guardian.
First off I don’t think I have any particular insight into why our society apparently began to unravel this week. I don’t have any solutions and can’t pretend to really have any understanding of the people involved. My life is fairly comfortable and is as removed in social terms, if not geography, as it is possible to be.
I think the thing that really prompted me to and get my thoughts together on this was the reaction of Michael Gove on the radio, on Wednesday morning. I can’t remember the exact words as I was having a shower at the time but in short he said we shouldn’t seek to understand recent events as they were purely a manifestation of good vs evil. I added the word manifestation as this is what he really meant, he said something else that didn’t work as well.
I thought about that for quite a while.
It’s obviously idiocy of the highest order but there was something that resonated with me. As with much of the coalition Government narrative, it is a complex event boiled down to a simple explanation. The reductionism of this is so effective that the words essentially have no meaning. This is dismissing events as though it was little more than a Batman comic.
It operates on the same simplistic level that appears to have convinced the mainstream media that macro economic policy works in the same way as a credit card.
This has been coupled with the constant refrain from the Government, that to seek answers is to justify criminality. This is the attitude of someone trying to hide something. The rules of cause and effect don’t have a moral component. I believe that boiling water turns it into steam, this doesn’t mean I’m justifying it .
What I think I can safely say is that many thousands of people did not spontaneously, and suddenly, all reach the same conclusion, that wanton criminality was the way forward. This inclination had to be latent and needed to be triggered.
The causes of all of this are likely to be complex, though not ignoring that personal choice is probably the overarching factor. I don’t think we can ignore the role of politics within this, and I don’t mean this is something caused by the Conservatives alone. All parties have a similar responsibility for the change in moral norms that has clearly happened over generations.
We are living in an age where it is most likely that young people will not achieve levels of prosperity that their parents have. This isn’t an issue of poverty be it absolute or relative, it is an issue of hope and aspiration. I don’t mean that civil disturbance is influenced by settling for a smaller telly than your Mum and Dad. I mean that we are living through a time where the entire tempo of our lives is a regression on what has gone before. It is only moral boundaries that stop us seizing at quick and easy routes to comfortable living. Be that a moral objection to auditioning for X Factor or an implicit understanding that we shouldn’t rob banks.
This makes it all the more important that we ensure that everyone has got something invested in our society, something that they don’t want to lose. Without that we have no real form of censure.
The world wide recession has clearly impacted every strata of our society but this has been coupled with an ideological experiment to remove the state from our lives. This isn’t as simplistic as the reduction of budgets, it is also the message that is given to us by the Government that we must take responsibility for our lives back from the state.
This message is couched in the economically bankrupt imperative of deficit reduction but the reality is an ideological reduction of the state.
I imagine that this message was intended to develop the flawed concept of the Big Society as we all embraced our personal responsibility. The reality is that we see that many young people have recognised that it is their responsibility to generate their own wealth and simply decided to take it.
If you consider this article in the Telegraph you can see why such a reaction has come about. Any young person shaping their values in our society can see from the example of our political, media and financial classes that illegality is a technical barrier. If this notion isn’t redressed through family then I’m not exactly sure where people get their lead from.
Of course that doesn’t justify the decisions that young people have taken.
It does leave us with a problem, how do we stop this happening again? We can maintain a massive police presence for a few more days but then we run out of money. At some point we will need to reduce this and I’m not convinced that we have managed to change the minds of many of the people that decided that Sunday was a good time to set everything on fire.
Yeah, I don’t have an answer to that.
We need long term solutions and a fair bit of that will only come through setting examples. That will mean getting rid of politicians that we know are corrupt. Regulating the media and regulating the financial sector. Anything less will only fuel an erroneous perception of injustice.
It is fine for the Government to experiment with removing the state from our lives, in the hope that the private sector will fill the void. As with any experiment we need to be prepared for what happens if we get results we don’t expect. In this case criminality has filled the gap left by a shrinking state and lethargic private sector.
We have seen some efforts to fill this gap by society itself. We’ve seen vigilante mobs on the streets and we’ve seen spontaneous civic cleaning. Whilst I understand that, in some forms both of these are needed to make us feel good about ourselves they divert attention away from what really helps us out in the short term. The last few days have seen Council workers out first thing in the morning doing the real cleaning before any fo us get up. Throughout the night we have seen the Justice Service, that has been decimated by the Government trying to send an immediate message out to communities.
We need to recognise that we can experiment all we like but when it goes wrong we need at least a semblance of a safety net, in the form of the state, to pick up the pieces.
Posted in Media, Politics | Comments (4)
Birmingham has many things to be proud of but its ability to manage the most basic publicity is not one of them. It absolutely confounds me that when creating the plan to outsource IT jobs to India, someone didn’t think about the publicity implications. From a PR point of view it ticks just about every hysterical box that you can imagine.
Since this managed to get itself plastered all over the papers, I’ve been trying to figure out how a Council could be so publicly inept. Birmingham’s problems with managing the current financial climate are well documented but is the publicity garnered from the savings on 100 jobs really worth it? I do believe that savings should be made if we guarantee that money gets redirected towards the most vulnerable people. If sending some services off to India means we can spend more on people with disabilities then I think I’d grudgingly say, that’s something we should consider.
Unfortunately the economic reality in Birmingham is not that simplistic.
In 2006 Birmingham decided to take all of the IT infrastructure out of Council control and create a new organisation called Service Birmingham in partnership with Capita. The theory being that partnership with the private sector would bring “efficiency” to the public sector. A contract was created and Service Birmingham is paid annually to provide IT services. The profits that are generated from the operation of this contract are split between Capita and Birmingham City Council (I don’t know what the split is).
As with any private sector company the principle driver is to generate profits for shareholders. The only way to generate profits is to drive down costs whilst maintaining the same income; outsourcing drives down costs.
So this raises an interesting question, if Service Birmingham are lowering their costs by outsourcing jobs to India then are they equally reducing their claim on the contract with Birmingham City Council? I have no idea what the answer to that question is but I’d be very surprised that if, as a result of this process, there is any change in the terms and conditions of the contract we have with Service Birmingham.
This also raises the issue of the relationship of this quasi private entity and their political masters. The majority of the press coverage of this has labelled it as a Tory Council sending jobs to India. It would be quite a naive political organisation that wouldn’t consider the minuscule benefits of outsourcing 100 jobs to India against the nationwide bad publicity. If you consider that the budget of Birmingham City Council is around £1 billion is it worth it? No, especially if you consider the paper thin majority the ruling coalition is sitting on.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it was a decision taken completely out of the political process and with little consideration of the people apparently in charge of the City. The only people likely to benefit from this are Capita shareholders and, apart from the people who have lost their jobs, the people most likely to suffer are Tory Councillors.
This really is a cautionary tale, beware the beast you create.
Posted in Birmingham, Politics | Comments (0)
The Right Honorable John Hemming is nothing if not selfless. The less charitable might have seen his decision to expose Ryan Giggs to the harsh glare of publicity as a desperate attempt at self promotion. The story in the Birmingham Post indicates that his motives were entirely altruistic. His actions might have prevented more than 75,000 people being sent to prison. I do wonder what would happen to our prison system if it were entirely made up of people that had outed Ryan Giggs on Twitter. I don’t think overall prison literacy levels would go up, but there would be many more pictures of cats.
John is no stranger to publicity, the story about the kitten goes without saying, his disastrous interventions in the family court are well documented and his partial success in visiting space might make you think of him as a comedy politician. Now we can see that his jokey persona actually hides a deep concern for the welfare of Giles Coren.
I’m a bit agnostic about the recent media feeding frenzy around injunctions. Obviously not so agnostic that I just ignored it all, no, I’ve made it all the way upstairs to write this. I think that if Ryan Giggs asked for an injunction and a court decided that, according to the law, he is entitled to one then fair enough. If we have a legal function, that is sanctioned by Parliament, then we shouldn’t just ignore it. The issue around the Trafigura case seemed a little different as a company dumping toxic waste is of a whole different scale to Giggs playing away from home (I do mean having an affair there rather than the conventional application). I realise that the principle is pretty well exactly the same but there is an underlying level of hypocrisy in most things I write.
I am puzzled by one contradiction in the Post story; John Hemming told the Post that he made his Parliamentary revelation in order to protect the innocent. He added that he doesn’t think other people should make such public pronouncements but should leave it to MPs. This either implies that he can do this due to Parliamentary privilege or that he has another more secret MP power. The rush of mainstream news sources to report Giggs’ name, after Hemming said it in Parliament, indicates that most people seem to believe that it was still subject to an injunction.
John goes on to say that he wasn’t actually covered by Parliamentary privilege as the terms of the injunction had been so damaged by widespread usage that he couldn’t have been prosecuted. I’m not sure you can have it both ways, you’ve either made a constitutionally shakey swipe at the establishment or a very successful bit of grandstanding.
As said before, John’s grasp of legal matters isn’t great, if I can quote Mr Justice Wall :-
‘My judgment is that his self-imposed role as a critic of the family justice system is gravely damaged…. Speaking for myself I will not be persuaded to take seriously any criticism made by him in the future unless it is corroborated by reliable, independent evidence.’
The important thing about this is that the courts are performing the will of Parliament through the law that has been handed down to them. If people are concerned about injunctions being used unfairly, or even to repress free speech, then we need MPs to pass laws to stop this happening. An MP simply flouting the law is basically a waste of time that could be used more productively to change the law.
There have been deep constitutional implications of John’s actions. You can still get an injunction to protect your privacy, if you can persuade a court it meets the basic legal rules as exist in our constitution. The difference now is that it is only enforceable if John Hemming MP agrees with it. Charitably John has reduced the economic burden of this change in the law as he doesn’t need to know any detail of the case, no, he will base his decision to expose you in public based on……… nobody knows what the criteria are.
Exciting isn’t it?
Posted in Media, Politics | Comments (0)
I, like most people, gave a little patriotic cheer when Eric Pickles announced that the pointlessly bureaucratic rules on flag flying are going to be relaxed. Pickles has always been a man that is willing to confront the issues that others shy away from.
I think the benefits of doing this are manifestly obvious. We all accept that flying flags is a fantastic catalyst for community cohesion; there’s something about flags flapping away that brings a community together. As he rightly points out “misplaced political correctness” can prevent the unification that comes from flying national and local flags.
Though we all know this is true I’m pleased that Pickles must have at last found an objective evidence base to prove this is true. After all, it is unlikely that a Government that has put such store in the lack public funds would waste valuable time and effort on something like this without clear evidence.
I think I’d always known that there must be some Kafkaesque bureaucracy surrounding the flying of flags, though as I don’t have a flag pole it isn’t something that I’ve ever been confronted with. Fortunately the press release from Communities and Local Government highlight the ridiculous hoops these jobsworths make us jump through.
Apparently you do not need permission to fly the flag of:-
- any country in the world
- the European Union
- the United Nations
- the Commonwealth
- any County
- the patron saint associated with a County
There are a number of flags that can be flown with deemed consent, these are:-
- An organisations own flag
- An advertisement for an event in the building
When you look at both the lists above you do begin to wonder which community it is that is being disadvantaged by the current rules. Clearly communities can quite happily already fly national and local flags without seeking permission so what is this all about?
The only people I can think of that currently need to ask permission to fly flags are pirates. Pirates are frequently maligned in the press and it is good to see Pickles doing his best to redress this. Worth every penny.
Posted in Politics | Comments (5)
If you’ve answered no to both of those questions then I think I can safely say that you don’t work in a health related sector and you don’t have a long term health condition. Ok, that’s a generalisation but it’s probably a reasonable one.
The problem with health, and health related matters, is that, generally, people don’t give a toss unless they’re paid to, or they have no choice. People care about the NHS but they care about it is a structure rather than the concepts that underlie it. Most of the activism around health, by the healthy population, purely relates to the opening and closure of hospitals. That’s fair enough, the visible structures are by their very nature visible.
Of the two categories I am firmly in the former. My knee has started hurting a bit recently but overall I care about conceptual health because I’m paid to.
The lack of a wider understanding of the impact of health is a shame. The health of a nation is relatively easy to measure and is a very good proxy for the wider conditions people live in. We can understand a lot about a population from how long they live.
Unfortunately it isn’t a subject that instantly grabs people. There aren’t many laughs in health inequalities. A constant diet of dead babies, fags and chips has a habit of putting people off.
Part of this event involved a talk by
Sir Michael Marmot. Yes, I know, Sir Michael Marmot.
I know who he is because I’m paid to know. All you need to know is that within the context of Public Health he is somewhat like
50 Cent. Never has a worse analogy been committed.
My problem with Michael Marmot is his name. I seem to fluctuate between thinking his surname is either
marmoset or
Marmite. It’s neither.
A few years ago he produced a report on Health Inequalities called the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post 2010. Also known as the
Marmot Review.
I instinctively think this should be a systematic test of whether marmosets like Marmite or not. I reckon they probably don’t.
There is a rich heritage of writing reports on social inequity, health inequalities and the determinants of health. Sir Douglas Black did it in 1980 with the ominously titled
Black Report. The Government didn’t like it and it got swept away.
Our current Government seem to be going with the Marmot Review, which is no bad thing.
Through the wonders of the Internet Sir Michael Marmot’s talk got captured for the world to see. This is where I finally get round to the point.
You should watch this video. I know I’m asking you to watch a half hour video of a man in a suit talking about death. The difference is that this is fairly entertaining, it will certainly give you an insight into how health impacts on the wider population. There is at least one laugh in there and he does get very angry (though only for a second).
Putting Local Communities at the Heart of Public Health – Professor Sir Michael Marmot from Solihull NHS Care Trust on Vimeo.
One of the things I can’t quite work out is why I instinctively fixate on marmosets. After all, the
marmot is an animal in its own right. I think they also wouldn’t like Marmite.
Posted in Misc, Politics | Comments (1)
To Clap or not to Clap
February 6th, 2011
I started writing this for
Eye on Moseley but after planning it in my mind (yes, there is some planning, it isn’t just a stream of consciousness) I realised it isn’t really relevant to Moseley as such.
Both Councillors represent the
Respect party which was born from the
Stop the War Coalition. As such you might not be surprised to hear that they didn’t burst into spontaneous applause. Since this happened I’ve been trying to figure out what I would have done in the same situation. I’m deeply sceptical of the colonialist military adventures that Tony Blair sent us on but I like to think I can separate the individual from the policy.
I’m also quite aware, from the
War Logs made available through Wikileaks, that heinous acts have been perpetrated in our names in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Though it would appear that the George Cross is only given for more altruistic bravery. I only found that out when I just looked it up.
In the case of Birmingham it was a man called
Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher who carried out an act of supreme bravery in throwing himself onto a hand grenade and consequently saving the lives of those round him. Based on what I’ve read it sounds like he is a man that deserves both a standing ovation and a medal. The thing with this is that I can say this because I’ve got the benefit of hindsight and Google. I’ve had the time to put this into context and make my decision.
Both Councillors involved were given no prior notification of his arrival and, I assume, no in depth outline of either his career or the specifics that lead to his act of outstanding bravery.
It is reasonable that both Councillors would be extremely circumspect in what they publically support. The reality of life in Birmingham is that we have communities in Birmingham that are absolutely entwined in the war in Pakistan/Afghanistan. People who live here have relatives that have been victims of both sides of the conflict. As such, their elected representatives need to be excessively cautious in what they say and do, however well intentioned it might be.
The wider issue in this is how we have come to the point where a mob can dictate our reaction in any given situation. A persons decision to not clap is surely one of the freedoms that we purport to be protecting in our attempt to impose a model of western democracy on Afghanistan.
To add a little more context to this story we should realise that the chief cheerleader in this debacle is Cllr Martin Mullaney. As Cabinet Member for Leisure and Culture you might expect a degree of responsibility in comments launched into the public arena. The following quote dispels that myth.
“I can only assume that if one of the failed 21/7 London suicide bombers had been in the council chamber, Cllr Yaqoob would have been demanding the council applaud the failed suicide bomber for their past heroic actions.”
Yes, that’s the level of debate we are dealing with.
There is a history there.
Whilst you might laugh at his infantile logic please give some consideration to those of us represented by him. Whilst he can find the time to go on the radio flirting with libel and outlandish accusations he doesn’t seem to be able to find the time to reply to my concern about the imminent
closure of the Citizens Advice Bureaux in Birmingham.
The crux of this issue seems to be that we have a reached a point where reasoned dissent from a set point of view is not tolerated. Not clapping an individual is seen as a snub to him and consequently a lack of support to all that we have put in harms way.
These helicopters keep people alive through keeping troops off roads and getting medical support to where it is needed. Unfortunately they’ve now been sacrificed, like the troops they would carry, to Dave’s great economic experiment. Though it does add credence to the claim we’re all in it together. We are all quite literally not in helicopters even though some of us need to be.
Closer to home the Council could give consideration to how budget cuts are
withdrawing access to mental health and substance misuse services. Both of these are used disproportionately by returning military personnel. As a direct result of the things that we make them do on our behalf.
I hope we can do everything to avoid the situation that developed in the US where people returning from Vietnam were blamed for the failure of the state. Equally I hope we can get to a point where those who purport to represent us can take the welfare of those that fight wars for us more seriously than just whether or not someone clapped or not.
Posted in Birmingham, Politics | Comments (3)
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
February 1st, 2011
I started writing this a few weeks ago, when I finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and then sort of stopped. It took me a while to realise I’d just started trying to write a
review rather than keeping to what I thought of it.
Actually I finished it almost a year to the week after I finished
Assassin’s Creed 2. I’m not sure if that is noteworthy or not. It gives you a bit of an insight into what I’ve had for Christmas for the last few years (that’s not a complaint, I’ve really liked both of them).
I suppose it is interesting in that a sequel has been released so quickly. I’d expect the development cycle on a game like this to be massive, 12 months might make you think it’s been rushed. Given the attention to detail I have a feeling it probably wasn’t rushed.
It isn’t too different to Assassin’s Creed 2 but legging it around renaissance Italy sticking knives in people doesn’t get boring, so I don’t mind. The addition of a
Championship Manager element, where you can train assassins to do the assassinating for you panders to my inherent laziness.
It’s still refreshing to see a story that has been thought through and is as far from the paper thin Call of Duty nonsense as you can get. Having said that I’ve only got a vague idea of what was going on and a sense of regret that I wasn’t really paying attention at the end. I think I might have missed something fairly vital as the final scene didn’t make a lot of sense.
I understand that the multiplayer is worth investing a bit of time in but I’ve been getting on with other games, I’ve finished another three since Assassin’s Creed and still need to write them up.
Reading this back it seems a little half hearted. That’s a shame as Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is one of the best games I’ve ever played. The problem with it is that it has fixed the few minor things that were wrong with the last one, consequently I think I said it all last time.
If you get the chance to play this, jump at it. It’s a truly great example of a City that seems to live and breathe.
Posted in Finished Games, Games | Comments (0)
Command and Control
January 21st, 2011
On the same day the Government released the Bill which will fundamentally change the way that the NHS works, possibly forever.
Since the Government
made their plans public in July of last year I have seen a wide variety of theories on why this is happening. I work in the NHS so this isn’t overly surprising, we all have a theory. They range from the attempt to privatise the NHS through to an ideological experiment to create an untested model of health services.
I don’t really subscribe to the former. The NHS is and has always been reliant on the private sector to deliver services. GPs are independent contractors and whilst we rely on their philanthropic motives, they are not that different from BUPA or any of the other players we imagine will enter the market.
Anyone who watched GPs take the Government to the cleaners in contract negotiations a few years ago will be fully aware of their keen sense of market forces.
There will be a greater involvement of the private sector in providing health care but I think that is more as a result of the Labour initiative of
independent treatment centres rather than proposed legislation.
I do have some sympathy with the ideological experiment theory, but in thinking about history I realised this is far from untested. Michael Gove wants us to learn lessons from history and I think there is a very important one that the NHS needs to consider as it goes into rapid change.
Far from being aligned with a rampant free market the Conservative Bill actually is replication of the
Soviet model of collectivisation. The theory of collectivisation came from Stalin who perceived there was a benefit in taking small free holders and combining them, often by force into larger collectives.
In Primary Care, in the UK, we are taking independent traders, GPs, combining them, through legislation, into larger arms length Government bodies. In some cases against their will but thankfully without the genocide involved in collectivisation.
One of the consequences of collectivisation in the Soviet Union was the removal of the local flexibility to grow food that was needed. In a similar manner the decisions to commission local health services will now be dictated by a central Government body called the NHS Commissioning Board. GPs will be free to implement commissioning any way they want as long as it is consistent with the central dictat.
This move to command and control is further emphasised by the move to remove regional representation of things like the Health Protection Agency and replace them with a monolithic single Public Health Department.
The history of the NHS has always had GPs sitting outside and passing comment on the Government of the day. In many cases this was useful because they could champion the cause of patients over the frivolity of policy. These changes will see GPs, for the first time since the creation of the NHS forced to follow the party line.
I’m intrigued that the Conservatives would seek to implement something modelled on the very worst excesses of Communism but am all the more impressed that they seem to have convinced people it is just the will of the market.
Posted in Politics | Comments (1)
Bring Me the Music of 2010
January 10th, 2011
I’m not sure if it is legitimate to persist with “best of 2010” lists this far into 2011. It seems like the moment has gone. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to bother this year, it just means I recognise it is an unseemly use of the worlds precious web space.
I think 2010 was a pretty good year for music. I think the range of new stuff was fairly diverse, though part of me thinks this could be because I was better informed. In previous years I’ve relied on recommmendations from friends for new stuff. Whilst that works for a bit it does require making a lot of new friends to find completely new stuff. That’s clearly unsustainable.
I’ve been actively searcing
Pitchfork for new bands/music and I seem to agree with their reviews.
The Kings of Leon 1st album,
Youth and Young Manhood is still one of my favourite albums in all of time. I don’t think anything else they have created has done anything than be a poor copy of it. Until this year. Come Around Sundown isn’t going to set the world on fire, it’s a very basic well made album where, crucially, for the very first time I can work out what the hell they are singing about. They make it onto my list for, finally, trying to put gibberish behind them.
I don’t really know who Plan B is. I vaguely know he raps, I’ve never heard him do it. I saw this album in an advert by ASDA and thought I’d give it a go. To be honest I had very low expectations but it turned out to be a bit of a gem. Overall I think it is more admirable in what it tries to do than what it delivers. His voice is a bit weak for this sort of souly, Mowtowny stuff but he gives it a go and I’ve listened to it loads.
This was a random suggestion through Twitter from
@nicktheowl. I reckon there is a perception that I have a soft spot for progressive rock. That’s not wrong, I do. I heard a bit of a sample and ended up getting it imported from Australia. Between the time of it setting off from the other end of the world it was released in the UK for half the price. There’s a lesson there. At first I really didn’t like this. I thought it was formulaic nonsense. Since then it has grown on me. I’d sum it up as a cross between Yes and The Beatles. I doubt there is anyone that would think that sounds like a good idea.
I’m pretty sure this came from a
review on Pitchfork. I have no idea what prompts me to buy things but there was something in the review that sounded interesting. It sounds very unfinished, which in an age of over produced perfect sounding CDs is refreshing. I can’t really think of anything to compare it with.
A rare, for me, inclusion of something vaguely electronic. I think it was one of my first albums of 2010 and I still listen to it.
Apparently Yeasayer have been round for years, I’d never heard of them. I think I saw them on the coverage of Leeds during the summer. Based on that I bought this and never looked back. A bit progressive but with a healthy dose of ’80s pop thrown in. My descriptions sound appalling don’t they?
Araced Fire are another band that, I believe, got off to good start and then went downhill.
Neon Bible was a bit boring after
Funeral. It’s not a bad album but why bother to listen to it? I can answer that, I don’t. The Suburbs does sound different and is good. I’m pretty sure it is compulsory to include this album on any list involving 2010.
Yes, another recommendation from Twitter, this time from
@craigfots I didn’t know anything about this nor what to expect. Buy this album now. It isn’t just one of the best of 2010, you’ll be listening to it in the future, maybe as far as 2013. It has a bit of folk about it, but don’t let that put you off. Actually folk combined with the
Animal Collective. That should put off people that like folk and people that like the
Animal Collective.
I love Jaga Jazzist.
What We Must is my favourite album of all of the albums that have been made by all the people. I’m not quite sure but I’d got it into my head that they’d split up years ago and had resigned myself to no new electronic jazz. Well, at least no new electronic jazz from Jaga Jazzist, other people are still allowed to make it. As it turns out they’re still about and this year they made the brilliant One-Armed Bandit. If you don’t like jazz you probably won’t like this, it’s a bit of combination of jazz and electronica and is the best thing made in 2010.
It is an odd thing to look back on the previous year. Particularly because there are quite a few things that I’d assumed had been released in 2010 but it turns out they were 2009.
There is also a bit of a temptation to include as obscure stuff as possible. Looking back at my list I realise that I’m gravitating towards all the albums that appear on every best of the year list. Getting old obviously does make you more conservative in your taste.
I thought it might be an idea to make a Spotify playlist of all of these albums. So I did. Except there is no Arcade Fire.
Posted in Music | Comments (0)
It would be unseemly to finish the year without some sort of list, so this is my summary of games I have played this year.
This was my first attempt to record all of the games I have completed and overall I’d have to say it hasn’t gone very well. I currently have nine listed, though with Christmas coming it’s possible that will nudge up a little.
It does mean that I’ve completed games at a rate of less than one a month, which is a big decrease on other years. I know I’ve started loads of games that I’ve never got round to finishing, including Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, God of War III, Star Craft II: Wings of Liberty and Final Fantasy XIII. All of them very good games but all of them left uncompleted to varying degrees.
There are a number of reasons for this, mainly because my PlayStation died and took all my game saves with it. For things like Final Fantasy this would have meant repeating a good twenty hours, I didn’t fancy that.
I’ve also got married this year which hasn’t had a direct impact on my ability to play games but did take some thinking about and a degree of preparation.
I suppose my final reason is that games this year just haven’t seemed as good as other years.
So, rather than making excuses here are my favourite games of the year in some sort of order. These are games released this year rather than ones I’ve played. I have no idea why, but it does mean that I haven’t included Assassins Creed 2, for an entirely arbitrary reason.
10) Angry Birds: It seems strange to include a game from my phone on here but I’ve played it a lot and it is great. It’s free on Android and I’m bewildered why some people don’t own it.
9) Sports Champions: The development of PlayStation Move was a blatant attempt to make in roads on the dominance of casual gaming by the Wii. Given the relative difference in technology it is no surprise that Move managed show how this really should be done. Sports Champions is a great showcase for how motion controls should work. The minute adjustments you can make to you table tennis bat alone justifies inclusion on here.
8) Starcraft 2: You will notice this is also on my list of games I haven’t completed as well. For some reason I just haven’t got round to it. I’m not sure why. I love any game that makes me consider resource management and Starcraft love resources. I missed out on Starcraft the first time round but have loved this one. I do need to finish it.
7) Rock Band 3: Rock Band is a vital part of my life. It gets played consistently through the year and has been a drain on my income on a weekly basis. I think Rock Band 3 is close to perfect. The ability to change the band round mid set gives it much more flexibility in the post pub situation. The addition of keyboards has also led to a much better range of songs. I suppose quite a lot of this is also cumulative. We have hundred of songs now and there are very few situations where playing Rock Band is not the most appropriate use of time.
6) Fallout: New Vegas: I went into some detail about this a few weeks ago. It is a good game that could have been great. I understand that most of the problems have been sorted out now. If they have then everyone should give it a go.
5) Heavy Rain: Again, a game I wrote about a while a go. It’s something that has stuck with me in the nine months since I’ve finished it. It is a bit clunky but the innovation makes it worth it. I keep meaning to give it another go since it has been patched to work with Move, I’ve never quite got round to it.
4) World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: Is it fair to include this? Probably not. It has got me back into Warcraft after a few years off and, currently, I love it. Though, to be honest, most of what I’ve been playing was actually added in Wrath of the Lich King. I love the fact that the world has been remade and the new style of quests has removed much of the drudgery. I need to consider that this has only just been released so in a few months I might well have got bored again.
3) Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit: This was released at roughly the same time as Gran Turismo 5 and you couldn’t get two more different driving games. Whilst GT5 is just dull Need for Speed is unadulterated mayhem. I was a massive fan of Burnout Paradise and I think Criterion have brought the Need for Speed franchise back to life. They seem to understand how multiplayer should work and have seamlessly integrated your friends into the single player experience.
2) Red Dead Redemption: Yeah, I mentioned this before. What was a good game at the time has been improved by the constant release of downloadable content. I hadn’t realised that it was hiding, what turned out to be, a very strong multiplayer game. In fact everything that Grand Theft Auto 4 should have been. The addition of Zombies, in Undead Nightmare was a random move that has been much appreciated.
1) Battle field Bad Company 2: This had to be number one. It is actually one of the best games I have ever played. Since completing it back in July I’ve stuck with the multiplayer and loved every minute of it. This is the game that Call of Duty thinks it is and it’s a crime that the developers have not got the accolade they deserve. This has also been supported with really strong downloadable content, capped off by the release, this week, of Vietnam.
If you do yourself one favour this year, try and play a game of rush. This is what the Internet was invented for.
Well, that was my year. Not an outstanding year for the number of games but certainly outstanding for my number one choice.
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