Tim Ingham defends videogames

And the audience agrees with Julie Peasgood



She's the author of The Greatest Sex Tips in the World and (quoting from Amazon) "Julie Peasgood won Best Erotic Writer at the 2007 Scarlet Awards, beating many other established sex writers."

It seems like she hates videogames because they're addictive. I've been playing games for years and I don't think they're addictive, they're a pastime, a hobby, something to fill in the boring bits with.

The fact is my Xbox has been packed away for the last three months or so and I haven't actually been able to play anything for any length of time since then, aside from being round at a few mates' and having a quick go on whatever. I haven't been feeling any sort of withdrawal from not playing it. (Though I am kind of worried about my GamerScore getting reset if I don't sign in to Live soon.)

That whole interview seemed to rail against common sense and three of the four could be said to be grossly ill-informed about the subject. Yes it's easy to pick apart their mistakes and lack of knowledge on the subject but the way the audience cheered left me feeling dumbfounded. Why did they 'boo' the Byron Report? Why does no one but gamers believe the Byron Report?

Kelvin McKenzie throws in the murder of Jamie Bulger saying that, of Jon Venables, "he was corrupted by it". And surely that's not true. There was the Child's Play thing (though there was no evidence that either Robert Thompson or Venables had watched it) but there was never any mention of videogames during the trial. Though he was allowed to play games at the Red Bank secure unit in St Helens after his conviction.

So what was the most violent game that Venables could have played when he was 10?

Well here's Wikipedia's list: Clicky!

So Mortal Kombat II... I don't know why I'm even going down this pointless road. Peasgood doesn't know about games, McKenzie admits he's not a "war gamer", and Titchmarsh should be out in the garden getting friendly with plants. Ingham does a great job but no one there wanted to listen.

Is there anything we can do about it? Nope.