Arm Rant Torpedoes...
1 Mar 2006 19:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patentdragon* rant *
PM under pressure on video games - I've covered this case before, back at Diary-X, so I guess it's fair game again.
"Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - my ass. Things have gotten a whole lot worse with Blair "in control" of Britain - and this is the government that has said that a certain drug that's becoming increasingly popular with stupid teenagers is effectively legal. This is the drug that is hardly ever mentioned in the infamous Stefan Pakeerah/"Manhunt" case that's the focus of the news story above, and was conveniently ignored as a factor when Scottish teenager Jodie Jones was murdered by her boyfriend.
The boy who killed Pakeerah was a druggie, desperate to pay off a debt to his dealer. The killer held up his "friend" to get money off him, and when the boy didn't hand over any cash, he was killed - could the killer have been "high" at the time?
The killer of Jodie Jones, when arrested, was found to have a significant amount of his drug of choice on his person, and apparently admitted to consuming enough of it in a week to be almost perpetually "high". The influence of drugs on these cases cannot be so casually dismissed - yet that's exactly what happened.
Instead, popular culture was heavily implicated in both cases - in the Pakeerah killing, it was the video game "Manhunt"; in the Jodie Jones killing, it was Satanic/Goth/"black" metal. Surprise surprise...
Another very interesting point: the mother of Stefan Pakeerah has been very vocal in her campaign to ban violent games - but who, might I ask, allowed her fourteen year old son to own a Certificate 18 game in the first place...?
Pakeerah died two years ago. Just how many people have been "killed by video games" since? And how many young lives have been ruined by drugs in that same period?
Perspective is needed here, not headline-grabbing - but to which option will Tony Blair resort? Killers addicted to drugs, a prime minister addicted to column inches in the papers...
*end rant *
PM under pressure on video games - I've covered this case before, back at Diary-X, so I guess it's fair game again.
"Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - my ass. Things have gotten a whole lot worse with Blair "in control" of Britain - and this is the government that has said that a certain drug that's becoming increasingly popular with stupid teenagers is effectively legal. This is the drug that is hardly ever mentioned in the infamous Stefan Pakeerah/"Manhunt" case that's the focus of the news story above, and was conveniently ignored as a factor when Scottish teenager Jodie Jones was murdered by her boyfriend.
The boy who killed Pakeerah was a druggie, desperate to pay off a debt to his dealer. The killer held up his "friend" to get money off him, and when the boy didn't hand over any cash, he was killed - could the killer have been "high" at the time?
The killer of Jodie Jones, when arrested, was found to have a significant amount of his drug of choice on his person, and apparently admitted to consuming enough of it in a week to be almost perpetually "high". The influence of drugs on these cases cannot be so casually dismissed - yet that's exactly what happened.
Instead, popular culture was heavily implicated in both cases - in the Pakeerah killing, it was the video game "Manhunt"; in the Jodie Jones killing, it was Satanic/Goth/"black" metal. Surprise surprise...
Another very interesting point: the mother of Stefan Pakeerah has been very vocal in her campaign to ban violent games - but who, might I ask, allowed her fourteen year old son to own a Certificate 18 game in the first place...?
Pakeerah died two years ago. Just how many people have been "killed by video games" since? And how many young lives have been ruined by drugs in that same period?
Perspective is needed here, not headline-grabbing - but to which option will Tony Blair resort? Killers addicted to drugs, a prime minister addicted to column inches in the papers...
*end rant *
