Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the UK’s two big dinosaur parties – and the media – to react with fury to the unexpected Lib Dem surge.
We can but hope the curiously-proportioned bar graph and contradictory sets of figures are a biting satirical comment about the unreliability of opinion polls from Murdoch-controlled Sky News, but I fear that’s a touch optimistic.
A number of commentators have in the last few days been attacking David Cameron for so actively pursuing the idea of live TV debates between the three "main" party leaders, on the grounds that – with the huge lead in the opinion polls the Tories had at the time the debates were agreed on – he had everything to lose and nothing to gain from tackling his opponents face to face in front of the nation.
To be strictly fair to Cameron, though (and I'm doing so purely as mental exercise), the debate wasn't theoretically such a bad idea.
Malcolm McLaren RIP. This is a version of a piece I originally wrote for WoS a few years ago, reprinted in tribute to one of the world's great chancers.
The world would have been a much more interesting place if he'd managed to become the Mayor of London.
On the face of it, it's a time for national rejoicing. After just 13 years in government, Gordon Brown has suddenly apparently discovered the secret of 100% employment – state jobs for all.
New Labour's latest attack on the voiceless poor is the stunning assertion that after 30 years of millions-long dole queues, it seems there was no need for anyone to be unemployed at all.
The last bastion of global freedom was put in chains last night. Now, on a whim, a government minister elected by no-one can legally shut down absolutely any site on the internet, indefinitely, on the mere suspicion that it might, in the future, infringe someone's copyright, or in some way inadvertently assist some third party in the breaking of some other law.
Of course, these powers will be used only sparingly and with the most careful and wise consideration. No further democratic scrutiny is or will be required. Authority has been wholly established.
It's weird how bad people are at looking even a tiny bit below the surface. All you have to do is quietly mention in passing somewhere that Tetris, Columns, Bejeweled or any of their millions of clones and derivatives aren't actually "puzzle games", and all hell breaks loose.
Even nowadays, with a resurgence in indie games making abstract graphics (relatively) popular again, most gamers angrily insist that if something doesn't look like a traditional spaceship, it can't be a spaceship.
With a tremendous sense of comic timing, the International Football Association Board this week ruled (despite the votes of the English and Scottish FAs) against any possibility of even experimenting with the use of goal-line technology, almost at the same minute as Birmingham City were denied a clear goal in their FA Cup quarter-final against Portsmouth that might have kept them in the competition.
It’s embarrassing that in the modern age such crucial refereeing errors, so simple to rectify, can still see teams knocked out of a nation’s biggest cup tournament. What’s more embarrassing still is that another sport has successfully demonstrated just how easily many of the niggling issues that dog the thankless task of football officiating can be solved.
Is this okay, or really really not very okay at all? I just can’t tell.
“Finally a SNIPER game where you play as a soviet soldier to help liberate the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp!”
Does ANYONE understand them? Depressingly it seems not.
If you're joining us late, many years ago there existed a thing oft bemoaned by fans and pundits alike, called the "professional foul". This was a cynical deliberate foul, typically committed by a lumbering centre-half when he'd been skinned by a forward who was then heading clean through on the goalkeeper, but still a long way from goal. The centre-half would blatantly haul him down, making no pretence at a legal attempt to win the ball, and give away a harmless free kick perhaps 30 or 40 yards out.
The forward would thus be denied a chance to go one-on-one with the keeper and very likely score. The defender, meanwhile, would suffer only a yellow card at most – because his foul was in itself usually innocuous (being a simple trip or shove), leaving the referee no grounds on which to issue a red. It was clearly unfair, and something had to be done.
The PSP? Hwurgh! What is it good for?
Absolutely some things! Say it again!
Alert WoS viewers, who may find much of the text of this review oddly familiar (but do read on, for all is not quite as it seems), will already be aware of my range of views on the history of SNK’s Metal Slug series. From a hugely refreshing beginning, the franchise rapidly degenerated into a cynical cash-milking business punting out lazy and increasingly inferior titles with ever-growing rapidity and desperation.
The nadir actually arrived fairly early, with the abysmal Metal Slug 3, and there have been a few flickers of hope – like the inventive Neo Geo Pocket spinoffs (now excitingly playable via emulation on PSP, finally solving the problem of the NGP’s murky un-backlit screen and awkward controls) and the aforelinked GBA title, which came up with many of the ideas that have been more fully fleshed out in this latest release.
But mostly the announcement of a new addition to the Metal Slug family has been occasion only for some sad reflections on the latest half-arsed indignities to be inflicted on a once-proud name in the name of a quick profit. Metal Slug XX is a step back in the right direction.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
