January 21, 2012 · 3:20 pm

#oneaday59: It’s that time of year again……

January sees most of us count the cost of our Christmas excesses and work out how we are going to make ends meet once we have paid off all of our bills from the seasonal loveliness called Christmas.

But for some, January is bonus time. Yep, the banks will be rewarding their top performers who have so skillfully steered their companies through the worst financial times for 50 years, and as they say ‘quite right too’. The politicians are fearful, again, that if bonuses are too high, us non bankers may moan and be disobedient. They did the same last year after all. Just so we are all aware of the rules and etiquette, today Mr Bob Diamond, CEO of Barclays warned the politcal leaders of Britain, for now a United Kingdom, not to try and influence their decisions. Sound familar? We will know soon enough what obscene levels of ‘compensation’ will be paid to these people, but what action will we actually take? A year ago I wrote this. We now how the #Occupy movement and our local version in the City of London is still there, making a point of sorts.

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So all the tough talk about ‘us all being in this together ‘ (sic) (for those non residents of the UK, this was the phrase introduced by David Cameron, now Prime Minister of the UK at the Conservative party conference in October 2009 and has been the rallying call in these tough times) has proved to be a little wide of the mark. As purchase tax, or value added tax (VAT) as it was rebranded some years back rose 14% to 20% on the 4th of January, and thousands of public and private jobs are slashed,  as deep and rapid cuts to the welfare state and the education system,  the majority of folk in the UK are now getting used to a time of austerity. And you know what, we have no choice. The economy of the UK has taken a major battering, why, well in truth there are so many factors it would be a long essay and stuff that I simply don’t understand. But basically we spent more than we earned and we have to do our financial porridge for some years.

One factor that does stand out amongst all the others however, is the fact that some of our banks became insolvent in 2008. Instead of ‘the bank calling the debt in’ as normally happens when businesses and institutions fail, this time the banks carried the debts and could not meet their commitments. There was no one bank to call all the other banks in so to speak. They really were ‘all in it together’. The decision was taken, we are told, in the national interest, by Prime Minster Gordon Brown to bail the banks out. Amazingly no one actually seems to know to what extent. Namely we don’t know the final number. Some sources quote upwards of £1 Trillion. in the case of RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) we are told that the citizens of the UK now own 83% of the shares. In return for these share the nation poured £45Billion in cash, insured £280Billion of risky loans and set aside a further £8Billion in case things get really bad. So you’d have thought as majority shareholders in this company, we i.e our Government would have had a say in how that business should be run, in the national interest and all that.

But the Government insisted earlier today (when I wrote this anyway) it would not intervene to stop Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief executive, Stephen Hester, earning up to £9Million for last year’s work. Furthermore it will not seek to cap the bonus pool of more than £1Billion that the bank intends to pay it’s high earners. A spokesman for David Cameron said: “We’ve made a broad statement which is about the need to see some restraint and some responsibility from the banks, but we are not going to set bonus pools for individual banks.”

We know the sketch here. Money talks blah, blah. But for all the recent fighting political talk – see below – of those who govern us, those that our pickled voting system has thrust upon us, right or wrong, is always the same. It is just talk and talk, unlike property is cheap.  Indeed the extra tax rate/levy on bonuses from last year has been wiped out,  replaced by a lesser yielding tax on the banks’ balance sheets.

So if you are young and  live in London, or are trying to buy a house in London, or indeed in the countryside close to London – aka The Stock Broker Belt as it used to be called when VAT was purchase tax, one of the consequences of this indecent and bloated excess is that property prices will rise again, thus putting property even further off the radar of those starting out in their working life, those trying to bring up a family. The very same people, many of them pay as you earn (PAYE) tax payers (you know the ones who pay the correct amount of tax as they do not have access to fancy schemes for tax optimisation) are royally being shafted.

The youth should always be at the centre of any society’s future, yet they find themselves over taxed, if they are lucky enough to have a job, under served and utterly betrayed. And the bank band played on. Pfffff. I am not given to cheap prejudice, but I can tell you now, I have complete and utter contempt for these people.

So there you go and to keep it interesting, I have a meeting with our bank manager planned for next week to discuss our  ‘facility ‘for 2011. The name of that bank? I will give you 3 guesses. You should get it right first time. Wish me luck.

Footnote what our leaders said when in Government (courtesy of The Independent )

‘It is wholly untenable to have millions of people making sacrifices in their living standards only to see the banks getting away scot-free – the banks should not be under any illusion: this Government cannot stand idly by.’ – NICK CLEGG, Deputy Prime Minister17 NOVEMBER 2010

‘I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow [the RMT union leader] could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer.’ – VINCE CABLE, 22 SEPTEMBER 2010

‘Every decision the banks make like that [paying large bonuses] makes it more difficult to keep a tax regime that they might favour.’ DAVID CAMERON, Prime Minister 17 DECEMBER 2010

‘We will not allow money to flow unimpeded out of those banks into huge bonuses, if that means money is not flowing out in credit to the small businesses who did nothing to cause this crash and suffered most in it.’ – GEORGE OSBORNE, Chancellor of the Exchequer 4 OCTOBER 2010

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And just in case you need to see the man in action here you go

We now how the #Occupy movement and our local version in the City of London is still there, making a point of sorts. It has all been peaceful and I for one hope it stays that way. But surely we can take more effective action? Like all change our bank accounts to a bank that has some ethics – like the Co-Operative? It is easy, if a little time consuming and think of the effect if there was a mass defection from the banks that are too big to fail…..

Act NOW.

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January 9, 2012 · 3:45 pm

#oneaday 58: Citius, Altius, Fortius…?

So says the Olympic motto – faster, higher, stronger. Indeed this year’s Olympics could and should do a lot of things for Britain. Much has been written about the legacy vs cost of the whole project and the latest figures to be quoted show a hard cost of £9.1Bn to the UK tax payer.; To put some perspective on this, £9.1Bn  is about half the bank bonuses paid in the City of London in 2008 just before the major crash and about twice what was paid out to bankers this time last year.There will be a load of new homes for people (note I don’t say ‘houses’ because many will not actually be that, but stick to the official word) in East London some of which will be ‘affordable’ again official speak. 6 of the 8 sporting venues have been found a use post games, leaving only 2 to go. The project has been delivered on time and by all accounts within budget and to a high standard. This is all good. Tickets are oversubscribed and whilst thousands of UK citizens have not been able to get tickets, this is the first time that any Olympics has been sold out so far in advance. I guess that is a tribute to the UK public’s appetite for sport and the big occasion. The organisers even sold 20,000 tickets to the Synchronised Swimming when capacity was half that. Who’d have thought?

Indeed I will make no bones about it, I am a big supporter of the Olympic Games. Even though it has become a fully professional games and we will see a second Wimbledon tennis tournament this year with most of the same players taking part, it is still a great sporting occasion and one that Britain has a very decent track record (no pun intended) over the years. It is probably best that it is virtually all professional now and that aspect is out in the open. For years the USSR and DDR plus other Eastern Bloc nations would show up and win loads of medals through a mixture of ‘focus’ namely they were state sponsored full time athletes, gymnasts, weightlifters and so on, or through blatant cheating by using performance enhancing drugs. Over age ‘college’ kids from the USA would sweep up the other medals and everyone would shrug their shoulders and accept it. Great Britain would produce the occasional super performers like Daley Thompson, Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe as well as fantastically talented and unassuming amateurs like Mary Peters and David Hemery.

Anyway I digress! For me the Olympics are fab. This year, and every four years there will be an army of volunteers who will give their time to help run the games and welcome all the visitors from overseas. But I have read reports that the volunteer army have been given strict instructions by the IOC (International Olympic Committee) on how they can and can’t use social media through the games and this has to be a really suspect decision.

Before we call for the head of Lord Coe, who has not only proved himself to be a truly world class athlete, but has run the whole enterprise with an amazing sense of professionalism and passion (much like his running ability), we have to look at the Olympic organisers, the IOC. Much like FIFA they report to no one bar themselves and make decisions without fear of consequence. And they are based in the tax haven of Switzerland, just like FIFA.  It is the Olympics themselves that have put this dictate down.

So imagine that you are one of thousands who will give up their time to help most likely nowhere near any sporting action, and you are told ‘no Twitter, no Facebook, no communication’ during the games please. Instead of encouraging thousands of volunteers to let their friends know what is happening, good or bad, direct from the coal face and in the process generating millions of Olympic tags, you snap that off at the source and introduce dark ages rules that will only irk those who are giving up their time for the honour of helping out. Seriously the IOC need to reconsider their position and do that rather quickly.

This sort of backward thinking would have been perfectly accepted at the Bejing Games of 2008, after all China does not really like the World Wide Web, preferring the Chinese version.  But as for Britain being complicit in this outrage, well it is astonishing, out of touch and just plain wrong. We have not seen this sort of totalitarian approach to information control since Henry VIII broke with Rome, although Murdoch has had a pretty good go at playing his own special hand in recent years.

Outrageous and out of touch. Dear IOC, for the sake of your own reputation please reconsider your position on the issue of social networks for this year’s Olympics or suffer the heat that will inevitably rise as citizens reject your nonsense rules. Higher, faster, stronger in everything, thank you.

 

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January 5, 2012 · 10:07 pm

#oneaday57: Irony, Lady?

When I was old enought to vote, I voted for Thatcher, whether you prefaced her name with Mrs, Margaret, Maggie or another less savoury term. It was 1983, I was 20 years old and we had just ‘won’ the Falklands War. Spirits were temporarily high, or at least they were for a naive 20 year old, and the alternatives were Michael Foot’s Labour party or the emerging Social Democratic Party who were allied with the Liberals (The Alliance). Labour was too lame to mention and The Alliance were ‘too new’. But as time went on even those who  voted for her began to have some doubts.

We had experienced the violent inner city riots of 1981,  and then the miners’ strike of 1984 saw even more violence not only between the police and strikers, but between workers and families from the same pit villages and towns. It was a divisive piece of British history and you can’t help thinking that Mrs T loved every minute of it. A decade before, the whole country suffered power cuts caused by striking miners and most of the people had had enough. This was her revenge for that action and her sworn intention to smash the power of the unions. No matter what ideology you follow, if you do, and I don’t happen to follow a left or right wing mantra, when the leader and Government of the country is waging war on some of its people, that can’t be an enlightened thing. Thatcher thought she was Churchill, trouble was the unions were not the equivalent of the Nazi party and Arthur Scargill was not Mr Hitler.

So when it was that I heard about the release of ‘The Iron Lady’ I decided that I needed to see it and managed to view via an advanced screening. A film made about a living ‘legend’ (love her or hate her) is a rare thing. Normally these thing happen after the protagonist’s life on earth. Pre release hype and trailers suggested it was all going to be sabre rattling and gung ho attacks on conscripted Argentine troops. Some right wing commentators exclaimed theie sheer unbridled frenzy at the prospect of this homage to a true Brit. I suspect that when they seee the film,  they will be somewhat disappointed.

Meryl Streep performance as the Iron Lady herself is nothing short of amazing. I can remember the Thatcher manner. That clipped middle class, slightly patronising drawl, those stone cold eyes that would cut through tungsten, the bouffant, the upmarket WI style battledress and an unflinching self-belief. Amazing. And equally amazing was her portrayl of Mrs T as an octogenarian suffering from Alzheimers, sometimes there, often not, but clearly wrestling with a sense of confusion about what she had actually achieved and whether her husband, Dennis, brilliantly played by Jim Broadbent, was there or not. He had actually died some years before and was a ghost masquerading as a fool in a wonderfully Shakespearian way.

Being ‘of the time’ I found the whole film thoroughly entertaining, but I suspect to those that did not live through her ‘reign’, those too young to remember,  will find it pretty dull. Expect outcries from The Daily Mail at least. As many have said it was light on politics and heavy on her personal struggles against men, her children, the Conservative Party, the Common Market (now the EU), any foreign leader bar Ronald Reagan and General Pinochet,  Unions, political foes, members of her own Cabinet, TV pundits, Socialists, Liberals, the world.

In the end she became the very image of the puppet that messrs Luck and Flaw had cast her in Spitting Image. The first woman leader of a Western nation  left us with many legacies, less council houses, more people owning property (ie having mortgages and paying huge interest on their loans) less union power, a Poll Tax that came and went, a decimation of’ non performing’ state owned industries, a free market,  foreign owned utility companies, a share holding middle class, few manufacturing industries,  a de-regulated City of London, Yuppies, Harry Enfield’s Loadsa Money, power dressing, and the biggest division of the people in Britain since the English Civil War.

I told you that I voted for her. I did. I was 20 years old and had been brought up to feel ashamed of Britain in decay. By the time of the next election in 1987, which she won again with a landslide, I had given up bothering. The two party sysytem would never deliver national progression in my view and I certainly did not want her back. I did  not vote again until 1997 and that was for (New) Labour. in 2010 I decided to go for the Lib Dems and look what happened. In the  end though, comedy can always help one ascend the Slough of Despond. Enjoy these 2 clips if you get time

 

 

 

And don’t expect the same barrel of laughs within The Iron Lady. Love her or hate her, Mrs ‘there’s no such thing as society’ Thatcher definitely brought the extremist tendencies out in all of us British people. Not many do that. And thank god we don’t get lary too often, it only leads to tears and misery.

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January 4, 2012 · 6:05 pm

#Oneaday 56: New Year’s resolutions?

This is a blog I wrote late on New Year’s Day. THis year, we are 5 trying to do ‘one a day’ as a team….that is 73 blogs each this year…

Is there any point? I mean each and every year for as long as I can remember I have been suckered into making New Year Resolutions. Mostly they last a few weeks, occasionally they last longer, but I never keep them. Ok I did once, 1st Jan 1983 I gave up smoking.

But why do we do this? Last year my resolution was to blog once a day. Enticed by the #oneaday blogging movement, I resolved to write every day even though plenty of people told me to do #oneaweek. Nope, I thought one a day would be doable. What was I thinking? I managed to finish the year on 54 blogs, just over one a week. It started poorly and I never ever caught up with the daily average. Yet until about May, I thought I could pull things back. I didn’t, clearly.

So this year, instead of learning my lessons, I resolved to blog once a week with my fellow Fab Four Amigos. Together we are calling ourselves the Five Hombres, and it already feels much better. We are together, we will support each other and make sure that we deliver one blog per working day ie five days a week. Yep, I am confident we can do this, so confident that I actually volunteered to be first up. And here it is and here am I, at 11.37 on Jan 1st 2012 writing a few hundred words to get the ball rolling. So much happened last year on a micro sort of personal, as well as on a global level, that sometimes it was hard to keep up. Exciting and uplifting at all times and it was actually cool to glance back at some of the things I wrote about during 2011.

Here’s to my fellow Hombres! Together we are stronger, of that I am confident. 2012 is going to be a brilliant year.

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November 10, 2011 · 9:20 am

#oneaday55: Progress through conversation

So FIFA backed down over the Poppy row? Not exactly what actually happened was a diplomatic agreement was made after some protest and subsequent discussion. FIFA’s rules are not actually broken and the FA supported by its chairman the Duke of Cambridge, got acknowledgement that their voice was heard. Poppies will be present on the black armbands that they England players will wear and Spain will also respect our position. Poppies will be everywhere else in the stadium and on the tracksuits and everyone is now calm and happy.

The FA have even agreed to give 500 tickets for the match to members of HM Forces and a further 1000 for the game against Sweden. Not wishing to be picky, but that really does not seem to be much. It’s a gesture.The FA and the players could make a sizeable donation to The Poppy Appeal, match fees and ticket income, or food , programme, sponsor receipts and there is still time to reconnect with the people by doing something radical. I fully appreciate the FA is all but skint, and yes future precedents could be set, but so would vital examples and those are what we need in these testing and troubled times. We all need to see beyond ‘the money’ and reset so many ‘games’ and this would be a fantastic step in the right direction. If one of the many lasting legacies of
the fallen from all wars is to ‘nudge’ those lucky enough to earn and live well  to think about the wider society they live in, then the spirit of togetherness can be rekindled and progress will be made.

It is also a lesson that we all have the right to protest if we feel that we are being wronged, individually and as a community. That protest should always be peaceful but it should be listened to. Our Prime Minister felt it right to protest to FIFA and I hope our Government will always listen to those who make their disaffection heard, all be it in a peaceful manner. Real progress can only ever be made through a proper conversation in my experience.

 

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November 9, 2011 · 9:21 am

#oneaday 54: A corner of some field that will forever be England?

When asked by a good friend last week  in the pub on Bonfire Night [a celebration of the execution of those involved in a Papist plot to assassinate the King of England some 400 years ago], about my views on
FIFA’s decision to ban the Poppy from the England football team’s shirts at this weekend’s friendly, at Wembley against Spain,  I said I felt it was probably the right decision. I based this on the simple logic that national kits should be free from any advertising commercial or otherwise, and free from all political symbols. That is not to say that I regard the Poppy as a political symbol or indeed advertising. It is a tradition in Britain and one which I am personally very proud of.

However, I have thought further on this issue and have come up with two ideas – one radical and one not so radical.

The national football team have, I believe, become toxic. The attitude of some players on and off the pitch has often not been a good example of sporting endeavour and gentlemanly behaviour. The Football Association have
become increasingly marginalised as a result of self induced incompetence and a vicious and sustained attack on the part of the Premier League in order to further increase the power of the latter within the game. Both team and Association have lost the respect of the fans and the nation in general, I would argue.

This island union made up of its component nations fought the evil of fascism in order to preserve its independence and freedom. That was the Second World War. Ironically the Poppy was introduced after the Great War (latterly known as the First World War) which was far from a struggle against the evil of fascism and far more about the nations of Europe fighting over territory as they had done for a thousand years previously. Colloquially, it was a fuck up of enormous proportions by the ruling elite of Europe, but  let’s not go there! The tradition of wearing a red Poppy to commemorate Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday is established and it is the democratic right of anyone to have the choice as top whether they wear one or not.

Back to football. If the FA had any gumption, it would offer each member of the England football team the choice as to whether they wanted to wear a Poppy or not, no matter what FIFA say. Indeed, in 1936 to the eternal shame of the FA the England football team were ordered to salute Mr Hitler with the now infamous right arm raised at 45 degrees towards the Nazi leader when England played a friendly against Germany in Berlin. At the time, this was considered polite but with 20/20 hindsight it was perhaps not
exactly right and proper. If the match had been played at Wembley, would the German FA have ordered the German team to wave politely at Mr Hitler issued ‘three cheers for a jolly good fellow’? I think not.

If the referee at Wembley refused to referee the match,  then provided the Spanish agreed to play the game, it could go ahead without match officials. This would be a significant and  seismic gesture and would directly challenge the authority of FIFA, an organisation that has consistently made its own rules up and pursued rampant commercial ideals ‘for the good of the game’. FIFA are self appointed and self regulated. They answer to no one and thus behave as a Totalitarian organisation. They are also headquartered in Switzerland, a nation that stayed neutral in all wars whilst acting as bankers to all regimes, including the Nazis. If the players and FA defied this rule, and if Spain stood shoulder to shoulder alongside them would send a message into the heart of FIFA that even Sepp Blatter could not ignore. All the paying fans in the stadium plus all those watching on TV and via the Internet would react in a positive way and it would be history in the making. We already know that the German FA have sent messages of support to the English FA such is their despair at the power of FIFA.

Alternatively and perhaps realistically, the FA have to ‘play the game’ and tread a diplomatic course. So they should continue to negotiate and lobby for the right to wear the Poppy. They should also diplomatically defy FIFA,  perhaps insist
FIFA officials wear poppies, and should appeal to the players to donate theirmatch fee to the Poppy Appeal and all the match ticket proceeds also. This would be a step in the process of repairing the faith and the connection between the
exponents and custodians of our national game with those who support it. New Wembley needs a hand in the tradition stakes, how better than to be the site of 21st century peaceful defiance in the face of a totalitarian regime, indeed it could be the corner of some [foreign] field that will forever be England.

Either way, we all need to stand up to FIFA. After all when Mr Blatter eventually slips his mortal coil, I am sure FIFA will order the wearing of black armbands as a mark of respect to him at every international match on or around that day.

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November 3, 2011 · 7:31 pm

#oneaday53: Democracy know your [place in] history

According to Wikipedia, ‘Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all the people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal (and more or less direct) participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law. It can also encompass social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political participation. ‘

The term itself comes from the Greek  word δημοκρατία – (dēmokratía) “rule of the people”,which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) “people” and κράτος (Kratos) “power”, in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising 508BC – again all according to Wikipedia.

Thus when the Western world heaved a collective sigh of relief a week ago when it was announced that a ‘deal’ had been done to ‘help’ Greece out with their debts. The deal was done by a few, behind closed doors and without agreat deal of democracy seemingly in play. Immediately ‘the markets’ cheered, bought and sold stock and overall bought more than they sold. Markets went up and everyone hailed salvation. No doubt some stock market dealers made a tidy sum that day.

Seven days on and the reluctant Prime Minister of Greece, Mr George Papandreou  who was elected on the back of a previous, highly corrupt regime incidentally, decided to call a time out on this EU move. Far from unilateral agreement on the part of the Greek
government on behalf of its people, George decided to get the ultimate buy in or buy out from his citizens and call a referendum.

This may or may not get through the Greek Parliament of course, and today it seems like it may not, but it feels like the first move of solidarity between the Greek people and their elected leaders for some time. It feels well overdue. Despite the fact that Greece has by all accounts been living the life of Riley on the back off corruption, back handers, inflated pay for all and very little economic infrastructure to support it all, this does feel right, despite what ‘the markets’ feel about it. Indeed the fact that politicians around the world are hostage to these financial markets highlights the complete and utter lack of democracy nowadays. No one voted for the people who run these markets, but seemingly they are the true masters of the universe, above law and free of any moral dignity other than to worship at the altar of Mammon.

Mr Papandreou has decided that his last hurrah will be an ironic nod to that ancient Greek principle of democracy. Ask the people simply ‘do you want to say yes to the loan accord from the EU, yes or no to Europe and yes or no to the Euro’.  Meanwhile the likes of Goldman Sachs, very much the puppet masters in this Greek tragedy will no doubt move on to their next deal, their next commission rake off and even bigger profits. The ‘Occupy’ movement will not go away until the elected leaders of democracies around the world take control of the financiers and their markets and ensure power is shared and not monopolised by the relatively few investment bankers and hedge funders who have fiddled and stolen from the many.

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August 27, 2011 · 12:27 am

oneaday#52: The day I asked the Prime Minister for computer science

I should have written this up at the time, I drafted it, half finished, half dusty.

Having just read Eric Schmidt’s MacTaggart lecture from the Edinburgh Festival today, it took me back to a brisk winter morning in Oxfordshire. It was Thursday 1oth March 2011. It turned out that this was a very special day for Kirsty and I. We had been invited to the opening of the UK’s first National Accessible Games Centre in Charlbury, and I was to address the Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron no less. On the way to the opening, our hearts sank, when we heard on Radio 4 that ‘Prime Minister Cameron was on his way to Brussels to meet feillow European leaders to discuss the escalations of civil unrest in Libya’.

‘That’s us done for then Kirst’ I said, ‘the PM won’t be coming to Charlbury today to open the centre’

‘Yes, what a shame’ said Kirsty, ‘still let’s make the best of it after all Matt Hampson is guest of honour and it is a big day for SpecialEffect (the charity that had built the centre)‘

So we carried on and I was less nervous about my speech, given I knew Matt and the SpecialEffect team.

However, when we got to the National Accessible Games Centre, it was crawling with all sorts of men in black, complete with ear pieces and military style gaits. The word from our hosts was that Mr Cameron was coming after all. He duly arrived and I made the following speech in a small room pretty much one to one, we were literally 3 feet from each other.

I am extremely proud and honoured to be asked to say a few words on this momentous occasion on behalf of the UK video games industry. I am thrilled that SpecialEffect are opening the National Accessible Games Centre here in Charlbury and is a tribute to the hard work put in by the whole of the SpecialEffect team.

This Centre is the first of it’s kind in the UK and we believe in the world and it is a real landmark not only for this wonderful charity, but for the video games industry in general.

The video games industry prides itself on providing true interactive entertainment. But it was only when this very special charity reached out to our industry, the multinational corporations and the smaller businesses, when they nudged us if you like, that we realised that that we could do so much more and make our games truly accessible to those
people with disabilities.

We feel that video games and interactive entertainment products offer a unique opportunity to level the playing field so to speak, to allow all people with or without disabilities to compete, play and enjoy games with each another. We are in an unique position as an entertainment industry and through interaction with initiatives such as SpecialEffect we can
truly start to ensure that we make games that are inclusive.

Our industry charity, GamesAid of which I am chairman, has been massively impressed by their work. So much so that for two years running the members of GamesAid have voted to support SpecialEffect.

Indeed the highlight of the UK’s premier consumer games show, the Eurogamer Expo last September in London was not Assassins Creed Brotherhood, Dance Central or Gears of War 3, it was the work that SpecialEffect showed wowing media and gamers alike. SpecialEffect certainly left a massive impression with their amazing Eye Control technology allowing everyone to play Need for Speed with nothing more than their eyes.

I would also like to say a few words about the synergies between the UK games development industry and SpecialEffect as these
are important to us all.

Driven by a technical expertise, fuelled by passion and commitment and often against all the odds and without a book of rules to follow, the UK has produced some of the greatest video games ever produced. From Elite to Grand Theft Auto to Fable to Little Big Planet, the UK has shown a propensity for technical innovation and awesome gameplay. In short we have punched above our weight on the world wide stage and our UK games developers have contributed and will continue to contribute significantly to the creative industries sector.

In the same way, SpecialEffect led by Dr Mick Donegan and his wonderful team have showed exactly the same approach to their cause. They are doing amazing work, writing the rules as they go, innovating and pioneering along the way. They have showed true leadership and are a massive asset to UKPLC.

Today is the day that SpecialEffect have taken an important step on the road to building this very special place – it really is a little big accessible games centre, built for games and above all open to everyone.

The Prime Minister gave his response, which was straight off the bat, without notes and highly impressive. There were some pictures and then we were instructed to move outside for more pictures. At this point Mr Cameron asked if the industry was getting behind SpecialEffect, and ‘are there any stragglers that I need to help along?’. I said that the industry had got behind the initiative and support was forthcoming and from multiple sources.

He then asked me if there was one thing he could take back to his Government to make a difference to the computer and video games industry. I paused, thought about it, and then said ‘yes, as a matter of fact there is one crucial message you could take back to your Government. Please ask Mr Gove to consider putting computer science back on the National Curriculum’. I referenced the recently published Livingstone Hope Report on skills for the computer and video games and VFX industries, commissioned by Ed Vaizey at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and that it had called for 20 recommendations, the
first of which was to put computer science back on the map. Mr Cameron asked why we should do this. I couched it in simple terms.

‘Prime Minister, we are very creative nation and the creative industries are an example of where we are winners. We have an amazing music, TV, film, and games industries and are
respected the world over. One of the many reasons for this is that we own the English language and it gives us and other English speaking peoples a unique advantage. It is almost a code which allowed us to create art and entertainment relevant to the 20th century. But now in the 21st century, we are all touched and influenced by technology beyond our wildest expectations. Technology requires a different language – the language of computer code if you will. If we do not equip our children to both read and write code, then they will only
ever be consumers of that technology, not inventors. Our culture and economy will be threatened and we will lose.’

‘But we teach IT in schools’ said the PM.

‘Yes, but that teaches children how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It does not teach them how to design, develop and build those products. Think of it as the equivalent of being only
able to read and not be able to write. Communication is one way and we have no ability to express ourselves culturally and thus economically’.

‘I see, that is interesting. In fact it reminds me of the Baltic Conference I attended recently. There was much talk of the big technology companies eyeing Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia as possible sites for expansion. I was told all of these countries have skilled technicians and education standards in the science , technology, engineering and maths (STEM) are high. ‘ said the PM.

‘Yes Prime Minister, they all have a greater command of the new languages, the code, than we do.’

Our conversation ended and we had a series of pictures for the media and guests , before the Prime Minister left in a car, headed for an aircraft to take him to the important European summit on Libya. But before he left, I shook his hand, tapped my nose and said ‘Prime Minister, don’t forget it’s all about the code’.

Mr Cameron looked me in the eye, tapped his nose and said ‘yes, it is all about the code’.

And so to today, Eric Schmidt chairman of one of the world’s greatest technology companies, Google, spoke at the Edinburgh Festival about many things – but the line that did it for me was that the country that
invented the computer was “throwing away your great computer heritage” by failing to teach programming in schools. “I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even
taught as standard in UK schools,” Schmidt said. “Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it’s made.”

Let’s hope our leaders listen up and take some action. If we don’t, then Britain may not have talent for too much longer.

Full articles on Eric Schmidt’s speech can be found at www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/26/eric-schmidt-chairman-google-education#start-of-comments

and

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

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August 9, 2011 · 2:46 pm

#Oneaday 51: To be someone is just a wonderful thing

I have been silent on the #oneaday  project for too
long and yet we are living in the most extraordinary times. Since I last wrote
we have seen the unravelling of the Murdoch empire and for most of us that must
be a good thing for our democracy. More on that another day though, right now
that is a long way away from my thoughts.

 

Ever since Friday last week I have been increasingly worried
that our democracy would be seriously threatened. The shooting of Mark Duggan
in Tottenham by the Police went largely unnoticed by our media and certainly
unanswered or commented on by the Metropolitan Police. That was until Saturday
night which saw an unleashing of protestation, anger and destruction in
Tottenham manifested by a conflagration of epic proportions. Watching the news
on Sunday morning told me that this was really serious stuff and people were
not only disaffected but incandescent with rage and anger. More protesting
morphed into rioting on Sunday night, spreading north to Enfield, political
leaders were still absent and those that muttered, muttered unconvincingly.

 

Then all hell broke loose last night all over London and the
white heat of technology did its own bit to keep the rioters, thugs, looters
and hooligans connected and focused. Protest was no more, this was rebellion
against the Police and the other people who lived in the same geographical
location as the protagonists. An army of so called ‘kids’ ran amok. Once the
Police strength had been assessed, their ‘guns counted’ if you will, the hoards
knew that the streets had no name and they could do exactly what they liked,
when they liked, to who they liked. And then, predictably, the chaos spread to
Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool.

 

Let’s get a few things straight before I get accused of
being preachy. Whilst I was born and lived in London, and still do part of the
time, I had the fortune to be sent to a good school (proves the Catholic Church
can get one thing right), get a decent education and make some great, lifelong
friends. But I did fall into the wrong company let’s , when I was 15 years old.
It resulted in 2 expulsions, from the same school which was unique in our
school’s history and many a ‘brush’ with the law. When I finally got my
marching orders from school, the peer group I hooked up with were not my loyal
school friends, who had all started to find me ‘difficult’ company to say the
least, but my mates from the terraces at Upton Park. Football became my life. I
didn’t work for a couple of years, got up to all sorts of capers around Europe
and actually become a societal outcast. I will add I did cast myself out of
society.  My peer group were the older lads in the ‘firm’, and our
notoriety was our badge of honour. At last, in my 19 year old eyes, I was
someone. Everywhere we went, we knew we were feared, we knew we were respected
by our opposite numbers and above all we thought we were special.

 

Everyone wants to be someone. Everyone wants to belong.
Everyone wants. In 1984, aged 21, I finally woke up having missed prison by a
hair’s breadth. I decided to try and get myself to art college and luckily I
had the wit, the will and the intelligence to get in. Once I was there, I was
impressed by how creative people really were, and how refreshing it was not to
live my life on a knife edge of adrenalin, violence and peer pressure. When
fists turn to knives which then turn to guns and crossbows, you either wake up
and get out or you literally will not wake up. My school friends helped me see
who I really was and art college opened my eyes. I left college, got a job, any
job, and started to pay my way in the world namely I started to give back
rather than take. Soon after I used my ridiculous levels of self confidence and
arrogance to start my own business and channelled all my energy into creating
not destroying. It has been a path of steady redemption ever since, using that
‘never lay down’ attitude to prove that our business could not only ‘stand and
fight’ but win now and again.

 

I still like to think I have a sense of social justice. I
hate excess, and yet I live in a fantastic house, have the most wonderful wife,
an amazing mother, father and brother, amazing friends and work with fantastic
people in a wonderful industry. Life really could not be better. A bit of me
still says this is wrong, wrong given there are young people in Britain who
have little or no hope. People who are so pissed off with their lot, that they
decide to take a risk or two, pursue their version of the ‘free market’ and
reject anything or anyone purporting to be part of their community or indeed in
authority. It is the rule of the street, the survival of the fittest and to the
winner the spoils. No prisoners, no points for second place, no surrender. The
top boys get the top cars, the best drugs, the good looking girls, the most
money and maximum respect. They get all the glory.

 

When these people, indeed anyone, sees the excessive
financial rewards handed to those who work in a broken financial market, the
very same market that has sent our country and other countries to the edge of
financial ruin, and get away with daylight robbery, it is not surprising that
they just think ‘fuck it, what we can’t afford we will take’. But theft is
always wrong, no matter who takes away from others.

 

Where are their parents people ask? What parents? The
propensity of double barrelled names tells a different story, literally the hedging
of your identity. Without proper role models, what chance do these people have?
If your eyes get starry and your head  is turned by rappers, footballers
and other gangstas, the rest is written.  What they need is different role
models, to be involved in building something, making a contribution and taking
decisions, learning how to win and learning how to lose. They need time
invested into them, they need to want to belong and want to conform, they need
to see the benefits of mainstream society, rather than being simply sold the ‘features’
so to speak. In short they need to be someone.  Many of these kids do not
have father figures, for everyone’s sake, we now need the mothers to take to
the streets and appeal to their children to stop. Simultaneously, our society
needs to show these people a way in.

 

A Paul Weller wrote,
‘to be someone is such a wonderful thing’, if ever a phrase cut both ways, this
is it.

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June 23, 2011 · 9:25 am

#oneaday 50: E3 – a kind (of) view

It was my first time back in LA at E3 since 2006 and it was both exciting,  stimulating certainly never boring. Would we see the true dawn of a new platform less frontier where the Cloud was all? Or would we see platforms continuing to plough their own furrow, vying for the top development talent as well as the consumers’ Yen, Pound, Dollar or Euro?

These are inspiring times and we are seeing both structural and seismic changes to the industry as we know it.  Platforms and methods of distribution are certainly key factors that will both disrupt the status quo and drive growth or hasten failure for those who are unable to adapt to market conditions and consumer demand.  Everyone is seeking to be the hub of the entertainment universe both in the home and out and about. From a consumer’s perspective, this does give plenty of choice, but it can also lead to confusion and confusion is never good. That is why technology and content companies need to have very clear offerings and above all deliver seamless, secure, reliable, scalable and inclusive services and products to consumers. It is clear that some consumers want one connected device which they can use in a variety of ways. Between Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, HTTC, Samsung and others we will see plenty of gadgetry that will edge us all towards that nirvana.

But back in the video games world, it was great to hear and see that Microsoft were pushing Kinect out to the core gamers, that Sony launched their new handheld the PS Vita (out this year) and were also focusing on the core gamers and Nintendo unveiled their new console, Wii U (out anytime between April and December 2012). The Wii U will blow most people away as soon as you get your hands on it and it truly offers another dimension (3rd anyone?)  in gaming. It will push and inspire games developers to make games that will in turn inspire and push gamers everywhere.  And Nintendo too are focusing on, you’ve guessed it, core gamers. Selling packaged goods media alongside the hardware will be a much needed fillip to the traditional retailers who are not yet into the digital world.  There are also some Nintendo favourites such as Mario Kart and Luigi’s Mansion coming to the 3DS which will push sales nicely too.

Meanwhile up the road from LA, Apple announced the iCloud which is a way of storing all your music, photos, apps, docs and more, wirelessly as well as pushing them to all your devices automatically.  Cloud computing is finally becoming a practical reality, and another exciting tech on show was OnLive, who have BT and HTTC as investors.  This is a streaming service which brings top notch PC games to your TV or tablet. Using a universal controller you simply play directly from the Cloud. I even saw Flash running on an iPad! OnLive are due to launch in the UK in September so it will be interesting to see if the service is taken up by gamers, core or casual or somewhere in between.

Elsewhere in the digital space, EA have launched Origin which is their digital distribution service set to rival Steam, Amazon, Apple, XBLA, PSN and others. They clearly see the digital race is on and like the chariot race in Ben Hur, it will be fast, furious and pretty brutal.

And finally, it was great to see E3 packed with the key innovators in our industry – the developers, old and new, all hungry for the new tech, some liberated by self-publishing and above all most of them had a smile on their face. I even saw some great augmented reality apps which will revolutionise advertising very soon.  If you see smiles augmented or up there in the clouds, it’s a good sign that the future for interactive entertainment an video games is very bright indeed.

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