David Cameron's new best friend

You may have seen David Cameron on the news today, anointing himself head of the "New Moral Army", promising a "fightback" against rioters, and praising (at 0.53) "the million people on Facebook who've signed up to support the police". The group in question was created and is run by this lovely chap:

Well, that doesn't seem the sort of thing the Prime Minister should be getting behind, does it? But wait. There are more rib-ticklers where that came from.

A riots reader

Quickly rounding up some of the more interesting reflections on (and in some cases, prescient predictions of) recent events. By all means send any you've spotted that I've missed and I'll add them.

Riots: the underclass lash out (Daily Telegraph)

"Meanwhile, the view is gaining ground that social democracy, with its safety nets, its costly education and health care for all, is unsustainable in the bleak times ahead. The reality is that it is the only solution."

A sad day

I'm always a bit conflicted about things like this. Half of me thinks "What a greedy shower of twats", given that The Onion has been free to read online for years and has still managed to make enough money to run an entire TV channel off, so it's hard to believe they need to start doing this to survive. 

The other half says "Hey, maybe this means people will come to stop thinking that all online writing – in fact, any kind of writing – should be free", and that there might still be some hope of reversing the trend of the last decade or so and being able to make a living out of it.

When there's no future, how can there be sin?

Let's make something clear from the off. I have absolutely no idea whether Mark Duggan deserved to be shot dead or not. If the widespread but as-yet-unconfirmed reports that he fired a gun at police are true, he's certainly got nobody but himself to blame. 

We live in a time when the police – and especially the Metropolitan Police – will kill you for getting on a tube train or for just going about your normal everyday business somewhere in the loose vicinity of a protest march, so pointing a gun (or even something that might look a bit like one) at them would be pretty much the textbook definition of asking for it.

Probably best not to ask

WoSland – getting things done, again

Alert viewers will doubtless recall a recent piece in which we praised the toweringly magnificent gameplay engine of Evolution Tennis for iOS, while savagely attacking its awful, unbelievably user-hostile metastructure.

As ever, though, WoSland's nudging has managed to secure tangible and thrillingly awesome results where others merely flail around impotently.

Dear Oral-B

I just bought one of your fancy electric toothbrushes, because I live on sweets and I'd quite like to still have some teeth left when I'm 50. I have a consumer question relating to it, which I wonder if you could help me with.

What the FUCK am I supposed to do with this, you fucking halfwits?

No Fun Land

If anyone ever doubted the uselessness of the modern videogames media, consider this – when you're working in the specialist press, and your only job is to bring people news related to videogames, how shit must you be if you get scooped at reporting videogame news by the Metro?

But that's only passingly what I want to talk about today.

WoSland Game Of The Year 2005

You start to bargain with yourself, after a little while. "That one didn't count, I got killed stupidly on Mission 1 so it was just a practice", you say.

Then it's "Well, I was going to stop at 10 o'clock, but now it's five past and I've missed the start of the programme I was going to watch, so I might as well have 25 more minutes till the next one's on."

Less of a feature, more of a survey

I've been racking my brains for most of this afternoon, because it's too humid to do anything that involves physical movement. I've drawn a blank, so I figured I may as well ask the millions of readers of WoSland for help.

Can anyone think of a single really good shmup in the entire history of gaming that's ever been created by an English-speaking developer?