London mayor Boris Johnson has publicly blamed video games for violence amongst Britain’s young people. What a fool.
Writing in The London Paper, the Mayor said
We must show young people that knives are not cool, and for that we need positive role models.I want to counteract the damaging influences drug-addled celebrities and violent video games and the lure of the life in the gang by providing opportunities.
Lets take a look at Grand Theft Auto. It is probably the epitome of violence in video games and has been since the first one. In GTA IV, you have to drive on the left as the game is set in Liberty City, which is based on New York. Do those who play the game in Britain drive on the wrong side of the street because of it? I think not.
It started with films. Then it moved to television, then rock ‘n’ roll and now it’s video games. Politicians seem to be completely unhappy until they have used a part of the mass media or entertainment businesses as a scapegoat for the problems society has as a whole.
Young people in London are just disenfranchised from the rest of the country and indeed the world. They turn to crime partly because they have nothing important to occupy their time, and they feel victimised and they lack the moral guidance and support they so strongly need. Politics is an exclusive club for those at war and those in business. What part of that can a young person be a part of?
It’s no wonder knife crime is going up massively amongst young people.They are demonised by the media, just like black people were in the sixties and seventies. Broadcast news’ desperate attempts to capture ratings is having a massive impact on young people and, sadly, they know it, but are doing nothing to counter it.
Computer games and the entertainment industry don’t have half as much of a negative impact on society, and young people in particular, as politicians and the news media do.
I think Boris may have asked one of his advisers what part of the entertainment industry is making the news right now. Said adviser would have thought about GTA IV and Amy Winehouse. The result is Bumbling Boris blaming celebrities and video game violence amongst our troubled youth.
Maybe Boris needs to get a grip on reality and do something about it, rather than just talk about, chastising all the young people to make the old people of London feel vindicated in the knowledge that they were right about young people all along when they are just plain wrong.
All Boris will end up doing is widening the gap between young people and the rest of the country, pushing them away from those who can pacify the violence and kerb the advancing knife crime ‘crisis’.
