Political Games

It appears that his no doubt onerous duties as Labour expenses claimant for Leicester East and chair of the Home Affairs select committee are not keeping Keith Vaz busy enough to prevent his straying into Liam Fox territory over the video game Modern Warfare 3. Fox, it will be remembered, did some huffing and puffing last year about a game in which players could opt to be the Taliban: "I am disgusted and angry," he blathered. "It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game." As the Guardian's most consistently sane commentator after Steve Bell pointed out, it was a bit difficult to see how a lot of little flashing pixels could be a legitimate cause for concern to a man who was, as we now know, the secretary of state for Adam Werritty's defence interests in a country that was at war. Vaz, who has approximately Dr Fox's scruples when it comes to killing real human beings, has not gone quite so far as to use the word un-British, but he has tabled a motion blathering about links between violent crime and violent video games, and calling on the British Board of Film Classification to do something about it. Vaz is particularly exercised about "the harrowing scenes in which a London Underground train is bombed by terrorists, bearing a remarkable resemblance to the tragic events of 7 July 2005", although the BBFC has already said that Modern Warfare 3 bears no resemblance to the said events. Evidently the perpetrators were influenced by a different game; perhaps even by a Great one.