Labour under Ed Miliband.

Okay Ladies and Gentlemen, here it is at long last. The results of the poll dictated to me that you wanted to read my waffle about the Labour party under their new (ish) leader, Ed Miliband.

Although this man was not my particular choice to win the internal leadership battle, he won, and by the looks of things, he's going to be Prime Minister after the next general election.

Publicly, David Miliband was the better candidate to lead the party, and my personal choice, but as is the case with the Labour party and its heavy Union support, Ed was the favourite for them, and consequently won the leadership battle. 

Ed doesn't really have the charisma or looks that can match that of Cameron. He does have that air of nerd about him; with his nasal voice and that worried scowl on his face when in an uneasy situation. To be honest, his older brother, David doesn't really have all that much going for him when it comes to looks either. However, I am a firmly oppose this new era of politics that were started by JFK - a politics all about how the lead candidates presented themselves and how they spoke, not a politics necessarily about the values, actual policies and parties behind their leader. Which the British found out to their own peril in the 2010 elections, where 36.1% of Britain decided to ignore everything history had taught them about a Conservative government, not even bother to do any degree of research into the blue manifesto and subsequently vote for the man with the nice hair and pleasing face.

Whoops, swerved out of my lane there, back to Labour under Ed Miliband.

Ever since the dawn of democracy, the opposition party's sole job is to basically tell the current government that they are wrong, and to try and convince the public that they can do the job better. Every now and then however, on the rare occasions where the nation is united about certain things normally regarding ridiculous EU regulations, the government and opposition parties will agree in opinion - and that's when you know that we mean business. Take note, Brussels, if ever you dare attempt to pass something upon our great nation that both Tories and Labourists both hate so much that we would unite with one another to fight it, beware.

The first job that Ed undertook once he took the crown of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition Leader was to reshuffle the Shadow Cabinet. The Shadow Cabinet is basically Ed Miliband's fantasy government (like fantasy football, only infinitely more enthralling). He was in a difficult place. He had so much proven talent to pick from, such as ex-Foreign Secretary David Miliband. But he was his brother, and he didn't want to risk turning the Labour party into a domestic every time they didn't agree. He also had to make a decision between Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, the husband and wife, for the same reasons. As a result of this, he made Yvette Shadow Secretary of state and controversially, Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, despite openly admitting that he really had no idea what on Earth the economy actually was. In the end, thankfully, Alan resigned because his wife was having scandalous steamy romps elsewhere (did you like my attempt to make that sound tabloidy?). This left a rather important hole to be filled, and who better than with Ed Balls, former Education Minister. Quite the promotion for him there. It's better than having George Osbourne. Alan Johnson was better than George Osbourne. You can't grow a tree without water; you can't grow an economy without money. No brainer really? Apparently not for wor Georgie.

Rather annoyingly, Ed and the gang still haven't seemed to have put together a viable set of policies to go in line with the new path that they are going down by scrapping the 'New' out of the title and being known as the plain old Labour party again. However, I severely doubt that this will affect their chances of winning the next general election in 3 years time because the public are going to respond to the Tories pig headedness and ham fisted approach to everything by voting in the only way they know to get rid of them; Labour. Let's face it, Liberal Democrat are hardly in for a chance after the spectacular show they put on over the last few months and the 'Other' parties may earn a few extra votes, but Labour is still the only viable opposition vote to take. Even if the voters are blind to the red manifesto and ignore all the good things they've done for this country. But it's still a step in the righ- I mean, left direction. The correct direction. A vote for normalcy- I mean, er...normality.


As a footnote, I decided at the weekend that I was going to quit smoking. I'm going to do this totally Cold Turkey, that means no patched, no nothing. It's personal between me and the fags; using patches would be like Cameron asking Obama to back him up in an argument with Sarkozy.
It's day 3 so far, and it's absolute hell. I have a 3 hour long craving last night that kept me up until about 2am. I know it's amazingly beneficial to me, but it is so tempting to give in.

I'm back on Deviant Art!

This is just a quite blog to keep you keen.

Used to be quite active on this art blogging site. And then my life took a turn away from my artistic hobby.
I then consequently forgot my login details to my that old account, so I decided to make a new one. Which I find quite sad, (impending arrogance) because there was some really good work on there.

You can still see that dusty old profile here.

But my new one is here. This is the one I'm going to start using from now on. Activity will be low, but I'll give you guys a nudge when something new gets posted on there from me. In the mean time, enjoy what's on there at the moment. :)

Enjoy. Also; DON'T FORGET TO GET YOUR VOTE IN FOR NEXT WEEK'S BLOG! Tell all your friends, and get my name out there in the blogging world!

Peace out guys!

Better late than never - Tucson

It is absolutely fantastic news to hear about democratic US Senator Gabrielle Giffords' speedy and down right miraculous recovery after being shot at point-blank range in the head on the 8th January during a public meeting in Tucson, Arizona. Unfortunately there were some people that weren't so lucky (if you would call being shot in the forehead lucky). Six people were murdered, including on nine-year-old girl.

Since the shootings, there has been much speculation about the motives of the attack. It's quite clear that Senator Giffords was the intended target, which suggests political motivation. Which points the finger towards the far right Republican Tea Party, headed by Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.

Gabrielle Giffords wasn't a stranger to assassination or hate crime directed towards her. In the past it has been alleged that she has had her office building shot at, and during a similar meeting to the one being held on the 8th in 2009, a plundering gunman dropped his gun on the floor before being arrested by police.

Gabrielle Giffords - Courtesy of The Guardian

This hostility towards her has been because of her strong support towards many of the Democratic policies such as Obama's new health plan, abortion, immigration and stem-cell research. Which is barbaric. Our health service is state owned; look how well it's doing! Why would anybody not want this? And the fact that she narrowly beat the Tea-Baggers in the recent elections last year - so essentially, Tucson has is as close as makes no difference to a 50/50 split between Democrats and far right Republicans.

Nutter + Gun x Palin's OTT bullshit = Tucson Shooting

This deranged looking chap was the person who shot Giffords. It cannot really be disputed that he was influenced in some way by Palin's ridiculous and hate inducing political campaign against the Democrats. Just take a look at this map showing key election 'battle grounds' that Palin intends to target.

One of the Tea Party's campaign maps.

It cannot be argued that these points of interest looked suspiciously like crosshairs, or target markers. The red ones being key seats that Palin aims to fight for. They are in fact surveyor symbols that are used to map out an area. Either way, they look like crosshairs. And to colour some in red emphasises this 10-fold. There are so many other symbols that could've been used, such as *s, plain circles and arrows. That said, there has been a couple of similar 'target maps' that have been used by the Democratic party on the past.

I feel that it is totally unnecessary for there to be campaign maps to look like this! The top one can even be accused of looking like a war campaign map used by generals to control armies! I'm outraged by the caption under the second map! I'm not sure what party the bottom one was published by, but I suspect it was Republican. It can only be hoped that British politics don't follow this trend in political election campaigns.  

The sooner that they realise that they need to stop treating their opposition like assassination targets and acting like it's a military campaign, the sooner that people are going to stop feeling pressured into making extremist actions, such as executing Senators. It was going to happen sooner or later, will this be a lesson learned? Apparently not judging by Sarah Palin's response to the tragic incident with her use of intense and hostile rhetoric and misunderstanding of the phrase 'blood libel'. Moreover, it would seem that Obama managed to rise above the political blame game to give a heart-felt and genuine speech on how much of a tragedy it was - hoping Gabrielle Giffords a speedy recovery and not once placing any political accusation anywhere. 

You can find both the videos here.

Need I say  more? 

Some things are better not being known.

Let's just get this out the way first. I am a firm believer of freedom of speech. But all this malarkey that Julian Assange is doing is just ridiculous and in light of the start of his court trial, I thought I'd type a blog up about it and how I feel about this whole affair. If you can't access this blog in the future, it's because 4chan have found me and killed me with an email bomb.

Granted, perhaps the Swedish government probably didn't handle the whole alleged rape claims very well. But I believe that this was purely because of the amount of pressure they were getting from the US to get Assange in a place where they could get to him.

Did the founder of Wikileaks rape these women as alleged? We won't know until the judge makes his decision. But either way, he does look like a seedy and grimy sort of fellow, with a little bit of the banker breed thrown in for good measure.

Julian Assange

There have been calls from fair right American's for him to be executed. Which is frankly barbaric, however it doesn't excuse the fact that some of the leaks that he has been responsible for have been totally and unjustifiably unwarrantable, and dangerous for the national security of America. 

Leaks such private conversations between members of the American government about their opinions of certain countries and War Logs of both Afghanistan and Iraq. It's not just America that he's attacking either with these publications, but other countries that approach him with illegally gotten information. It's all on the same par with treason, and anybody who is caught doing it should be treat in the same way as somebody who is caught selling information to a foreign state. There is always talk of somebody being a traitor and posing serious risk to the country every time a somebody is caught selling secrets to the Chinese, Russians, Koreans. So how is this any different? 

There is a reason why governments don't publish this information. Granted some of it is because of self preservation; nobody wants bad PR, no matter how honest the government is. However, some is genuinely for the  public's best interests and safety, and to upkeep sometimes fragile relationships with other countries to keep the peace and maintain the best interests of their country at heart. Who doesn't want their country's best interests put first?

To callously put all this information up for world wide viewing is completely wrong. Some of it can be justified - SOME OF IT. And Julian and his crew at Wikileaks need to be able to strike the balance between what the public have a right to know, and what the world DOESN'T need to, and has no business knowing. 

Half the people up in arms about this probably never even heard about Wikileaks before August last year. And probably never even bothered their arsed to read through the 400,000 files in the Iraq war log. I know I sure as hell didn't, I have better things to do then stick my nose into things that don't concern me, and be safe in the assumption that if there was anything that the media thought the public ought to know, it would be published.

The argument of free speech is a ridiculous excuse for the justification of the use of offensive comments. The boundary lines of this is pushed to the absolute limits by the likes of the Daily Mail and the Star - the latter of which published an anti-Muslim front page headline, and then manage to misspell the word heroes whilst printing the story right next a flesh abundant picture of a woman. And they wonder why Muslims can be so hostile toward us. Anyway, here's the online article. At least the Star had the decency to disable the comments section on this page. Impending racism thwarted. 

[Insert a picture of this front page here....anyone?]

It would appear that I can't in fact find a picture of this. But whilst I was searching through the archives of the Daily Star, I was absolutely flabbergasted by how much space Katie Price has taken up on their front pages in recent weeks! All space wasted for actual real news. 

Until next time, folks.

BREAKING NEWS! A celebrity wears clothes!

Bit short of things to write about today. Perhaps I should turn this publication into a less frequent occurrence. I decided to have a looksie on the great provider of accurate and frightfully important knowledge, MailOnline.

Apparently some woman called Mischa Barton has put on a pair of tight trousers and knelt down. Yes, that's right. The Mail has literally written a story about a celebrity wearing clothes. Barton isn't exactly a big house-hold name either, unless you watched The OC. And let's face it. Who did? 

So here, not only has the Mail reported on this woman doing the shocking and unusual thing of covering herself, but they've also called her fat because what can only be described as the tiniest bit of skin has overspilled over the waistband of her trousers. Only the caption to this rather unfortunate picture claimed she was "bursting" out of her trousers. 

I also found this about Mark Zuckerberg being stalked. The founder of Facebook has become a victim of real life stalking by an avid admirer who bombarded him with many emails and even sent him and his sister hand written notes and on one occasion, some flowers. Zuckerberg has since filed a restraining order on his stalker's arse after the man was arrested whilst approaching Zuckerberg's house. 

Once I had finished reading the article, my attention promptly found some of the comments that the readers had posted in response to this publication. Comments such as:

Clever people don't never go on facebook though Im on it a bit, I admit but Im unusual.

I beg to differ. I use Facebook quite a bit - and I would perhaps dare to call myself clever; at least cleverer than the average Mail reader. See, I even used a semi-colon correctly. I digress, anybody who puts the words "don't" and "never" next to each other is clearly on their way to be a budding Neurosurgeon.

Caught in his own net. Now he knows what other people have to put up with.

Or perhaps don't never have to put up with if they set their privacy setting properly and only have real friends on their immediate network. Then you don't have to worry about your privacy.

What comes around goes hundreds hundreds of people every year get stalk on face book mm not a good adverticement

Ouch. Clearly not a fan of punctuation, suffixes, conjunctions or even the concept of quantity. 500million people use Facebook. It's an absolute relief that only (what I'm assuming he meant) hundreds and hundreds of users become victims of stalking in any degree through this site.

And my personal favourite:

"What comes around goes hundreds hundreds of people every year get stalk on face book mm not a good adverticement" - karl wood, southampton With all possible respect, if you can't even spell "facebook", what makes you think you have anything of value to contribute to a discussion about it? People get stalked in the street, not a great "adverticement" for town planning, but we still have towns... "Maybe it will help Mark Z to consider more carefully the effect that Facebook has on lives..." - Dave, Leeds Why should he care less? If you don't like it, don't use it, or build your own (that's what I'm doing). It wasn't built especially for you, and nobody ordered you to use it, did they?

 A man who thinks that he is higher on the horse than the two other people he is quoting, then makes himself look stupid by forgetting silly little things like readability - and saying he spelt "facebook" wrong, when it's a proper noun, and therefore spelt Facebook. Or perhaps some other method of breaking the quotes from the comment he has made about it. Like a hyphen, or a full stop. Or maybe the use of the 'return' key. Happily, however, he does understand how to use an apostrophe. But with more rhetoric coming from this man than Sarah Palin, I don't think he has knowledge about any other ways of writing critique. Try sarcasm. Or making jokes. Maybe add suggestions? Or taking a look at this blog.


Whilst reading a quality paper, I must say I am sick of reading about the woman who is suing a Plastic Surgeon for £54million because he left her with a 'monster eye' and a facial twitch. Read the full story here. She should get fuck all. Granted the surgeon himself may have been a bit dodgy, but is this a good enough reason, if there was one, as why vanity surgery is stupid - and it serves her right to be afflicted with this problem. I have absolutely no doubt that she looked totally normal before the surgery. And I have absolutely no sympathy for this idiot who clearly had too much money to spend.

Another thing I heard on the news this morning was that Clegeron (or Camegg) is going to start charging parents who use the Child Support Agency a £300 fee per year. Critics have called it child tax. I call it punishment for not having a traditional Conservative family. Westminster claim that it will cause parents to stop using it and will encourage them to sort out child support privately. Which is fair enough, but those that rely on this service the most are those that are generally the worst off in society. Am I missing the point when I say that the whole idea of a government service is for it to be free? Clearly the Tories skipped over this memo because it helps the disadvantaged.

Fucking draconian philistines.

Also, I will leave you with these two articles concerning junk food. One is from a half decent newspaper, the other from the Mail. Can you guess which is which?

Junk food diet could damage your child's IQ.

Junk food beneficial for your diet.

Mr. Copy and Mr. Paste

Hokay, so I've just literally just finished turfing all of my blog posts from Tumblr to Blogspot. I honestly didn't realise quite how much I had written! Thank God for Mr. Copy and Mr. Paste! Eternal gratifications to them two! Not only have they made my life so much easier in this instance, but the Daily Mail wouldn't actually exist if it wasn't for them. Well, it probably would, but it would be reduced to the truly dismal task of quality journalism. Wouldn't that be just terrible.


Anyway, here's my new and future blog. This is what I'll be using to allow an insight into my life from now on as it is just so much better. 
I do know that as a result of my transferring actions, some of the pictures are smaller then what they  were, and that some are missing all together. But I challenge you you find me an archive on this planet that's fully complete. At least you got all the words. Be happy for that. 


Speaking of the Daily Mail, it would appear that they have advertised a job vacancy in the Guardian (anybody who has ever been confused by the definition of 'irony'? Well, this is it.)

Daily Mail

•Britain’s most successful newspaper group is offering would-be reporters and writers an exciting and challenging yearlong training course, plus the chance to work at the Daily Mail and Mail Online

•We are looking for bright, sharp, intelligent writers who believe they can be fast-tracked to the very top

•You’ll be on the best journalism course in the business – and be paid a competitive salary while you train

•Successful applicants will probably have completed post-graduate journalism training or had experience working in newspapers

Apply by February 21, with your CV, 200 words on why you think you could be a Mail journalist, a 200-word news story and a selection of up to six cuttings and send to Sue Ryan, Trainee Reporters’ Scheme, Daily Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry St, London W8 5TT. 
Please send queries to sue.ryan@dailymail.co.uk

Somebody who blogs under Consume Conform Obey has even gone as far as to bash up a letter of application to Sue Ryan and urged that anybody with any degree of competence with a keyboard do the same - ie. Has knowledge of where the Ctrl + C and V buttons are located and possess the ability to use them.


Anyway, I thought that I would no doubt give it a go too. 

Dear Sue, 

I am writing in response to the job advertisement that you published in the Guardian. I like how you've tried to expand into employing actual talent there, but I honestly don't think that the type of people that read the Guardian would really be too interested in writing for the Daily Mail; below them, perhaps?  

I digress, I would be very interested in the opportunity to be able to write quality journalism for your much respected and sourced tabloid as I am incredibly interested, as a student and lover of the everything English, to be able to consequently throw away all my morals and dignity to be the author of literature, of a level which is nearly matched by a children's story book, that causes public outrage with speculation and lies. 

I feel that this would be the perfect job for me and that I would be able to integrate myself neatly with your current staff as I would consider myself a very politically savvy left-winger who is willing to do whatever it takes to get a scoop; even if it means phone hacking. Unfortunately I do not possess any degree of journalism experience, but my English teacher once said to me that I would make a good journalist one day if I ever chose to take a route down that career path. Gracefully, this is a route that may have possibly come open to me with this vacancy! I look forward to hear back from you.

 Yours sincerely,

A person with intelligence and a functioning moral compass. 

Time to copy and paste this into and email to send it to the lovely Sue Ryan. I feel that I have put myself on excellent standing with this application. I really have high hopes for this going well for me!
I would suggest that you do the same, but I don't want my chances scupper'd by your superior letters of application!

I went into it with more knowledge of the Universe.

On Saturday night, my friend and fellow blogger decided to drag me to see a band at a pub called The Office. The band were called Mugshot and were surprisingly…er, surprising.

With the opening of the gig reverberating with the intro of Metallica’s Enter Sandman, I was reserving judgment against whether the lead singer would be able to keep up with the instrumental talent that the rest of the band seemed to so effortlessly emit. And with his first words, he managed this. Flawlessly.

Enter Sandman’s extraordinary guitar solos were matched note-for-note by Mugshot’s lead guitarist. It set a high president for whether their following pieces would be able to live up to this opener.

But with the second and third songs being Time is Running Out by Muse and Raidohead’s legendary Creep, they proved more than capable. Even if the leads vocals weren’t up to Matt Bellamy’s range.

U2 and a very rock version of Live and Let Die by the musical deity that is Sir Paul McCartney followed. Spectacular. This band was very old school - made even more apparent that the members were all very middle-aged.

By this point in my eyes, they could do not wrong. This was the moment that I chose to nip out for a very rushed smoke.

I returned to them playing Dani California by the Chili Peppers. Here, the lead vocals kept up with the tempo of the verse lyrics absolutely perfectly and added their own quirk to the chorus. Lead guitar flawlessly shredded out the final outro salvo with incredible precision.

With the next song being U2’s Vertigo; they kept up the goosebumps. Hello, hello!

I must say that by now, I was starting to get the feeling that Mugshot were big fans of Bono and his crew.

Unfortunately, with a heavy heart and much begrudgement they had a break for 20 minutes, and I had to catch my last bus home.

Their whole sound was crisp and clear and unlike with a lot of unsigned “pub” bands, their sound levels were spot on. The music didn’t drown out the vocals, and the bass guitar wasn’t so quiet that a mouse sneezing would have been louder. You really got the impression that Mugshot really enjoyed what they did, and that they put massive amounts out practice into being able to perform with such perfection.

And now, as if by magic, we move from a superb performance, to a truly shocking  performance from a band who really should’ve known better (it’s almost as if I actually planned this transition).

As I’m sure that a few of you are aware, there was a massive American sporting even on last night. The Super Bowl is what I can only describe as the FA Cup Final in Britain. Except bigger - much, much bigger. It just oozes everything there is about America. The commercials, the atmosphere, the dramatic commentators, the fake grass they were playing on. It was the Steelers vs the Packers. I have no idea what this means, but I was rooting for the Steelers because I noticed that the Packers had a bloke on their team who had a long ginger perm; and kind of looked like a girl.

When I first started watching, I was more clued up on how the universe worked, but honestly, by half-time, I was really getting into it and really starting to get an understanding for the rules of American Football and why it is such a big event over in the US.

So yes. The Half-Time Show. I really was expecting something truly fantastical for an event of this magnitude - but we got a painfully terrible performance from The Black Eyed Peas instead. They were out of tune, totally unco-ordinated and they seemed so completely flustered. Even a cameo appearance from the guitar legend himself, Slash, couldn’t make it better. By the time Usher gracefully dropped from the sky for his 30 second slot, it was just lost.

From a massive band like the Peas, I would really have expected more. I found it honestly disappointing to watch - even Fergie wasn’t looking that attractive.

I would rather have watched Mugshot play there than the Peas.

My name is Desmond Miles, and this is my story

It’s been three years since we were first thrust into Desmond Miles’ DNA Memories

of the legendary assassin, Altair, via the Animus. This nifty bit of kit allows people to be able to see and live the memories of their ancestors through their DNA. Since then we’ve been absorbed by Desmond’s epic story. His kidnapping by Abstergo Industries (the modern day Templar’s), his epic fight against the Crusaders through Altair, and his expansive quest through Italy and the rest of 14th Century Europe via the Italian Stallion, Assassin Ezio Auditore for an artifact called the Piece of Eden - an Apple with super awesome powers.

We have quite literally watched Ezio grow up from being a baby to a fully-fledged legend Head of the Assassin Brotherhood. We watch his father and brother’s get executed and we play his strife to find the man who killed them, Uberto Alberti to avenge their deaths. Due to this, we have grown a certain affinity to this man; even though Desmond’s story began with Altair. Thankfully, there is still reference to Altair, through weapons, armour, conversation and in-game history.

The ‘real-time’ setting of the game is 2012. The world is in turmoil. A plague has wiped out Africa. There are Americans trying to get into Mexico as refugees. High amounts of severe hurricanes all over the world. And perhaps the worst, the closure of the last major film studio in an unnamed country; we all know it’s probably America, but we’ll just let Ubisoft keep thinking that we don’t know.

Throughout the game we get to leave the Animus and stretch out legs as Desmond in the Abstergo headquarters. Here we meet Lucy Stillman and learn a little bit about what is really going on.

 Altair, can you lend a hand? Perhaps a blade? 

First impressions were that of absolute awe as we journeyed through the Middle-East during the times of the Third Crusade in search of the Piece of Eden (which is essentially an apple - with super awesome powers), whilst avoiding the Templar’s, beggars, guards and water (Yes, water. Apparently the ability to swim isn’t a necessity on a budding Assassin’s CV). We were -I mean - Altair, was under the leadership of Al Mualim, head of the Assassin’s Brotherhood. Under his leadership, we were told to hunt down and assassinate (but more often than not, screw up, and end up in a massive fight with the odds stacked against you, winning and feeling like God) nine key figure heads of the Templar’s and Crusader’s. Each *ahem* assassination would bring you closer to the final target of Robert de Sable, the Crusader Army Leader, and the Piece of Eden. During each mission, you had the choice to be able to complete various side tasks that would affect the main mission such as reduce the number of guards lurking around the area etc. 

             

                                                     - Altair looking badass

These did, however get a bit monotonous once you got about half-way through the story. Thankfully, however, you only had to actually take a pick of two the five or six choices per assassination. Obviously, the more you completed, the easier the final stage would be. But it was much more fun to go straight in and have a fight, or chase the more cowardly ones around. 

After each main target assassination, Altair would have a little chat with his victim and finally saying “Rest in Peace”. During these final words, it would emerge that each one of the targets genuinely thought that what they were doing was right and just - planting the seeds of doubt into the mind of the player, and the ominousity that perhaps something was amiss. It turned out that there was. After having a beastly battle with Robert de Sable, he lets you in on the secret that Al Mulaim was in fact a traitor and was using you to get him closer to his goal of getting the Apple for himself by killing all the others that wanted it. Naturally, we couldn’t let that happen and promptly dispatch him. And by promptly, I of course mean after many retries and a side helping of annoyance. 

After Altair deals with Al Mualim we get thrown back into Desmond’s boots back in 2012. Abstergo want to kill him and run off and have a nosey for the Pieces of Eden in the current day. Apparently there are 15 of these things scattered around the world. Curiously, Lucy Stillman steps in and manages to convince Abstergo not to kill Desmond. Turns out that she’s a mole for the modern day Assassins. Who are also trying to find the Pieces of Eden before Abstergo do. Just a classic story of Good vs Evil, but written in such a way that literally drags you into the game. 

Desmond starts to become affected by his ancestors in a different way at the end of the first game. It’s called ‘the bleeding effect’ and is the term given to the affect of the Animus’ subjects having their ancestors abilities bled into them, via the Animus. 

Requiescat in Pace, you bastard!

At the start we are instantly thrown into the thick of it when we have to make an escape from the Abstergo headquarters with the aid of Lucy. Once we manage to escape, we rendezvous with Lucy’s Assassin allies, Rebbecca and Shaun and settle into our new safe-house.

Shaun is the classical stereotypical Brit in this game. Sarcastic, pessimistic, arrogant and a cardigan and shirt wearer - but in a comical way that us Brits are. He is the historian and researcher.

Rebbecca is also wrapped up in a classical stereotype parcel. But inside this one is a trendy American geek - big headphones, glasses, computer whizz and cute. She made the Animus 2.0 that Desmond will be making much use of in the second instalment of the series. 

So anyway. It appears that Altair had offspring over the centuries and passed on the Assassin-ness (I’ve decided that’s a word now) through the generations until it reached Ezio Auditore - the earlier mentioned Italian Stallion. 

                                                                    

                                                                         - Teenage Ezio

We do quite literally follow this guy from birth. We see him born, we watch him grow up. His first love and we see his Father and brothers hanged by Uberto Alberti, another Templar, and we join him on his mission of revenge to take down this frightfully horrid man. 

Once that is done, he takes refuge with his Uncle Mario at the Monteriggioni Villa. Upon arriving here Mario lets him in on the secret of the Assassin’s Brotherhood an that he was born into it. Ezio then starts training in the arts of the Assassin. At it’s core, the baseline layout of the game is much of the same as the first Assassin’s Creed - however, the whole thing just feels much more crisp and in depth. You really get a feeling of the importance of the Piece of Eden and much, much closer to the main characters. Plus, they got rid of them stupid little side tasks that you HAD to do before each mission. More emphasis was placed on Free Roam and we were given a whole bunch of new toys to play with. Like the pistol and poison. The latter was always good if you just fancied the entertainment of a slowly dying baddie flailing around like Elle in Kill Bill after Uma Thurman rips her other eye out. But other than that, it was pretty useless. At least the pistol had the ability to take down a beasty Brute in a single shot. 

Another new element was the combat system. Ubisoft added a number of new elements to this in the form of interesting new ways to kill and beat up enemies. Even if we didn’t bother using them because we were too busy spamming the standard attack and counter button.

During Ezio’s training, he comes across some bloke called Leonardo Da Vinci. Apparently he was some talented bloke who lived during the Renaissance. In the game he made Ezio new weapons and helped him decode Altair’s codex logs. 

Once we make peace with all but one of Uberto’s co-conspirators, Rodrigo Borgia,the story skips forward 10 years. This seedy man has the Papal Staff and tries to use it to gain access to the Piece of Eden that is hidden in a secret vault  in the depths of The Vatican. You engage in a bit of good old fistie-cuffs with him and obviously perform a beat down on his backside before he can open the vault. Annoyingly, the game makes you spare his life, and he runs away like a little coward so that he can cause more trouble for you in the third installment. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

So yeah. We beat him up, he runs away, leaving us to open up the vault to get to the Apple. And this is where is get weird and looking all funky with glowing neon veins in the walls. A hologram of a woman, called Minerva, appears and starts taking some crap about the Piece of Eden and the responsibility of power and how they are a aincient race dubbed ‘The ones who came before’ - blah, blah, blah, herr-derrr. Long story short. You get the Apple.

                                         

And then WHAM! You get dragged out of the Animus because it appears that Abstergo have found your hide out! Looks like it’s up to you to save the day and help fight off the their henchmen with your newly bled powers from Ezio, whilst the rest of your team can escape. Thankfully, you manage to get into the escape van in time and they don’t leave without you.

Nothing is true; Everything is permitted.

The third game lifts off directly where the second one finishes. In the depths of the Vatican. It turns out that your Uncle Mario has followed you and gets a little bit annoyed that you let Borgia escape. But it quickly passes and you travel back to the Monteriggioni Villa together with the newly plundered treasure.

                                        

It turns out that whilst you’ve been gone, Mario’s mercenaries have been busy with the installation of some funky siege cannons. You get  a little bit of practice with them and have to go and have the surprise of a surprise party that your sister ruined for you but some ditzy bint who couldn’t be arsed to carry a crate of flowers up some stairs.

Either way. You have your party, and hop into bed with Claudia. You have a lovely night together, until Borgia’s men decides that he’s going to come and attack your villa that you  spend aaages re-venerating in ACII. They also destroy your armour, and you lose your weapons. This is all very annoying, and upon having a brief tactical chat with Mario, you decide that he’ll take the Apple and go take a bunch of men out to fight them directly whilst you, the super assassin, hangs back and mans the cannons. I can’t help but feel that I would’ve kicked the slimy Borgia scum straight back to where they came from. But I didn’t write the game.

So you get beaten back and Borgia’s men breach the walls. At the forefront is Cesare Borgia - Rodrego’s son. And he’s got a very tired looking Mario at gunpoint. In a fit of epicness, Ezio attempts to save him, but just gets told to sit the fuck down by a bullet to the shoulder. Cesare shoots Mario and takes the Apple, and Ezio narrowly escapes with his life.

After seeing Cesare execute his uncle, Ezio decides to ride back to Rome to avenge his death. Predictably, he doesn’t make it as a result of the bullet hole through the shoulder and passes out.

This is when Desmond wakes up in 2012 at the Monteriggioni Villa. The groups new hideout. Here they set up shop in the Assassin’s tomb in the basement, and get back to work to recover the Piece of Eden.

Upon hopping back into the Animus, you wake up as Ezio in Rome. It turns out you were fortunate enough for a nice man called Machiavelli. This man gives you new armour, weapons and gives you the support you need to exact revenge on and liberate the people of Rome from the oppression of the Borgia.

And so ensues a series of missions to help disrupt the Borgia army and influence. Along the way Ezio makes a number of Alliances in the form of Courtesans, Thieves and Mercenaries. As well as growing your own guild through the recruitment of trainee assassins - who you eventually train up to be fully fledged assassins; rivaled only by you. You even bump into Leonardo Da Vinci again. And it turns out the spanner has been making war machines for the Borgia - and you have to destroy them. Which is quite cool.

Also, the French turn up for a while - didn’t quite understand why, but they get the hint and fuck off after a bit.

As the game proceeds and gets into its latter stages, Machiavelli gives you the honour of being promoted to Leader of the Assassins. Which is awesome no matter what time you live in.

You eventually catch up with Rodrego and Cesare. Annoyingly, Cesare poisons his dad and tries to run away to get the Piece of Eden. You manage to get to it before him and he runs away yet again. In case you haven’t noticed already, the Borgia family do this a lot. It consumes me with rage.

Anyway. Cesare fucks off leaving you with the Apple and free reign to go around kicking the remnants of the Borgia army out of Rome. It turns out the Apple has some pretty funky sweet powers.

Once this task is completed - Ezio uses the Piece of Eden to look into the future and sees that he must track down Cesare and kill him. Leonardo tries to stop him, saying that he is needed to run the Brotherhood; to which Ezio replies - rather epicly, “I built this Brotherhood to last; with or without me.”

Ezio Manages to track down Cesare mid assault on Viana in Spain. And proceeds to catch up with him on the battlement wall. Here you have a climactic battle with Cesare which predictably results in you getting the upper hand. Upon this happening, Borgia claims that he cannot be killed by the hands of man. So Ezio lobs him off the wall to fall to his death, “at the hands of fate”.

                                        

                        

Once returning to Rome, Ezio puts the Apple back into the vault under the Vatican where it was originally recovered at the end of the previous game.

And this is where we return back to Desmond and the gang back in 2012. We know where the last known location of the Piece of Eden was and they hop to it to go get it. They turn up at the Colosseum and tell Desmond to find a way round to open the door to the church upon where the Apple is under. After a long run through the tunnels under Rome, Desmond and the gang finally get reunited and they make their way into the vault together.

Some more weird stuff happens involving that hologram wifey and the walls with blue veins. When Desmond picks up the Eden, it takes control of him and in a shocking twist of events, time stops and the game, or rather the Apple, forcesyou to kill Lucy. Once doing do, Desmond passes out and the credits roll…

And in conclusion.

Throughout this game, we’ve learnt the important strategic benefit of piles of hay - as well as their amazing and surprising shock absorption capabilities. We’ve learnt, to our peril, that Altair can’t in fact swim and we’ve learnt that climbing to the top of a particularly tall building and falling off hurts.

We have also learnt that it’s not just the Japanese that are capable of writing a truly spectacular and twisting story line. Ubisoft has indeed taken us, to paraphrase Matt Bellamy, on a ride through the veins of history.

Hopefully the wait for the fourth in the series won’t be a long one. And hopefully you made it to the bottom of this blog without dying of old age!

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, which shockingly a couple of my mates have been, you perhaps may have noticed some degree of unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. 

It was all started by the residents of Tunisia finally getting fed up with Dictatorship rule and decided they wanted a democracy. So they did it in the only they could - protests. They eventually managed to “peacefully” hoof their dictator Ben Ali after 30 years. 

After seeing this; people in Yeman, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and most notably, Egypt have all decided that they’re fed up with their dictators - or in the case of Saudi - their Monarch and fancy dabbling in the art of the democracy. Which is fair enough, if the people want to try it, they should be allowed to try it. And they’ve been successful on varying levels. Tunisia got rid of Ben Ali, Jordan has reduced income tax and raised minimum wage and Yeman, well, Yeman is still protesting, but that’s been drowned out by the media - because they find Egypt that much more interesting.

So onto Egypt. Their leader, Mubarak decided that he would be especially awkward about it and decide that he would barricade himself in his presidential palace and refuse to bow to demands. This was the case, until yesterday, when he gave his first television interview since the unrest began to US network broadcaster, ABC. 

                        

                                                                -Pull a pose for the camera!

In this interview Mubarak claimed that he didn’t want to step down because “there will be chaos”. Excuse me for saying this, but have you even looked outside recently? You are aware of what is becoming of Cairo, right? It looks like a war zone, mate. But then, I guess, for a dictator of 60 odd years, youwould class a democracy as chaos. 

He then went to say that “after 62 years in public service, I have had enough”. That’s somewhat excellent news. So why is he refusing to step down until (as he claims) September? He’s playing the classic dictator game of ‘making less sense than rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic’. At least he got one thing right by stating that he would “die on this [Egyptian] soil”. Damn right you will, you will if you don’t leave and the protesters ultimately get to you. 

Of course, Mubarak has his own supporters, and they have taken to the streets in protest against the anti-Mubarak protesters. You didn’t need the gift of foresight to know how this was going to turn out. Fights. Both sides are even taking ‘prisoners’. Think of them as POOPs (Prisoners of opposing Protesters).

As until now, the Egyptian Army is still mincing around in the middle ground, not quite sure on which leg to lean on. Even though, officially they are still supporting Mubarak by keeping a heavy guard around his palace - however they aren’t stepping up to the protesters to attempt to calm the situation as apparently ordered to by Mubarak, and they aren’t also siding with the anti-government protesters either. They are literally sitting to one side observing and aiding in the treatment of casualties. 

                                        

 

                                                      

     -Some troops have even went as far as to put anti-Mubarak slogans on the side of their tanks.

Time will tell what stance the army decides to take; there are many reasons why they would chose either side, with their benefits, and their drawbacks. But this crisis has the potential of going one of three ways:

1.All out Civil War

2.Mubarak leaves/gets turfed out and a good democracy is called in.

3.Mubarak leaves/gets turfed out and a bunch of nutters manage to get power.

Either way, Egypt will see change. For good, or for bad. And they’re going to have an absolutely shocking clean up bill.

In other news, a Mexican student in London is suing Top Gear for making ‘racist’ and ‘derogatory’ comments about Mexican’s on Sunday’s show. Typical.

It was a joke on the stereotypes of a Mexican. If a person of another nationality started insulting us with our stereotypes, would us British be bothered? No, in fact, we would probably laugh along with it - because, we have a SENSE OF HUMOUR, which turns out to be something that the flatulent, poncho-wearing, ‘tash-sporting, tequila-drinking, lazy slobs from Mexico apparently can’t be bothered to develop. But this is coming from a race who wears bowler hats, pin striped suits with a newspaper under the arm and carries a long un-opened umbrella, even in summer - what would we know? We just want a terribly spiffing cup of tea and a crumpet.

I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.

Drugs are illegal, talking about them isn’t. But perhaps this should change? Recently, there has been increasing support in the UK to legalise drugs. Evidence suggests that the legalisation of drugs would in fact reduce crime and reduce drug related deaths. Obviously, this needs to be done properly, and not by our current government and it’s ham-fisted approach to just about everything. Of course, there will always be those that are against policy change, and those that are in favour of it, especially with a subject title as sensitive and controversial as this. Either way, it definitely needs to be looked into by governments, not just in this country, but in countries around the world. I think if something like this was successful, it could have the potential to be a giant stepping stone in humanity’s social liberal evolution. 

Not very many people are aware of this, but in 2001 drugs were decriminalised in Portugal as part of an experiment to see what affect it would have on a society as big as a county. Decriminalisation means that the taking of drugs doesn’t carry a punishment, however, possession with intent to supply and trafficking still does. What they did was change drugs into a matter of public health, instead of treating it as a criminal matter. 

Instead of punishing drug users, they are offered therapy and medical help to be able to reform. 10 years on, there is evidence to suggest that this has worked. There was an instant reduction and sustained drop in the negative effects of drugs use. However, conflicting evidence suggests that the use of some drugs has actually increased. It could be argued that this ‘increase of use’ that was seen, was merely just an increase in the amount of people who had just tried drugs.

Contrary to popular belief, drugs are illegal in Holland. They just don’t enforce the law onto the Cafe’s that sell them. Their policy on drugs is similar to Portugal’s - to offer aid and support to those that need it. In 1998, the Dutch Government opened special clinics where Heroin addicts can go to satisfy their addictions in safe, clean environments, with the use of clean needles and under the watchful supervision of specialised staff that would be able to offer instant medical support in the event of an emergency. 

As afore mentioned, there will always be those that don’t think that these are good ideas. And I can see how they wouldn’t be. From the outside it can look like drug users are being encouraged to use. But evidence from Holland suggests that Heroin use has decreased.

It would seem that giving addicts proper, sustained support to overcome their problem is the answer, rather than hitting them with criminal charges, throwing them in prison and forcing Methadone down their necks. 

Obviously education needs to be offered along side this support. The education needs to be implemented at schools from an early age. Good education. Implemented into the national syllabus of schools. When I was at school, the only ‘education’ I ever got about drugs was from private workshops that toured the country offering quite an intensive and dramatic lessons on drugs, but these were rare, seen once a year, at the most. But to compliment these, all we got from the school itself was the odd lesson of “Drugs are bad, don’t do them”. Which in my opinion, was shit. Mmmmkay.

                                                                   

Ultimately, it would be good to see all addictive drug use to be eradicated - with people only dabbling their hand for the odd recreational venture. But this isn’t likely in my lifetime.

What I think that a lot of people fail to understand, is the impact of their demand for illegal drugs has on foreign countries. Want to avert your eyes to Brazil? Columbia? Afghanistan?

If drug laws were liberalised here, then they would be ultimately liberalised there too. The only reason why there is a “Drug War” is because they are illegal. Thousands of people are killed in the Drug War every year because countries such as the US put massive pressure on Brazil and Columbia to eradicate the drug trade. Obviously, because these countries don’t want to be on the wrong end of the United States political and military whip they pull out all the stops to remove and disrupt the drug trade emanating from their country. As is always the case with criminal gangs, the harder the government push them, the harder they resist and fight back. It’s a vicious circle that needs to stop. It’s quite abundantly clear that this tactic isn’t working. It hasn’t worked for the past three or four decades, why would it suddenly work now? Has human intelligence not learnt that battles of attrition don’t work - because the weaker side will always go underground and play a game of Guerillas and Super Powers. 

Apparently an interesting read on the subject is offered by a book called: Drug Crazy: How we got into this mess and how we can get out. I can’t vouch for it, as I haven’t actually read it. But I have heard good reviews from a few different sources.