Monkeyboy Goes

These two games will stick with me forever: Tacoma & Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

PEOPLE used to spend their summers outdoors. But in these screen-obsessed times, we seem to be doing less of that. While this ain’t great for humanity in general, it does mean that the traditional summer video game drought is over. This summer has been exceptional for gamering and the following two releases from this month should convince you of that. The first one, Tacoma, is a story-driven…

‘If We Stand Together, We Can Make A Difference: An Interview with Labour’s Chris Williamson

“SORRY I’m late, Ben,” the Labour Party candidate for Derby North Chris Williamson says to me as he greets me outside the train station. “I’ve just finished recording with the Today programme and this fucking racist wouldn’t let me leave.” Tall and much younger looking than his 60 years (due to his veganism probably), Williamson smiles at me with a broad grin, shakes my hand and off we drive to a…

Tory MP says we should stop being ‘so sentimental’ about child refugees — What ever happened to empathy?

BACK in March 2017, the Tory MP for Mid-Derbyshire Pauline Latham incurred the wrath of the media when, during a House of Commons debate on Syrian refugees in Greece and Italy, she said that we should stop being “so sentimental” about child refugees fleeing to and stranded in Europe. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied refugee kids are stranded in Europe (Image skanked from here) Despite making…

Orwell: This Big Brother Simulation Is Only A Game, Isn’t It?

AT THE end of March the free speech and privacy campaigning organisation Open Rights Group published an open letter to Home Secretary Amber Rudd requesting that she extend the consultation into the Investigatory Powers Act. Despite the fact that the government has now allowed itself to spy on us all ceaselessly, there are still too many people who appear to be apathetic about this enormous breach…

Migrant’s rights are Workers rights are human rights

IN little over two weeks, the wealthiest and most heavily armed nuclear state on Earth will have an narcissistic orange billionaire misogynist with highly suspicious hair become its 45th president. During Donald Trump’s policy-light and hatred-heavy presidential-election campaign, he branded Mexicans criminals and rapists; boasted that he would “do a lot more than waterboarding”; called for “a…

An Interview with John Pilger

THERE is a scene in George Orwell’s 1984 at a mass rally when the main character Winston Smith realises the state’s official enemy has just changed from Eurasia to Eastasia. Though this enormous policy change happens in the middle of a government speech, no-one else in the crowd seems to notice it. Finding the flags of their former allies, now their eternal enemies, strewn around them, they tear…

Hitting the Right-wing Media where it Hurts: An Interview with Stop Funding Hate

“DRIP by drip our society is being poisoned with headlines selling hatred,” begins a video by Stop Funding Hate. “Right now the press use fear and division to sell more papers and they don’t care what we think because hate pays.” Stop Funding Hate is a social media-based grassroots campaign aiming to deter companies like Virgin, Waitrose and Specsavers from inadvertently funding racism by paying…

Mankind Divided: The Wet Dream of Libertarian Capitalism

I’VE been spending a fair amount of time recently sneaking around a dystopian near-future version of Prague. As Adam Jensen, a cyborg Interpol agent, I’ve been stealthily knocking out gangsters, fascist cops, cyborg terrorists, corrupt politicians and members of the illuminati in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on PlayStation 4. It’s great fun messing around in the game’s open environments, figuring out…

Britain’s not full; You’re just empty

  Britain is full! The United Kingdom is so full of radical “muslamics”, scrounging economic migrants posing as refugees, and weird ex-soviet gypsies that there is literally no green or pleasant land left to stand on. So desperate are the vast swathes of asylum seekers over in Calais for the £35.39p a week the government bestows upon them that the native born Brits are being shoved off of…

Labour: Guilty by association?

Is it racist for someone to say, “Chinese people are bad”? Obviously, yes of course that is racist. Not only is it completely prejudiced to believe that based only on their outer appearance and culture, it’s also completely illogical to hate all of the one billion people that happen to live in China and the millions more around the world. My dictionary defines racism like this: Racism noun the…

Everyone Hates David Cameron and his Tory Friends

Last Saturday a shit tonne of people descended on London for the People’s Assembly‘s March for Health, Homes, Jobs and Education to vent their many frustrations at the Tory government’s handling of pretty much everything. Despite 150,000 people from all over the UK calling on David Cameron to resign (baring in mind the Panama Papers recently shed light on a £30,000 payment he received from his…

Too poor for our shores

“Family life is a human right, let the families in!” Gathered outside the Home Office on Thursday afternoon, a small but passionate crowd demonstrated against Home Secretary Theresa May’s rigid family migration laws. July 9 marked the third anniversary since May introduced rigid financial requirements for all British citizens wishing to settle here with a partner born outside the European…

You don’t have to be muslim… You just have to be human

Watching the reports coming from Israel / Palestine last year was absolutely fucking horrific. By the end of the conflict the Israeli military killed around 1,500 civilians, more than a third of these were children. The images that came on screen where hard to watch, especially knowing that it was the UK and the US governments who manufactured and sold the weapons to the Israeli Defence Force…

Gnarly Dude: A paddleboard lesson in Busan!

I walked to the back of the shop to meet Dylan, my Korean surf guru for the day. When the general greetings were out the way, Dylan pulled out his phone, stared at the screen, and behind a grimace he said, “I checked the weather. The water is totally flat. Not good for surfing. Do you want to try stand-up paddle boarding?” I had no idea what paddle boarding was, but it sounded cool. Plan B Dylan…

Save Our Human Rights Act!

Today our unelected, rule-by-birthright, tax-dodging Head of State read a few pieces of paper live on TV, written for her by our millionaire, fuck-the-poor Prime Minister and his millionaire chums. It’s always nice to be read a “programme for working people” by a woman with a jewel encrusted hat from a golden chair in a house of lords surrounded by royal ugly dudes and their medals: Makes you…

Happy 2,578th Birthday Siddhartha Gautama (a.k.a Buddha)

Buddha’s Birthday was celebrated all over East Asia yesterday. Held on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month, Buddhists attended their local temples for free vegetarian meals, sermons and to view fiery hand crafted lanterns. The big guy has showed up quite a bit in my travels around the Far East. He’s appeared in temples, in picture, on rocks, on mountains, and a whole host of tourist crap. His eyes…