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UK Tax Breaks For "Culturally British" Games
An anonymous reader writes with news of a proposal in the recent Digital Britain report to set up tax breaks for developing video games that are "culturally British." Quoting the report (PDF): "In film a system of cultural tax credits has long helped to sustain a wide range of films that speak to a British narrative, rather than the cultural perspectives of Hollywood or multinational collaborations. Other countries such as Canada, for similar reasons, extend the model of cultural tax relief beyond the film industry to the interactive and online worlds. CGI, electronic games and simulation also have a significant role in Britain's digital content ecology and in our international competitiveness. Each of these has the same capability as the more traditional sectors, such as film, to engage us and reflect our cultural particularism. They may in future have a cultural relevance to rival that of film." Conservative Shadow Arts and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the government has ignored the games industry, and he seeks to set up a government council to promote it. The report also outlined a number of changes to how games are rated.
To qualify, games must be written in Python.
Tea & Crumpets: The Game!
Coming soon: Dodging Dentists 2
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I think it's interesting that the tax breaks are for games with a British cultural setting, rather than simply being for British game development companies. I'm sure that a predominantly British development team will by its very nature develop games with a bit of a British bent to them.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Pub Brawl
Use you Wii-remote as either a beer glass or chair and attack as many fellow pub drinkers, as possible...
Or
Soccer riots:
The worlds first multiplayer FPR (First person rioting) game....
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
I dunno, I can see how it could be done. Say, have the next The Sims expansion pack have tea and crumpets as a food, and have the sim run for the House Of Commons at the end of the politics career track :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's a bit difficult to make an entertaining game based on bad porn, worse teeth and warm beer.
Nah, too obscure. Not so many people know history these days and they'd mistake it for the ongoing policy of the US. It has to be something genuinely British.
Like, say, Cooking Mama: British Edition. The worse it tastes the higher your score.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So making a map for a FPS where you trash the London subways instead of some other town's might qualify? Just curious...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh good! I am glad that Ingsoc is finally instituting rewards for goodthink. How else are we going to protect our precious culture from such harmful influences as freedom of expression, creativity, and uncensored foreign broadcasts?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Ohhhh, I could see a Hitman sequel against that backdrop!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I may well get modded to hell for this, but...
With xenophobic/nationalist ways of looking at society like this - that $YOUR_NATIONAL_IDENTITY is under attack, threatened of being diluted into oblivion - being mainstream, it's a lot easier to understand how the rhetoric of the fascist British National Party - and its analogues elsewhere in Europe - could have appealed to so many voters in recent elections.
Property is theft.
Expense fiddling - the game
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
proposal in the recent Digital Britain report to set up tax breaks for developing video games that are culturally British.
The Sims - Football Hooligans
EA Sports Cricket 09
Age Of Former Empires
Tom Clancy's Surveillance Society
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Add "perpetually boring" and change some accents and you've just described Far Cry 2.
Bertie & Wooster: The Game. Go on a policeman helmet stealing rampage, do whatever your servant tells you to do while avoiding getting married.
Battlefield: British Colonies. Take control of Africa and East Asia before France does! Beware of the native warriors, some throw very sharp slices of mango!
Okay that's all I've got, help me out guys!
You just got troll'd!
Only when those guns are pointed at a fox, squire.
Any other use is just not cricket.
what's culturally british?
Binge drinking.
This would be the best use of the wii controller ever: http://www.freewebs.com/wiiwantcricket/
I think there are more frequent articles concerning the UK, which means there are more opportunities, but I think the anti-British comments were worse a couple of years ago.
As well as attempting to give the major record companies whatever they want until the end of time, Lord Carter's Digital Britain report includes tax breaks for "culturally British" computer game development.
Planned games include Couch Warrior ("the goal is to sit playing a game. The graphics are truly horrifying and needed us to go to 3.5-dimensional to fit the player's avatar on the screen"), CCTV Panopticon ("take pictures of the CCTV cameras in your high street until arrested under the Terrorism Act for having your own camera in public"), Bottled Tan Snorter ("get into celebrity magazines and shag footballers, lose points for any sign of intelligence or words of two syllables") and Cynical Apathist ("write outraged blog comments with amusing satires of events of the day while working a job directly keeping the hideous machinery alive and running"). A committee will also form a group to do a study concerning a team to write a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone.
The games industry has warned in the past that developers are being lured away to other countries by the prospect of being paid more than shit. Conservative Shadow Arts Minister, Ed Vaizey, has leapt upon the opportunity, with promises of incentives for talented developers to stay in Britain and not be lured away by better pay in America. "We'll keep their passports from them until they reach 'Achievement Unlocked.'"
Having finally released Digital Britain, Lord Carter has resigned from the government and is returning to private industry. "Of course, Digital Britain remains a completely objective assessment of the way forward for the nation in the twenty-first century, and should in no way be thought of as my CV for a series of lucrative consultancies with the large media companies I've just given everything they've ever asked for. And a pony."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I don't know but that game sounds pretty freaking sweet.
Coming this year:
* Asbo of the Colossus
* Big Brain City Academy
* Turning Point: Fall of (civil) Liberties
* Nintendogs (poodle edition)
* Mario & Sonic in "Olympic overspend"
* House Of The Red (-handed)
(that's enough British games- ed)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
what's culturally british? ruling at the barrel of a gun for a century, poaching wildlife to extinction, or collapsing stable democracies so that you can rape a country of its natural resources?
Don't forget that the ethnic cleansing, the genocide, the slavery, the wars started solely to gain political favour at home, the systematic disregard for human life (not just abroad, either), and the levels of bigotry that make the KKK look liberal. We also have the dubious distinction of being the inventors of the concentration camp. The British Empire was not a nice place and the world is better without it. (Not that the other colonial powers were any better, of course.)
I don't think people like the BNP who keep going on about the erosion of British values actually know what those values are.
Wii binge drinking? Wii pint lifting?
Bagpipe Hero?
Or was the plan to play Wii Cricket (probably already exists?)?
Also cool with new motion sensors: Ministry of Funny Walks - the game.
Pokemon snap is the most British game of all.
Culturally British these days is saying there's no such thing as British Culture; it's all multicultural, and if there's anything displayed to state a liking of classical British Culture then the meta-game is to see how quickly you can take offense and claim damages against someone with deep pockets (yes I was one of the people who got yelled at for having an English flag for St. George's day a few years ago because it was 'insensitive' to other cultures. They were, however, strangely quiet when I asked how they felt about the mass of cars going by with Jamaican flags; that never bothered me, but one rule for all please).
As for the ruling by force, that goes back to the dawn of history and before. Every culture has it on some scale (in Tribal setups, you'll have one tribe raiding the next). And if food is in the area it will be hunted to the limits required; palaentology has records of species going extinct well before humanity was able to hunt them to extinction. We're learning that one, and starting tentative steps to try not to, but it's not a British cultural thing.
Collapsing stable democracies? Pfft.. All the wars involving Greece had that taken care of long ago. What about destabilising stable other governments? Again, not a classic Brit thing. Been going on for along, long time.
There's really a whole glut of culture in the UK, like Arthurian legends, and stories up through WW2. After that, it all goes a bit quiet.
Will any culturally British games get support, or just the ones they're proud of? Here's some more ideas following "Some Ideas" by 4D6963 (933028) above:
Jallianwala Bagh: 1st person/team shoot-em-up. Can you improve on the score reported in history books? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
Thanksgiving: Fighting For Your Holiday. An edutainment/historic recreation. Carry out the plan of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, extra points for recovering and eating roasted corn from the site. "In 1637, the Pequot tribe of Connecticut gathered for the annual Green Corn Dance ceremony. Mercenaries of the English and Dutch attacked and surrounded the village; burning down everything and shooting whomever try to escape. The next day, Newell notes, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declared: "A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children." It was signed into law that, "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots."
How about a multi-game framework called Global Domination, with specific scenario files such as "East India Company" and "Hudson's Bay Company"? Invade, subdue and colonize. Impose a colonial government in the form of a commercial enterprise. Try to come up with improvements on some of the quintessentially British techniques and tactics from history, such as slavery, sanctioned if not imposed drug addiction, and requiring proof of indigenous people killed in the form of strips of scalp with hair ripped from their skulls. See how long you can maintain control before the inevitable collapse of the Empire eventually leads to nostalgic recreations in the form of "culturally British" computer games.
Flamebait? This? No, this is response. The original is flamebait. One person's "cultural" is another's "racist". The "British" aspect just happens to make it very easy to flip that conceptual card.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Now the world can experience sitting around sipping tea, losing cricket and whining about the shitty weather.
.
Not distinctive enough. That could be American, or Spanish, or Roman or...
No, culturally British means "badly done cockney accents, in rubbish games that only see the light of day due to my tax money being used to subsidise them."
You heard it here first.
This sig all sigs devours
But would you use Trumpington's Rule Variations or the more accepted Tudor Court Rules?
Given there pretty obvious white supremacy attitudes, I rather think they do know what those old values are.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
i.e. propaganda
and right wing mongering.
It's a very good question. Britain has been involved in the affairs of just about every country on Earth at one time or another, both influencing it, and being influenced by it. Even ignoring that fact, a strong case could be made that anything in Europe or the Commonwealth has to do with british culture, since britain founded one and jointly founded and subscribed to the other. More importantly, closer to home, there are lots of issues with government promoting one culture over others, since it's supposed to be a multicultural society. For instance, in Scotland, they have to support Scots-Gaelic as well as English. In Northern Ireland, it's even more complicated, as they (legally) have to support Ulster-Scots as well as Irish language and culture and British culture. I'm pretty sure there are similar issues with Islam, Hindu culture, etc.
Seems to me that it won't be long before someone is suing the government on the basis that they're being discriminated against as game developers, because they're from a non-English background.
Chunky 8-bit porn, loaded on a cassette emulator onto a ZX Spectrum emulator for iPhone.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Oh. I think the people at the BNP know exactly what those values were. This is lets not forget a group of people that won't let people who aren't white join and think that everyone else should eventually be kicked out of Britain. I wouldn't be surprised if a substantial fraction of the BNP consider the claim that the British invented concentration camps to be a bragging point.
Blocky porn"
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Can this guy help?
http://www.reuben.org/ncs/members/biogs/meddick.asp
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Hey, we wiped entire races off the map and built our entire economic base on the backs of slave laborers. Among many other things. Don't start a how-deplorable-is-our-history match you can't win.
The world will be a better place without the American empire too, but don't tell that to Obama supporters who consider repairing our reputation to be the solution Bushism, rather than ending the imperialism that defined it.
Property is theft.
I thought that was culturally Irish? :P
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Well, to distinguish between British and American empires, the British would use the barrel of a gun to create democracies, rather than attack them and replace them with dictators. Also, the British would at least be down to earth enough to call it an empire.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I think the people at the BNP know exactly what those values were.
Yes --- depressingly, you are quite right... I'll amend my statement to: I don't think people who vote BNP know what the values are.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I'm sure it'll only lead to only completely accurate portrays of true English culture, just like how America's Army does similar for the US army.
So expect:
- Restaurant Simulator - using entirely British food and cooking techniques; build a world-beating restaurant that makes Italians cry.
- British Football 3D - play entirely respectful games of football winning with skill, but also good manners and complimenting the opponents to victory.
- Railways on-line - improve an already perfect railway to be even more "perfecter". The more you make the French jealous, the more points you get.
I can't wait!
throw new NoSignatureException();
It's pretty much culturally Northern European, possibly because of the long winter nights.
Britain has problems with too many people (sometimes young teenagers) getting very drunk, very often, and either being violent or ill.
(evidence: the need for this.)
If I promise to drive 20 MPH on the wrong side of the road in the game, will they buy me a copy of Grand Theft Auto?
What if I promise to drive 200KPH through tunnels, killing all occupants, will the French pick up the tab?
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Gang Bangers and Mash.
what's culturally british?
Binge drinking.
With vandalizing a bus shelter mini-game.
Dear Richard Garriot,
Since there is a tax break for games that are culturally British, now is the time for you to quit screwing around on space stations, brow beat the rights to Ultima back, and Get Lord British and the Avatar kicking ass and taking names once again in Sorsia. RESSURECT ORIGIN PLEASE! I need a good Wing Commander game KTHX!
We now return you to your regularlly scheduled M$ vs Linux /. flame war...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Will they send money to foreign developers for making culturally British games, like Paradox Interactive's "Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun"?
A bit of this might be good.
Cultural content for the entire world should not be produced in one country with the blandness we've seen from Hollywood. In TV and film many of us have seen perfectly good foreign works ("Let the Right One In", "Red Dwarf", "The Dinner Game") with terrible American remakes. We don't even know what we're missing compared to if games were less of a styrofoam-culture creation. I think the tragic fatalism valued in British culture, for example, might make for better stories than the juvenile "everything must work out in the end for our hero" thing wee have here.
So long as the tax breaks don't become embargos or similar and don't become strong enough to actually prevent games from crossing borders, this could be very good for gamers.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I dunno, I'm a brit and I'd tend to agree with him. No-one ever made a global empire of nearly a quarter of the world just by tucking into some jam and scones at high tea. Pretty much every empire has revolved around some clever technological invention, followed swiftly by a bunch of people acting like cnuts and using said invention to clobber a load of people into submission.
"Culturally British" is one of those stupidly ambiguous terms that can generally mean whatever you want it to though. Every country has some heinous atrocity in its past that you could say was "cultural", similarly every country has good qualities. My identity of british "culture" is tolerance and acceptance of people (even those who aren't brandishing very sharp slices of mango), but I'm sure there's plenty of people, especially brits and americans, who'd scoff at that.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Nah.....thats too old. Games need to be edgy these days. You know...so all the youth actually buy it. I suggest a sandbox game where you play as a 15 year old. The game will involve binge drinking, turf wars with other local gangs (all made up of 11-19 year olds). Then you just gotta add chavs and its done. Almost forgot...the side quests will involve "happy slapping". you regain health by eating British food such as curry and kebabs.
My first thought was that instead of having a "BFG" in a first person shooter, it would have a "BGF" (big giant foot) weapon in the game. Grand theft auto would have "bobbies" instead of police?
what's culturally british? ruling at the barrel of a gun for a century, poaching wildlife to extinction, or collapsing stable democracies so that you can rape a country of its natural resources?
Nah, that's not culturally British, the Americans do it too.
Binge Drinking is many things, but not +5 Insightful. More like -1 ASBO
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
Ah, there's the title for the culturally-British edition of "Bully": "Bully: Anti-Social Behavior Order".
I really hope most of the BNP's voters are actually just protest voting. For your sake.
Let's just say I'm pretty sure this video game wouldn't get a tax break...
Does anyone else remember the commercial for Hedley & Wyche from Saturday Night Live?
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
... games like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooligans:_Storm_Over_Europe
There is a war going on for your mind.
They should skip the games and move straight to the Illustrated Primers, there's no better way of propagating British cultural memes.
Perhaps they might have benefited from this?
Actually, if you go look at the election results, you'll see that the BNP only did very slightly better this election as they did last election --- the only reason they got seats was because so many Labour voters protest voted by going elsewhere (and, mostly, not the BNP). But that's okay, you can continue to feel smug and self-righteous if you like. You obviously know best...
Okay... maybe not.
What about Hellsing?
Oh, right, that's Japanese. I still thought of sending a copy to the Queen of England to watch if she's ever feeling down though.
"May God and Her Majesty the Queen bless you. Amen."
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Morris Dance Revolution
Basically, you could keep the entire game as-is... just add in a "muppet" or "tosser" here or there.
Oh, and you would have to add far more crap looking cars, with a few more supercars.
Something witty.
Passing laws in Parliament so you can say that you did all the above legally!
May the Maths Be with you!
... for all the bad things in the UK which curiously don't seem to happen nearly as much in other EU countries. CCTV, zero tolerance bullshit, paedophilia scares, Iraq war scandals, etc.
Like, say, Cooking Mama: British Edition
Use the Wii remote to drop the beef into the boiling water! 3...2...1... Go! Done! You win! Game over.
The enemies of Democracy are
Jim, is that you?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Does that run on the Nii?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
I'm sorry, but I can't think of "Culturally British Games" without expecting Monty Python cast members to be involved somewhere.
How about Llamatron?
The apple didn't fall far from the tree...
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Really, all this boils down to is more work for Stephen Fry.
Bow-ties are cool.
Yes, vandalized bus shelters became recently a serious problem in Britain.
Ezekiel 23:20
Shocking. Damn kids these days.
There are still Native Americans around. Hell my sister in law is Native American.
Yes we "took" their land, but the reality is military might has been used to conquer and acquire land for all of recorded history. The fact that the Native Americans looked different enough to enforce more of an "us" versus "them" mentality (rather than one group of Chinese annihilating another, or one European group doing the same) doesn't really change the situation. The same exact thing has always happened, and will continue to happen. It's the nature of how large groups work. Despite the whole "share and share alike" mantra we try to teach toddlers, when large groups of people want something that another large group has, they will fight over it, and the stronger group will either take it or maintain control (whichever applies).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Yes, there are a some Natives left. I still call genocide.
That conquest has been a part of human "civilization" for as long as its been recorded hardly changes what I said: the history of the United States is in many ways abhorrent, just like other places, like Britain.
I find it interesting that you sound like you're almost justifying "might makes right" just because it's an attitude that's been taken so many times. Forgive me if I'm just putting words in your mouth.
Property is theft.
I think, by the fact that you're writing this, that you represent British values, and yet think you're unique. I assume that you're British by the use of the word "we". Well, ME TOO, although. well.. take slavery for an example
are you a slaver?
no.. neither am I
You're not unique for believing this. You're NORMAL, So.. British values in fucking 2009. Please define again. Neither you nor I are responsible for the past. We are only responsible for our own actions. Don't pander to the apologencia. You have done nothing wrong. Just maintain your sense of good.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Look, you fucking tosser... do you ACTUALLY BELIEVE that as a British man, I desire a slave? Given that your country took another 60 years and a civil-fucking-war to establish an abolition. do you think you are responsible for your country's inability to abolish slavery?
lets get down to some basics. You don't have any slaves, and you don't know any slavers. Good! Grow up.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Read Niall Ferguson's 'Empire' for some more intelligent comment.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
There, fixed the subject for you ....
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
How about a game where you get to go around the streets of Britain shooting video cameras and avoiding the... police?
Make it a third-person shooter where that view originates from those very same cameras. (Or would that be a second-person shooter?) You get first-person view only when you've destroyed all the cameras that could see you. When you walk into another's view, you're suddenly third-person again. Except for the hidden cameras, of which you see their perspective only when you're looking straight at them (as your sight glances over them you get a blink of the other perspective as a hint).
Also, you don't get to start with a gun. Not even a throwing knife. You have to start with rocks, and chuck them when the cameras pan off you so as to avoid detection. As you get better, you get better weaponry (slingshot, etc., moving up to faster weaponry), while the cameras get more vigilant and more actively trying to catch you in the act. Eventually you start gaining control over the cameras, scoping ahead of you, as well as being able to loop their feeds (becoming a sort of cross between the remote stealth game "Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers" and "Operator's Side", but without the frustrating voice control of the latter). As authorities move in, you have to be more selective about cameras you disable so that you can spy on their positions.
I'm liking this more and more. But there needs to be some gray about it all, even turning dark, such as, as you advance in abilities and the need to protect yourself and the allies you've made, you start to wonder if you're really fighting against the surveillance or becoming Big Brother yourself.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
An article that gives the americans all the chance they can to make cheap jabs. I shall refrain from thinking or saying anymore, I'll just shoot you all.
I argue because it's the internet....and I can.
I'm not saying "might makes right", and if your position is simply that we're just as bad then that's fine. I just don't think that the US's treatment of the Native Americans is particularly different from what has happened countless other times to different groups. It'd be like calling a politician on not keeping a campaign promise and going haywire over it. Sure it might be underhanded and bad, but in reality tons of others have done the same thing, and will keep doing the same thing.
And in the end, I refuse to hang my head in shame or worry about what my ancestors did. I never killed a Native American, nor did I ever own a slave. Indeed (as I mentioned) my brother married a Native American - ethnically only - she's more concerned with having the latest Vera Bradley handbag than with anything culturally traditional, but still. One of my great grandmothers was a Native American (I look too white to tell anybody that with a straight face though - my hair is blond for goodness sakes). I simply let the past be the past and go on with my life.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Probably neither you or the GP have a firm grasp of history. For the GP: British rule was typically liberal, wildlife hunting under a few European wealthy hunters did not deplete wildlife, the British did not collapse stable democracies anywhere (although the Americans, who are related, did collapse a few stable dictatorships and tottering democracies), nor did they anywhere rape a country of its natural resources. British private companies did do many of these things, as private companies everywhere have always done and still do -- in that respect, nothing's new, and you may blame everyone equally.
// Maun British wrangs be righted".
As for the parent, there are no instances of British ethnic cleansing or genocide (though you will find instances for virtually every other colonial empire, including the Americans -- perhaps not the Belgians, although Leopold on his own did), they ended rather than began slavery -- I know the Indian and Ireland famines are claimed by some disgruntled historians to be genocides, but that's a fringe view. The were wars started to gain political favour, as past centuries were very warlike, but they did at least typically have the advantage of leaving a better administration in their wake (read: one with less suffering and better rights) than before. There was no systematic disregard for human life, at least any such disregard was less than was typical of the era, for any given era you care to name. Regard for human life is never perfect, it is a slowly improving thing, and it is pretty imperfect today for that matter. Bigotry? The British were rather racist, as was most of the world, but they didn't follow up on it by persecuting minorities -- unlike the KKK you cite, or the French or the Germans. And the South African concentration camps in fact housed British subjects and also Boers; they were underquipped and there was great suffering (not more than typical for a warring company at the time, check out death rates in a typical Army barracks for any country at the time -- American civil war records are well-kept), though they were never forced-labour or extermination camps, as what we later came to think of as concentration camps were. These wrongs were righted due to the campaigning of Emily Hobhouse. As Robert Burns said "For never but by British hands
I'm not British or American or interested in Britain today, but I am keenly interested in history. It's rather shoddily taught today and everyone spouts the prefabricated opinions that are fashionable, as you and the GP did. The British Empire was not a nice place, because the world was not a nice place, and frankly it still isn't. But the Empire was the most progressive and actually had the military and economic aegis to back its liberality up. The passing of its rule and the taking of the helm by America plunged the world into a more chaotic time, characterised by a quite different type of relationship of the wealthy to the poor. What used to happen? British or European companies would set up shop somewhere where good profits were to be made, inevitably sparking some protest and violence due to their practices. Britain would intervene: invade or colonise, unless there was an anti-imperialist government at home. They colonised and built up well and liberally (by comparison) administered areas all over the world, spreading the values of the English enlightenment with good Victorian administration and science. What happens today? Big companies set up shop somewhere where good profits are to be made, inevitably sparking protest or violence due to their practices. America intervenes and bears pressure on the government to keep quiet, or even topples it if it is very contrary. I do hope you don't call that an improvement! The only improvements the global poor have seen have been passive: due to non-governmental initiatives and the gradual diffusion of technology and wealth.
So what were British values, the ones that sustained the Empire, in practice and not in myth? The values of private individual
... and no one's mentioned World of Conkers?!
Alright, but that same rule never seems to apply when people want to talk about how great and proud our history is.
Property is theft.
I don't think people like the BNP who keep going on about the erosion of British values actually know what those values are.
Yeah they do: British values means having better publicity than the Germans.
Yes we "took" their land, but the reality is military might has been used to conquer and acquire land for all of recorded history.
And that makes it OK, does it?
Seriously -- that's all you need. How can they turn down your MMORPG with its radical new character class "that speak[s] to a British narrative" and "reflect[s] our cultural particularism" -- AND kicks ass!?!
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.