Ed Vaizey is the Conservative Shadow Arts Minister, with responsibility for video games. He sends me his newsletter about what is going on with regards to gaming and UK politics. This week he has sent me this:

“A home affairs select committee report into Knife Crime, published this week, expressed concern that exposure to violent films and video games on ‘young people’s propensity to commit violence’ more HERE. We remain stout defenders of the video games industry.  While there are obviously inappropriate games that can be accessed, we would remind readers that only 3 per cent of video games are 18 rated.”

We need to remember that the chairman of the home affairs select committe is non other than our old friend Keith Vaz who has a long record of making unfounded attacks against the games industry. So everything in this report should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism.

The fact is that there is no credible research linking video games to knife crime in society. Quite the opposite, violent youth crime has gone down in every country in which video games have become widespread. Professional researchers think that this is because video games act as a catharsis, the kids take it out on the game instead of on each other.

Also the kind of kid that is spending lots of time on the street getting involved in gang culture is not the kind of kid that is heavily into video games. There isn’t the time for both.

The reasons for violent youth crime lie far deeper in society than video games. The breakdown of the nuclear family, chidbirth as a way of earning money in dependency culture, desertion of old fashioned policing methods, lax criminal justice system, the destabilising effects of excessive immigration etc etc. Most of which have been brought upon us or have been made worse by this execrable labour government. I blame them, not video games.

Hopefully, with the current implosion of the government, they will soon be gone. Ed Vaizey has a far more sensible attitude towards us and will then be in power.