Let the games begin. We’re talking about the Commonwealth Games, the new video nasty Grand Theft Auto and the Referendum. Each in its own way is deadly serious and this week they have streaked across the autumn sky like the Red Arrows.
Sadly not an option
It’s less than a year to go till Scotland meets its destiny in the polling stations. The Yes and No campaigns have been taking up their positions in the starting blocks for the race towards the 18th September 2014. More opinion polls have come out this week, but so far they show little change. Voters are still divided 60/30/10. Roughly, 60 per cent for remaining in the United Kingdom, 30 per cent for independence and 10 per cent who have yet to make up their minds.
But the polls do differ slightly, depending who has commissioned them, and circumstances can change. One poll even suggests that support for independence could rise to nearly 50 per cent if people believe they would be £500 a year better off. What a parcel of rogues in a nation !
The friendly face of the Glasgow Games
Meanwhile, tickets for the Commonwealth Games have been selling like Selkirk bannocks. Applications for the first batch of tickets closed on Monday evening with 2.3 million requests being lodged for the week of events in Glasgow next July. Alas I was not among them. I did not realise it takes 24 hours to register and, of course, I’d left it to the last day ! But I’m told there will be a second chance to buy tickets for the less popular events – not however for athletics, cycling or swimming which are likely to be over-subscribed.
I can hardly bring myself to call Grand Theft Auto a game – it’s simply a computer programme – but it too has attracted a huge number of buyers in the week since its launch. Hundreds of nerds and hoodies queued outside shops in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen on Monday night to get their hands on a copy. World-wide sales are expected to reach 14 million within a month, worth over £500m.
It’s apparently a game of sex, drugs and violence taking place in a virtual city called Los Santos based on Los Angeles- though a district called Hawick makes a somewhat bizarre appearance. To our shame, Scotland is one of the spawning grounds for this sort of “game”, with four clever chaps in Dundee setting up a firm in the 1980s under the exciting name Direct Memory Access. It’s now, of course, been swallowed up by an American outfit called, rather more excitingly, Rockstar.
Grand Theft Auto
One of the best selling computer games of all time
It seems though that one of the appeals of this Grand Theft Auto (what language do these guys speak ?) is that you can wander round the city of Los Santos at will, going down side-streets, calling in to play tennis at the tennis club or take a swim in the pool, discover new districts – like Hawick (a drugs hotspot) – or investigate the sewage system or fight crime. It’s a whole new world in which a young person can participate…unlike, perhaps, the world we have created for real, here in Scotland.
In a slightly different way, a new film making the news this week, Sunshine on Leith, creates a rock an’ role version of Edinburgh’s other half. It’s said to do for the Proclaimers what Mamma Mia did for Abba. The music is weaved round the story of two Scottish soldiers returning from Afghanistan. What’s missing from the story, of course, are the Edinburgh trams. They’re not going to Leith any time soon. But that’s a different story, involving a 40 per cent cost-overrun, a three year delay and the project being scaled back by about half.
However, the first phase of the new tram system is coming down the line sooner than we thought. The city council caught everyone by surprise by announcing that all the road-works, which have turned the city centre into a building site for the past six years, will be complete by the end of October. We will then see empty trams trundling between the airport and Princes Street for the next few months as the lines are tested and the 47 drivers and the 52 ticketing staff learn how to be “fun, energetic, customer-focused individuals.” It’s hoped the first fare-paying passengers will be on board by May.
Yes, 2014 is going to be quite a year….a year of fun and games.