Our economy is doing better, clap your hands if you believe!

So at what point should we sit back, evaluate things, and wonder if in fact the G Ozzy actually knew what the hell what he was doing with the economy?

From what is being reported, it would seem that good news has happened all round, and the economy is getting better. We've had unemployment drop, a raised growth forecast, allegedly we're seen better real wages and we've finally appeared to hit our targeted inflation rate.

I've had a perverse sense of mixed feeling over all of this because I don't like G Ozzy and his frantic deep cuts so hearing that we're actually recovering and there's hope around the corner briefly upset me for ruining my personal narrative of him being a fool. I belatedly realised that, ya know, a good economy is a good thing and that's something to be happy about regardless of the personal fool state of any person. So yay.

Of course as we all know that once a number is introduced into politics it instantly reverts from being a mathematical immobile fact to a dirty twisted floozy of a lie. So I'd like to have a deeper look at some things. Also I may be able to reconcile my personal narrative to G Ozzy be a finally lucky fool, but a fool regardless.

For starters that whole real wages thing. We're apparently better off! Eh, but not really. If you take into account wages versus inflations that's about 2.4% versus 2.1%, so yeah, that's not right. Inflation seems ahead there, but if you taking into account tax cuts... it all starts getting very complicated. Going off figures reported from the BBC, it would appear the average weekly wages have risen from £472 to a whopping £475. Wow. In the strictest technical sense, yes, well done. We have more money. Of course, that's not considering how for about the last five years inflation has outstripped wages considerably... or how train fares and energy prices have exploded... house prices are unaffordable to most... but hey! Go buy yourself a coke. If there's a deal on, you'll be able to pick up some Pringles with that £3. So in the purest strictest sense that is correct, but in a non-pragmatic way.

For our slowly rising house prices, we have the Help to Buy scheme, or to go by it's alternate name from the IMF and the Institute of Directors the Oh Shit God No Not This Again scheme. It's a government backed scheme to pump a interest free loan to people to afford even more expensive houses with a tiny deposit that does a great job of raising house prices; so clearly the Express is fucking ecstatic over this. Never mind that British houses are already overvalued and under supplied, pfft, raise those house prices up, it looks good. What, this is exactly the same shit that caused this mess? Pfft, free money suckers! So what if in the long term this stuff is exactly the sort of thing that caused the recession in the first place? That's for future-me to consider. Present-me is about to hold a house warming orgy in my brand new condo! It's always amazing how much we human's like to fall back into bad habits.

I'll briefly pass over the unemployment figures, because I came to the opinion long ago that there's so many ways to stack those figures they've quickly become pointless. However, supposing they are true there still is worry that a lot of these newly generated jobs are part-time, or on zero hour contracts. Or jobs that have nothing to do with the government's interference.

My sinking feeling over a lot of this good news is that it distracts from the fact that this recovery has not only been a long time coming, it has been the longest time coming ever. For realsies. We've had a longer recovery than the Great Depression! Go us. It's definitely embarrassing. That strikes me as however this recovery is dressed, that different tactics: less mean-spirited and ideologically driven - would of pushed us out into growth far earlier. I'm also rather worried that good news is being used to once again bang the 'This recession is all Labour's fault' tune which is not very fair. True, Labour pissed away money on frivolities. It's kinda their thing. And they were in power when the recession hit, also true. But it started over a global recession - that's not one party's fault. Even if they oversaw a pension catastrophe, Millennium dome nonsense and flogging off our gold on the cheap.

" Yes, I know it took Disneyland five years to show a profit, but I've got a good feeling this could do it in one!"

In fairness, of all the recessions I read about in history this one at least has seemed to me the better one to live through - unemployment has not been utterly god awful, people aren't starving in the streets (though an increase in food bank withdrawals suggest that it's not all happiness and sunshine) so our societal welfare safety net looks to be keeping the worst of it away. It's just a pity it's currently being gutted.

I'll take the news things are improving, even with the truckload of caveats to the improvements. The economy works in mysterious ways, including consumer confidence, so shrieking that things are brilliant until everyone starts to believe can actually help. But I'll continue to be wary of having the lucky fool G Ozzy attempt to shoulder the credit and shift the blame.

Sim City an MMO, except when it isn't

I once wrote about Sim City, and how it was a sack of shit game that didn't work when released. The thing is, the necessity to log on their shitty servers was essential to the core running of the game (no, actually, it wasn't) because Sim City is; get this - it's an MMO. Yes, I know they never advertised it as an MMO until after it's shitacular launch, but that's just beacuse they were busy, I dunno, swimming in prostitutes or something. Nah, it's not a single player city building simulation like all it's predecessors, it's an MMO! A Massive Multiplayer Game! And they have to be online, that's the whole point! Why, if it's not online, it can't work, so you can't be mad at a full price game that doesn't work!

Only that you can be mad, because it didn't fucking work.

...and now, it's quietly not even an MMO anymore.

Yeah, this week it was announced in the next big patch they'll patch in an offline mode. So since fucking March last year, anyone owing Sim City has had to tolerate shitty useless logins. But hey, it's about 10 months down the line, and it's finally taking steps to be playable at last! You'll probably still want to be checking in online a fair bit though, because this turd of a game has needed essential patches like clockwork every month since release. And the pathing still doesn't work. Yeah. So, if you've been holding out until you get the Sim City you actually want, well, it's still a ways off, but it's marginally closer now. Pity for all those people who's had to deal with its shite for the last ten months.

I bring this up because I'm actually trying to remember about what my obscenity and typo riddled rants have been in the past, and wanted to catch up the stories. And it's nice to have good news to follow. Sort of.

You know, it's stuff like this that makes my wonder just how long mainstream, triple A big budget titles can last. Nowadays, it's rumoured for our shiny new current generation can cost more then eight times what the last generation did- and when you consider that when Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 can sell five million copies apiece and still weren't considered a financial success you have problems. Big fucking promblems.

Admittedly it doesn't help that you take 'safe' risks like the big names of Sim City, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and whatever 1980s games they can dig up for nostalgia's money sake tank because the the publisher would rather panic and make everything a 3rd person shooter with turret sections with a tacked on multiplayer. Let's take a look at my current games I am playing from Steam:

Must... get... all... the... gun mods...

Yeah, so that's three independent titles and a game that I think was made in the '90s. The last big budget game I brought was Bioshock Infinite, which I waited until Steam had a ludicrous sale on it first. A lot of gamers like me are finding themselves more and more to be trained to avoid a games launch (where those first 90 days most games make their money) because they won't work and later on, if you're nice and patient, Steam will sell it on the cheap. And you'll get all the dlc thrown in with it, and the patches will have it working. Why buy on launch any more? That behaviour isn't our fault. That behaviour is on the publishers.

And no, the answer isn't to have more pre-order bonuses.

We know that given even time a publisher's lust for money will sell that 'exclusive' pre-order dlc as later dlc.

Also pre-order bonuses are crap. Moving on.

Quite frankly, I'm wondering how sustainable this sort of budget is when many people like me are happy enough paying much less for a less graphically intensive but clever and enjoyable experience. Sure, it's not rendering each individual facial hair follicle in HD, but only the nutbar David Cage wants that. Hell, in certain situations, even Minecraft looks hella pretty, so pumping in all that money for a graphically superior but poor design aesthetic doesn't make a lot of sense.

So what we're getting is an exciting time of video games - we see small, cheap-in-comparison games that rely on wits, unique gameplay, humour and fun vs the big, lumbering, whiz-bang blargh bleh dross of the mainstream big players, who adapt as well as the mighty dodo. It'll be a hoot to see what we get because of this.

At last, Bond can drive recklessly

Did you know that in my county that it's totally not legal for spies to speed even in the case of national security? Yeah, it turns out that when James Bond is driving along in his shiny new Aston Martin trying to prevent a bomb, world domination or his own sobriety he has to religiously adhere to our speeding limits or he'll end up on multiple charges of dangerous driving. It's a bit of a let-down, really.

No wonder he goes abroad so much. It's the only place he was allowed to drive fast.

Fortunately, it's been decided that perhaps that a silly idea, and a world where suave spies aren't allowed to recklessly break the speed limit isn't a world worth living in, so they're going to be permitted to speed as much as they like to save the world.

It's also been decided that whilst we're at it, we probably should let, you know, organ transporters, bomb disposal units and mountain rescue units speed as well and the fuck. Bomb disposal units couldn't speed either? They have a literal timer to complete their jobs! Why is that not the title of every article ever? Bloody hell. Right now, at time of writing, and for a near future, bomb disposal units must patiently adhere to every minute road law on the way to something explody and ticking. How isn't my country in ragged ruins by now?

Admittedly, I'm not to sure how much how much of a difference this will make. Sure, this means you can rev it up on the motorways, but many urban areas have an obsession with speed bumps. I. Fucking. Hate. Speed bumps. I'm not a speed freak - if you need to traffic control, I'd rather they use sodding speed cameras because the one thing as speed bump won't do is get the hell out the way of approaching emergency vehicles. Admittedly, cameras won't do that either, but they won't physically block you. Oh, you're half a mile from the hospital? Well, sorry, now it's a extra hour as we carefully go over this speed bumps. Well, we could go faster, but we'd shake your kidneys out of your ears and rip the front off, which is a bit of a downer.

"No NO no NO noo-aw, fuck. That'll grow back, right?"

Now if you excuse me, I must get back to Evil Genius. That game has my soul something bad, and I need to dunk a few enemy agent in my biochemical vats until I forget about the fact that bomb disposal units can't race towards a ticking bomb.