UK Nutter News

Anti-gun campaigners are highlighting a school-shooting simulator video game available on Steam. According to its listing on the Steam, the game lets players slaughter as many civilians as possible in a school environment.

InferTrust called on Valve, the company behind the Steam games store - to take the title down before it goes on sale, on 6 June.

The BBC report omits the name of the game but in fact it is titled Active Shooter .

The school-shooting game is described as realistic and impressive. And the developer has suggested it will include 3D models of children to shoot at.  However, the creator also says: Please do not take any of this seriously. This is only meant to be the simulation and nothing else.

A spokeswoman for InferTrust said:

It's in very bad taste. There have been 22 school shootings in the US since the beginning of this year. It is horrendous. Why would anybody think it's a good idea to market something violent like that, and be completely insensitive to the deaths of so many children?  We're appalled that the game is being marketed.

Update: Deactivated

26th May 2018. See  article from variety.com

Active Shooter comes out June 6 and calls itself a dynamic S.W.A.T. simulator where the player can be either a S.W.A.T. team member or the shooter. Developer Revived Games also plans to release a civilian survival mode where the player takes on the role of a civilian during a shooting.

Revived Games, the developer of Active Shooter have responded to the controversy.

Due to the high amount of criticism the game's received, Revived Games added it will likely remove the shooter's role from the game before launch unless it can be kept as it is right now.

Update: Banned

31st May 2018. See article from bbc.com

Active Shooter has been banned from Steam's online store ahead of release.

The title had been criticised by parents of real-life school shooting victims, and an online petition opposing its launch had reached about 180,000 signatures.

The PC game's publisher had tried to distance itself from the controversy ahead of Valve's intervention. Although the original listing had explicitly described the title as being a school shooting simulation, the reference was dropped. In addition, a promise that gamers could slaughter as many civilians as possible if they chose to control the attacker rather than a police officer, was also removed.

Mental health campaigners have criticised the return of the Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why , expressing concern that the second series of the drama about a teenager's suicide is due for release as summer exam stress peaks. The story of 17-year-old Hannah Baker's life and death continues on Friday 18 May.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists described the timing as callous, noting that suicide rates among young people typically rise during exam season and warning that the Netflix drama could trigger a further increase. Dr Helen Rayner, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said:

I feel extremely disappointed and angry. This glamourises suicide and makes it seductive. It also makes it a possibility for young people -- it puts the thought in their mind that this is something that's possible. It's a bad programme that should not be out there, and it's the timing.

The US-based series was a big hit for Netflix despite -- or perhaps because of -- the controversy surrounding the suicide storyline. The first series of 13 episodes depicted Hannah's friends listening to tapes she had made for each of them explaining the difficulties she faced that had prompted her to kill herself.

Supporters of the first series said it was an accurate portrayal of high school life that would spark conversations between parents and their children and encourage viewers to seek information on depression, suicide, bullying and sexual assault.

 Women should be able to report wolf-whistling, catcalling and unwanted attention on public transport to the police as hate crimes, according to Grimsby's MP, Melanie Onn.

The Labour front-bench politician has secured a debate in Parliament on Wednesday, March 7, to call for misogyny to be made a hate crime. The town's MP said women should not have to put up with unwanted behaviour in public and claims that a law change would make women more confident in reporting such behaviours.

Surely in tetchy and angry times, when so many are so 'easily offended, surely we don't want people to be given the power to cause so much harm to others for trivial reasons. EVeryone will just end up hating everyone else even more.

Offsite Article: Parliamentary debate

8th March 2018. See  article from dailymail.co.uk

The SNP s Mhairi Black today became the first MP to use the C-word in a Commons debate - and read it out five times as she revealed the scale of abuse against her online.

Ms Black, the youngest member of the Commons, told a debate about misogyny in Britain about the daily tirade of abuse she faced.

The debate also heard Women's Minister Victoria Atkins explain she had left Twitter entirely because of the volume of abuse.

Labour MP Melanie Onn, who called the debate in Westminster Hall this morning, called for a change in the law to make misogyny a hate crime.

...Read the full article from dailymail.co.uk

Peter Rabbit is a 2018 UK / Australia / USA family animation comedy by Will Gluck.
Starring Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie and Elizabeth Debicki.

Feature adaptation of Beatrix Potter's classic tale of a rebellious rabbit trying to sneak into a farmer's vegetable garden.

Filmmakers behind a new adaptation of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit have been forced to apologise after facing calls for it to be banned from cinemas over a scene in which the protagonist and his furry friends deliberately pelt an allergic man with blackberries.

Allergy UK claimed the film mocks allergy sufferers and trivialises a life-threatening condition. Carla Jones, the charity's chief executive, said:

Anaphylaxis can and does kill. To include a scene in a children's film that includes a serious allergic reaction and not to do it responsibly is unacceptable. Mocking allergic disease shows a complete lack of understanding of the seriousness of allergy and trivialises the challenges faced by those with this condition. We will be communicating with the production company about the film's withdrawal.

Sony Pictures on Sunday night admitted it should not have made light of Mr McGregor being allergic to blackberries and said it regretted not being more aware and sensitive of the issue.

Peter Rabbit will be show in cinemas in March. It is PG rated for mild threat, comic violence.

Update: Peter Rabbit falls to the outrage mob

16th February 2018. See article from spiked-online.com by Candice Holdsworthwriter

The zealotry of today's censors knows no bounds.

The perpetually outraged have found their latest target. This time, they have decided that a film adaptation of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit is beyond the pale.

See article from spiked-online.com

An anti-porn  campaigner has criticised plans to introduce financial incentives for watching online porn.

Mary Sharpe, from the Reward Foundation, claims plans by an American company to offer virtual mone for discount on premium content, is damaging. Sharpe, who runs porn awareness classes at George Heriot's School claimed:

A payment incentive threatens to accelerate the rates of compulsive sexual behaviour in the population, and the resultant health harms and sex crime.

Stuart Duncan, from Vice Industry Token, the firm behind the reward scheme, said:

Results on whether pornography proves addictive or leads to illegal acts still remain inconclusive.