About online violent games and family connections.

Helen in the Archers has been getting very agitated about her small son Henry having been allowed by his uncle to play violent, shoot-‘em-up games on the computer, against his mother’s wishes, as his uncle was fully aware. Henry is probably about seven or eight years old, old enough to be aware of computer games but not, in my opinion anyway, old enough to be playing shoot-em-up games. But then I am a bit old fashioned in that respect.

Helen in the Archers wants to shield Henry from the violence of the world. After all he has seen enough domestic violence to traumatise a little chap. So her reaction, while a little on the extreme side - she stopped talking to her brother for a while and banned his access to his nephew - is understandable.

In the real world, meanwhile, Kirstie Allsopp has been in the news, well, on social media news, for her answer to the problem of her children being somewhat addicted to an online game called Fortnite. This game apparently involves players teaming up with other players to build massive forts and do battle against hordes of monsters. This sounds better than the kind of games where they seem to reenact real battle scenes with people, but not having seen it I could not really comment.

Anyway, Kirstie Alsopp’s offspring did not keep to the house rules about playing time and so she smashed their iPads! A bit extreme! Of course, you have to have a certain level of income before both your kids can have their own iPad and even more so that you can think of breaking them without qualms because the kids don’t obey the rules.

She posted something about it on twitter and received a whole lot of criticism in return, all about what a bad example that was, showing kids that violence is a way of ending an argument, etc, etc. She had so much criticism that she withdrew from twitter!

Now, I had no idea who Kirstie Allsopp was and I had to go on the internet to find out. She’s television presenter of such shows as “Location, Location, Location. That explains why I have not heard of her.

It turns out she is the daughter of a baron and could be referred to as The Honourable! Titles all over the show! That sort of family gives you connections to this and that. Consequently she worked for Country Living magazine and Food and Homes Magazine as well as working for her mother's business, Hindlip & Prentice Interiors, and studying at Christie's. We could all study at Christies of we had a family connection, couldn’t we.

In 1996 she set up her own company, focusing on top end purchases in Central and West London. And then along came the fad for programmes about houses on television and there she was, ready to be a presenter.

But the likes of me never watch her stuff. Neither do I play online games!