The Look from the left: GORDON! Back in a flash to save every lefty one of us!

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A Look from the Left at the muddle in the middle by Richard Wright

Week 2: GORDON! Back in a flash to save every lefty one of us!

This week the commons saw the return of Gordon Brown to public life. Oh how we have missed thee. And just in time for the upcoming release of the final Shrek film on DVD and Blu-Ray. Former PM Brown used his speech to support the two aircraft carriers and if there is anyone who knows about taking over a sinking ship its Gordon. I’ve missed Gordon I really have. Sure he looks like a living toby jug and has, roughly speaking, the same personality as one. But you knew where you stood with Gordon. He wasn’t a horrible political clone. He was unique. There will never be another Prime Minister like him. Half of me is saddened by that but sadly that half is being drowned about by the party that’s going on in my other half. As it always has been Gordon stands defeated by show over substance. And no, that’s not a fat joke.

But Mr Ed if you are reading this, and you’re not, Gordon may have a broken leg politically speaking but that’s no reason to put him down. Did you the like the horse metaphor? And the Mr Ed thing? That was intentional. That’s right I’m a classy writer. For this writers money Gordon can still be very useful. The coalition government is lacking a little experience and that could well play into Labours hands in the long run. Well lacking experience if you don’t count Teresa May who is old as Medusa and similar looking into the bargain. And there goes the class out of the window. Also the truthfulness of the piece because as an A-level political student she was the closest thing I could find to attractive at Westminster. But at the time I thought Nicola Sturgeon wasn’t bad looking so I question my sanity there a little. This was all in 1999 and that was quite some time ago. I might be sliding off topic slightly. Back on point: Gordon Brown – party statesman. The Ken Clarke of the Labour Party if you will. Only far less annoying and pointless.

The problem was Gordon Brown is fundamentally unlikeable. However as a Labour Party elder statesman, a background player, a consultant he could be very useful indeed. The man was in the two most important positions in British Political life and that has to count for something. Much like Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was a super sub for Man Utd so Gordon could play a blinder from the back bench. He could create a role for himself that augments and strengthens Labours agenda. After last week’s spending review the Labour Party has taken a lead over the Government in two separate polls. Now I am a massive sceptic when it comes to polling data as the only real poll that matters is a general election. And Labour is, to be fair, a good way off winning one of those. However polls do help shape public perception at least a little and this in encouraging for Mr Ed. The joy for Mr Ed is that because Gordon was such a failure as Prime Minister he really doesn’t have to do that much to look impressive. Basically look like he has a pulse and the battle is half won. But that should also lessen the intimidation factor. Yes Mr Ed I get it, you want to create a new Labour to replace New Labour but Gordon was never New Labour so why not make him a part of your new Labour. It’s getting complicated again.

I think Gordon Brown would be excellent as some kind of Party Chairman, something akin to the way they work in America only with less power. A Howard Dean for the Labour Party. Gordon if you’re reading this, and you’re not, then your party needs you still. I know it’s like watching your girlfriend making out with another bloke but forget it Gordon she left you. Leave it she’s not worth it Gordon she was never the right one for you. And that’s not actually a bad analogy. Gordon Brown and being leader of the Labour Party was like a relationship that was destined to never work. It’s the girl you long for, the girl you wish was yours and when it finally happens it’s not the way it should have been. It’s like Ross and Rachel on Friends.

The public waited a long time for them to get it together and the public waited a long time for Gordon Brown to be PM. But imagine if you had waited all that time on Ross Gellar and Rachel Greene kissing and then after the kiss Ross developed erectile dysfunction and Rachel decided she was really a nun. This happened to Gordon. Sort of. I hope you get what I am trying to say with this cause I’m not even sure I do. Gordon the relationship is over. You’ve moved on, she’s moved on and we’ve moved on. But Gordon there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s called political experience. You might lack any gravitas, emotional or charismatic authority and you may look an awful lot like Shrek but you can still play a role. Mr Ed is going to need all the help he can get and I’m sorry but Harriet Harman, Ed Balls and the grumpy old umpire of the front bench aren’t gonna be enough. Gordon – your party needs you. Sort of. You can indeed save everyone one of us. Sort of.

Joe McElderry records title track for, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

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Joe McElderry records title track for new feature film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

The most anticipated 3D film of the year is opening in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on December 9th 2010.

X Factor winner Joe McElderry was approached by Twentieth Century Fox to record the specially written track, ‘There’s a place for us’, written by American songstress Carrie Underwood, which will feature in the film released later in the year.

Joe will also attend The Royal Film Performance™ and World Premiere of the film in Leicester Square on November 30th and also switch on the regents street lights on November 9th

Directed by Michael Apted, The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is the latest installment of the Narnia saga. Filmed in digital 3D, the exciting new chapter is set to be the biggest blockbuster of 2010.

Joe recently returned to the charts with his debut single ‘Ambitions’ since winning the UK hit show, The X Factor ,in 2009. His album, ‘Wide awake’, is out now.

The Londoner Life Part 2 October {Opinions}

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The Londoners Life – October – By Phil Ryan

If there’s one thing that vexes the average Londoner it’s the state of public transport. Mainly because it doesn’t actually work often. It sort of nearly functions. I marvel at the regular announcements on the Underground. Today we have a good service. Two things always strike me about these announcements. One is they are setting me up to get ready for the bad service days by alerting me to the fact that to every equal there is an opposite. And the second is the thought why announce that the system is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. That’s like walking into a restaurant and the waiter coming over and announcing they have plenty of food. That’s the point isn’t it? But once you’ve managed to actually struggle around in the day on our crumbling and ever fragile transport infrastructure the next even more pressing problem is the late night options. And these can be summed up in three words – The Night Bus.

These are effectively large slow moving vehicles designed to contain as many drunks and werewolves as possible. Sprinkle in the few members of the occasional psychotic street gang, the unconscious guy who smells of vomit, and the elderly man wearing a tin foil helmet singing in a curiously low mumbling voice and voila – you have an average Night Bus passenger manifest. Where it says destination they might as well put Narnia. As the doors open the smell of alcohol and chips hits you, you nod at the driver cowering behind his bulletproof glass, he shrugs and off you go. It’s like buying a lottery ticket. And interestingly offers the same complete element of chance. I once got onto a Night Bus in Camden Town. It was packed. So I made my way upstairs onto the top deck. It was full of silent people all dressed in Gorilla suits. I went back downstairs. London. With its unique social fabrics. Difficult to fathom.

Just like asking people for directions. No matter what area you are in, if you pull the car over and tentatively call to a passerby they will do one of three things. Run in terror. Blatantly ignore you. Or smile and say they are not from round there. It’s guaranteed. I now believe that every morning everyone in London goes to a completely different area. Everyone. En masse. They walk around. Fill the cafes. Sit in the offices. Thus guaranteeing nobody is from anywhere local ever. A month back I was in Balham. Somewhere. In a friend’s car. Late and lost. First I tried the obvious approach of asking people walking by. They displayed the three standard characteristics I mentioned earlier. Then I went into a shop. Three guys behind the counter. Sorry mate they chorused. We’re not from round here. It was a 24 hour shop. When did they have time to be anywhere else? A conundrum. But paling into insignificance compared to the new phenomenon that I now struggle with. Re-cycling confusion.

I now have four bins. I used to have just one. But now I have two yellow bags. A brown bin. A blue bin. A green box. Four collection days. And a handy explanation guide from the Council. Written by a dyslexic gibbon. It’s the new thing. Re-cycling. In reality it means stuffing your home with small piles of waste. Rotting food. Great stacks of paper and cardboard. It’s like living in a well furnished refuse facility. The only thing missing is a flock of seagulls and a bunch of those weirdos who turn up in orange boiler suits on weekends. The ones that find a broken chair and reclaim it. They carefully fix it up until it looks just like a broken chair covered in gaffer tape. Coincidentally one lives next door. My next door neighbour is a pinched face woman. She wears one of those knitted Peruvian hats. Her dog is called Krishna. A keen re-cycler she once told me. I’d commented on her orange boiler suit with ‘This is my Planet’ stencilled on the back. And I made the mistake of asking her to explain the new system to me. Sadly she explained it. For an hour. I went back inside. I’d been doing it wrong. I’d been mixing paper with plastics. Food with waste. And batteries with old nuclear warheads. It was ridiculous. I felt bad. I was destroying the planet singlehandedly. But then that’s the whole idea. To put you off balance. As they guilt trip you they can now charge little bits of extra cash. For special waste bags. To pay for new trees in the area. To keep the park nice. To mow the verges. To stop the icebergs from melting. To save the Patagonian purple booby hawk. A Green levy they call it. To pay for things your Council tax used to pay for anyway. I once met my local Council leader. He smilingly told me they ship all my rubbish to China. Very green. Ten billion gallons of diesel and a filthy old cargo ship chugging from Camden to Shanghai. Oil slick trailing behind it. I hate my Council. I have to. But all Londoners do. It’s a London thing.

Where goes the Sisterhood?

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Every Wednesday, for a few weeks now, I have been in pain. Not through an exercise class, but through watching those awful, bitchyl ‘women’ on the Apprentice. It’s excruciating TV at it’s most excruciating. The embarrassment, the disappointment I have in them; it’s actually almost too much to bear. The women I know do not act like this. The vast majority of them anyway.

Which leads me into the million dollar question: Where goes the sisterhood? I am an actor (They don’t like it when you use actress, I really don’t care), I am also a business women, a writer, a daughter, a friend. I do not have an actual sister. I am over expecting women to give me a hand up in my acting career. In business, maybe. In writing, very probably. I have had advice from other female writers. But the acting? No, there is far too few roles. They put so much pressure on us to be young and thin that it feels like we end up hating each other. The patriarchal society wins again – but only because we let it.

Which is a shame, as I think one of the reasons that I have the luck to be a working actor is because of how I relate to other people. I have given advice to a lot of women wanting to be actors. Both younger and older. Some of them do not even know what Spotlight is. For the non theatrical amongst you, Spotlight is an online directory of actors. Most castings come through it. If you are an actor who is not on Spotlight, success is about nil.

I can’t say I have felt the same back. I mostly feel that the more successful I become, the more other women hate me. Not just jealousy, I hate jealousy but it’s forgivable- No, actual hate. They hate me for being younger than them, thinner or for having a better agent. I did a bit part in a very popular show recently and one of the main actors, a female, incredibly famous, some might say an institution, was so horrendous to me I questioned my life choices. Why spend your life on a film set with assholes? I could be travelling around America, doing aid work, writing a book. But, no, I am having lunch when a millionaire, far more powerful than me, who is trying to get me to move from the seat I am on because she wants to sit there, and then huffs off with her cronies when I refuse. It’s Mean Girls – with middle aged women.

Then there is the younger women, or the ones my age. I went an audition only to see a (now ex) friend. It was the third or fourth time I had seen her at an audition in a few months. She looked horrified as I walked in the door. Loudly exclaimed: ‘Oh, YOU’RE here. You’re at EVERYTHING. ‘ and then stalked off. She then preceded to bitch about me to every other women there. I had no idea what she was saying, but none of them would talk to me. There is a bitter sweet end: I got the part.

All of this reminded of me of a quote that I recently read: ‘With men it’s their enemies that tear them apart, with women it’s their friends.’ It’s depressing because it is largely true. I have a young playing age. I still get cast as teenagers. And nothing is more cruel than a teenage girl. Except maybe an ageing actress.

I was recently told on a film set that: ‘You will not be beautiful forever, you will lose your beauty, everything will leave you, you will have nothing left. You will become just like me.’ by a mad foreign actor. I doubt I will end up like you love, as I am not bitter and full of hate. Thanks anyway.

This is not to bring all women down. I got my start in writing through females. I have had advice and friendship. I have an amazing circle of female friends. But it took until my 20’s for that to happen. And sometimes I learn the worst of them. I grow up amongst men. The women I tend to not get along with are sensitive. The male ego is more fragile, but sometimes it seems that you can’t say anything to a women without her taking it the wrong way. All my female friends are laid back, down to earth, genuine people. I love them dearly. My life would be grey without them. I am aware of my luck.

So what do the women of The Apprentice have to learn? That they are holding themselves back. Melissa Cohen blamed the two men on the boardroom who were ‘picking on her’ for her swift exit. Her lack of self awareness was astounding. She was fired because she deserved to be. Unless women stop fighting with each other, stop being competitive and bringing each other down, this will always be a man’s world. Because, after all, should we really be fighting against sexism and each other?

Catherine Balavage

Where is the Best Site to Play Online Poker?

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 A Review of All the Major Online Poker Sites.

I’ve now been playing online poker for many years and I’ve played at all the major sites at some point or another. For many years I’ve been trying to find the perfect site to play at. There are so many now that it can be very difficult to find the right one. The problem with the current poker site review sites is that they are rarely independent, even if they give the facade that they are, most of them are paid some sort of fee when they get people to sign up to a certain site. So here is a genuinely independent guide from someone who knows what you really want.

The first point to start with is that wherever you play you should be looking for rakeback. What is rakeback? Poker sites take a small amount of money usually 5% out of every pot you play online. This is known as rake. If you sign up to a poker site through a rakeback scheme you will receive some of the rake you pay to the poker site back. If you go direct to a poker sites own site and download the software you won’t get rakeback. It may not sound like much but rakeback adds up very quickly, even a casual player should look to take advantage of it. You should also note that if you have signed up to a poker site before you will not be able to receive rakeback from them.

Unfortunately some of the main poker sites don’t offer rakeback. Most notably the ipoker network and pokerstars do not. Pokerstars does however offer a very good VIP system which if you play enough comes to a similar amount to rakeback. In most cases it is not quite as good as other sites rakeback schemes but some players may feel the other benefits of the site outweigh this. One very large site which does offer rakeback is FullTilt. See the table at the bottom of the article for details on other poker rooms.

So what else do you want from your pokersite. Well I would put my priorities in this order.

  1. Safety and Security
  2. Player Traffic
  3. Good Software
  4. A Good Bonus Scheme
  5. Good player support and withdrawals
  6. Weaker Players

Safety and Security

You will find most safety with a large respected site. There is almost no chance they will go bust. Moreover the larger sites invest a fortune on security. For this reason I would not recommend putting money on one of the smaller sites. Very secure sites are Pokerstars, FullTilt, the Ipoker network and party poker. Avoid the Cereus network comprising Absolute and Ultimate Bet poker. Both sites have been involved in major scandals in the past. They are both owned by the same company.

Player Traffic

Having enough players, tournaments and games of the type you want is vital for any poker room. You don’t want to be waiting around for an hour for the tournament you want to play in to begin or for a cash game place to become available. Once again bigger is better. The larger the poker site the more different types of poker and tournaments are available. In my experience both poker stars and full tilt are excellent in this regard. You will find more games and players on poker stars than anywhere else. Full Tilt is also very good and experienced players may want to play on their new rush poker games which allows players to play very quickly. For all information on poker traffic see this excellent website. http://www.pokerscout.com/

Good Software

Sorry to sound repetitive but once again I would argue that both Full Tilt and Poker Stars have the best software of all the poker sites. Poker Stars is very clean and easy to navigate, the layout of the tables is simple and effective. Personally however I rate the Full Tilt software far above any other site. You can tell the site was designed by poker players. Everything has been thought of from the position of the button to the way you drag in the chips when you win a pot. I also really enjoy the fun and numerous avatars available. Casual players may enjoy the unique PKR site. Players take control of a Sims style 3d character whilst they play. You can perform chip tricks, customize your character and display various attitudes towards the other players. It won’t be for everyone, particularly those players who wish to play multiple tables at once. Personally I do not particularly enjoy the ipoker or party poker software (although party poker is much better since it was updated a while ago). I would still argue it is the consensus amongst most players that these sites and other sites lag behind the main two when it comes to software.

Bonuses   

Unfortunately bonuses can be very complicated. Whilst the headline figure may look good one often has to be careful of the small print. Things to be aware of are the number of days you have available to work off the bonus. Casual players need to be careful of this or you may end up losing your bonus if you don’t play for a month or so. The other thing to be aware of is how quickly your bonus gets paid back. You can’t go wrong with the Full Tilt 100% bonus up to $600. I have done this successfully in the past. I see poker stars have now brought in a similar bonus scheme. If you look a little further out you will tend to find some better deals but again be careful of the small print. There are some good deals to be had on the boss media network through the likes of poker heaven and paradise poker (200% up to €1000). I see PKR also has an attractive bonus on at the moment (up to 100% on $2000).

Good Support and Withdrawals

Without any doubt the best support amongst all the poker sites is to be found with pokerstars. In the few times I have needed to contact them they have been phenomenally quick and helpful. Friends of mine have had very similar experiences. With all the sites I have dealt with I have never had any problems with withdrawals. I have usually used moneybookers to withdraw which I have always found fairly easy. It can sometimes be difficult to withdraw large amounts. However this tends to be the same across every site. In most case you can come to an agreement with a site or just withdraw in stages.

Weaker Players

In my experience the most difficult site to play on is Full Tilt. It tends to play a level above other sites. The very best players tend to end up on Full Tilt and this tends to ultimately filter down to the lower levels. Poker Stars also tends to be a much harder site than the average particularly for cash games, although I have always found tournaments to be reasonably soft. For some reason the European sites (ongamenet and party poker have always tended to be softer in my and others experience.) PKR is also especially soft since it is made up of mostly casual players.

Conclusion

Which poker site is right for you will depend very much on what you rank as your priorities. As I mentioned at the start you should be looking for rakeback and good bonus to start with whatever you want.

Remember: US Players can only play on pokerstars, full tilt, cereus, cake and some smaller sites I wouldn’t recommend.

For the casual player perhaps just starting a bit of online poker I would recommend FullTilt you can get a decent rakeback and bonus as well as their great software, strong support and a wide range of different games to play. The slight downside is the tougher players, but if you’re playing casually at the lower limits this won’t be very noticeable. Moreover casual players are probably more likely to play more tournaments in which case I wouldn’t worry too much about player skill levels as they will always be reasonably weak. Some casual players may prefer PKR which also has decent rakeback and bonus schemes. You will struggle to play multiple tables but the players will be weaker.

If safety and support are your top priorities the best site is definitely pokerstars. The only real problem I have with poker stars is that you lose out a bit on the rakeback.

For the regular player looking to make a decent profit I’m going to recommend a site on the boss media network. The combination of weak players, decent traffic and good rakeback and bonuses make it a great place to rack up the profits. The only problem for me is the software. A similarly decent option is the entraction network where you may achieve slightly higher rakeback. If software is really crucial for you then stars or full tilt are still excellent options. Whilst you won’t be as profitable on these sites you will learn faster against tougher opponents.

Thanks for reading the article and I hope you found it helpful. Please note that the scores in the table below don’t include a rakeback score and I have played on all the sites in the table below. Please leave any of your own experiences in the comments below.

This site is one of the best for rakeback and bonuses but don’t be afraid to look around.

http://www.raketherake.com

Boss Media – Paradise Poker, Poker Heaven, InterPoker, Fortune Poker, Virgin Poker, Parabet, OPoker

Cake Poker Network- Cake, Doyles Room, Juicy Stakes, Victory Poker, Power, Red Star

Cereus Poker Network – Absolute, Ultimate Bet

Entraction Network – NoiQ Poker, Devilfish Poker, PokerMambo

OnGame Network – Betfair, EuroBet, Betsafe, Hollywood, Tower Gaming, Red Kings

Ipoker Network – WilliamHill, Titan, VC

Column1 Rakeback Software Support Traffic Safety Weaker Players Bonuses Total
Poker Stars VIP 9 10 10 10 5 8 52
FullTiltPoker 27% 10 8 9 10 4 8 49
PKR 33% 7 7 6 8 10 9 47
Boss Media Network 30% 5 6 6 9 9 10 45
Party Poker VIP 6 7 8 9 8 7 45
OnGameNetwork 30% 6 7 7 8 8 8 44
Ipoker network VIP 5 7 8 9 6 8 43
Entraction Network 30-45% 6 7 5 8 7 9 42
Cake Network 30% 4 6 4 7 7 6 34
Cereus Network VIP N/A N/A N/A 0 N/A N/A 0

Rock Band 3 {Gaming Review}

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The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises – are considered by many to be the most influential video games of the first decade of the 21st century. First released in 2005 it seemed as if air guitarists of a generation could finally unite. I remember the first time I picked up my plastic guitar and fretted along to a track. The whole idea of being a mini rock god in my bedroom just seemed to work.

However, that was a long time ago and a long time before they decided to milk the cash cow dry. Over the past number of years it seems as if we have been inundated with rock games. If I bought a new guitar each time a new game came out I reckon I would own about ten by now. To make things worse this year we have not one but two releases and you better believe it both are aiming to reach the number one spot on your Christmas list. I managed to get my hands on a copy on an early edition of Rock Band 3 to find out if I should still be rocking on.

As mad as it seems there is a reason for all of these games; Rock Band and Guitar Hero (and their sequels) are in fact the creations of separate rival software developers – Harmonix and Neversoft; and in numerous ways they have their own distinct diverse approach on how to make a rock and roll video game great and how to sell it.

Take Rock Band for example. Rock Band has always aimed for maximum playability with a large selection of pop rock type tracks. When they have gone for serious rock they usually pick tracks that are well known and they provide strong online support. Also in my view on the easier difficulty level the player is never actually really tested. Contrast this with Guitar Hero and Neversoft who seemed to cater mainly for the serious rock fanatics. Anyone who has played Band Hero will recognize their disappointment at going online and finding out that there was little if any online tracks to support their foray into popdom. Try too tackling Band hero on easy and your wrists will be sore. It might be a game but it doesn’t play nice.

Check out their titles too, once Neversoft and their publisher Activision realized that they had a market in plastic guitars they seemed almost like a bat out of hell-bent on riding the rock train until the wheels came off; delivering a new title almost every year – often with just new tracks and tweaks being the whole USP. Thank heavens for the term ‘market saturation’ because when the rock train was about to terminate at the next stop they turned their hands to the Vinyl and came up with the admittedly very polished DJ Hero. Out went the classic rock and in came the classic Hip-hop. Contrast this with Harmonix and the very incredible looking Beetles Rock Band – they always seem to go for quality over quantity.

To be fair to Neversoft they do have a flair for spotting innovative design because each new release of a ‘Hero’ has brought something new, however small and Rock Band 3 has capitalized on each and every aspect that they brought that worked. They also listened to their many fans

Game Play remains the same as before; successfully complete a song by using your controllers to strike the correct notes in time with note tracks shown on the game screen; or, in the case of the vocalists, to sing in the relative pitch to the original artist. Each player has a performance meter, which increases when correct notes are hit and falls when notes are missed; a band performance meter represents an average of all players. If a player’s meter should drop to zero, that player will temporarily drop out, silencing their part, and the band’s performance meter will start to drop. If the band’s meter hits zero, the band will fail the song and be booed off stage, and can either restart or change their difficulty level.

Rock Band 3 allows for several players, locally or for the first time online, to play the roles of lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and vocals. I was pleased to see that Rock Band 3 had support for backup vocal harmonies with the lead singer (a feature previously introduced in The Beatles: Rock Band), and one playing an electric keyboard. (Yes it’s not just a new guitar you will need to buy this time).

Talking of which, it has often been a personal criticism that to plough the amount of time that you need to in order to get good at this game you are far better learning to play the guitar or drums in real life. Well this is a criticism put to rest because although this game is compatible with existing guitar controllers from previous Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. Mad Catz has just produced a new guitar controller, based on the Fender Mustang with real strings. Instead of five colored buttons, there are 6 buttons across 17 different frets, culminating in a total of 102 buttons to play. This idea is quite exciting me, as this game could redefine the whole term ‘fun learning’.
So on to playability. The game features a more in-depth career mode; and as before you can design your own character.

Reportedly the career mode includes over 700 career goals. The game also includes some 83 songs, ranging from Evanescence to Bob Marley and I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of my original downloaded content from previous Rock Band games transferred quickly and without additional cost. This gave me the feeling that this title is all about consolidating your Rock Band music. And that can only be a good thing. Tracks from the actual titles though such as Rock Band 2 required the purchase of a key but the transfer was quick and simple. I am always taken aback by Rock Bands online support and at time of writing there was over 2,000 songs available in the store for download. One word: wow. Developers of Guitar Hero should take note.

I found the game play to be rounded and a decent enough internet connection is all you need to ensure online play. Although, personally I found many tracks lacked sufficient challenge. The storyline was literally non existent – we all know the score: group of gang-banger wannabes decide to form a band and you have to help them scale to heights of success.

I do have a few gripes. Firstly the graphics – I was disappointed. Whilst functional they are no where near as polished as they should be, even if you were to take Band Hero which was out over a year ago and put these titles side by side graphically it would be stronger.

Secondly for me the sound mixer could have done with some refinement. For example I found it hard hear the vocal track if you are singing or vice versa. Guitar Hero 5 eradicated that problem ages ago. I couldn’t help but wonder why it is still here.

So what’s my view? – Well, despite its faults if you are going to get a Rock Band game then this is the title to get. In terms of game play and online support it has a much stronger, richer library. It is also the game you will return to and download tracks for and complete. More importantly it will keep you entertained without doubt through Christmas.

By Junior Smart

SPOOKS, SPIRITS AND SMARTPHONES, Top 5 Paranormal sightings.

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Phone-paparazzi boosts ghostly sightings

With Halloween approaching, research has shown that having the latest technology at our fingertips has caused a surge in the number of paranormal images that have been recorded.

Tesco Telecoms has found that one in three people have noticed spooky goings-on in photos and video clips taken on their mobiles.

This spine-chillingly high figure is driven by the growing popularity of Smartphones which have high quality cameras and the internet and email at the touch of a button.

‘Digging-up’ some consumer research into Smartphone technology and consumer behaviour, Tesco Telecoms found that 78% of people felt that their phones made it easier for them to capture those weird, unexpected moments on the cuff.

Taking their findings to Paranormal Research UK, leading investigator Phil Hayes confirmed that they had seen a 70% increase in paranormal evidence captured by Smartphone cameras or videos.

The research group attributed this rise with the fact that people carry their phones with them everywhere they go, making it easier to record those eerie moments. They also confirmed that submitting evidence has become faster, as the email and social network function on internet-enabled Smartphones, allows material to be shared easily.

Further results from Tesco Telecoms’ spooky research showed that Brits are in fact a nation open to paranormal activity with more than half of the population believing in ghosts and poltergeists.

And despite one in five admitting that if faced with a ghost they would run away, over half of Brits said they would bravely stay put and try and capture the sighting with whatever technology they have to hand.

Frighteningly, almost 60% of those questioned had or knew someone else who had experienced paranormal activity, with one in two saying that they had experienced a shiver down the spine upon entering into a room.

Some of the scariest incidences reported included objects moving by themselves, transparent figures floating across the room and ghostly cackling coming from nowhere.

Some of the male respondents even cheekily cited their wives first thing in the morning as the scariest thing they’d ever seen!

Lance Batchelor, Chief Executive Officer of Tesco Telecoms and Tesco Mobile commented: “Halloween is the perfect time of year to keep an eye out for the ghostly and ghoulish.

“We’d recommend those brave enough to capture any spooky sightings should MMS or email their pics to Paranormal Research UK for investigation.

“Keep your camera phone on the highest quality resolution setting and use the recorder to capture the noise of any spectral sounds.”

Top five most believed-in paranormals

1. Ghosts

2. Aliens

3. UFOs

4. Past lives

5. Out of body experiences

By Catherine Balavage