99 Red Balloons... and One Blue One

The increasingly media-savvy conservatives playing the song ‘99 Red Balloons’ and marching around Westminster today wearing Gordon Brown masks in honour of Labour's 99 ‘stealth taxes’ (god I hate this oppositional expression) are probably quite aware that they're making a double protest.

So there's these apparently sneaky taxes, but there's also the ‘stealth’ message of at least the principle of opposition to the Iraq war, to which the Cons are publically opposed, and which is the subject of Nena's song about an accidental and unnecessary war:

99 Decision Street
99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super-scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by

And the three little marketing consultants said "Wii? Wii? Oui!"

The Beeb are thankfully never short of stories that put an amusing spin on tired material. Quoting Nintendo president Satoru Iwata today, the BBC site explained Nintendo's reponse to the news that some users were hitting objects - such as television screens - during their frantic playing sessions:

‘Some people are getting a lot more excited than we'd expected.

‘We need to better communicate to people how to deal with Wii as a new form of entertainment.’

So... the Wii is so packed with entertainment goodness that it has gone totally out of Nintendo's control, and gamers have been transformed into sweaty beasts, content to destroy house and home as the price for a gaming ‘fix.’ And the advice they so badly need to communicate? ‘Nintendo also cautioned players to stay at least three feet away from the TV and to make sure people and objects were safely outside their range of motion.’ What would we ever do without them?