Norway MP Caught Playing War Game During Debate On War
from the oops dept
Everyone knows they’ve done it at one time or another. Sitting in a meeting somewhere, getting bored, it’s tempting to pick up your Palm device or phone or whatever PDA you happen to have and play a few games to waste the time. People think you’re working because you’re tapping away, but really you’re completely oblivious to the world around you. Of course, you probably shouldn’t do this when you’re an elected official and sitting in Parliament discussing war with Iraq. It makes matters even worse when you happen to be playing a war game on that PocketPC and television cameras capture all the action. The Norwegian MP who was caught doing so has realized just what a mistake he made: “I realise it was very stupid of me. I will not do it again.” Update: This other article talking about the same situation has a few other quotes from the MP suggesting before he admitted it being a stupid thing he tried to explain his way out of it, saying that he only started playing the game because his “fingers slipped”. He also claimed that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded because the game, Metalion (which is getting a ton of free advertising out of this), involves robots shooting down pilotless drones in space, which means there was “nothing bloody” about it.