nocto

new musical express are celebrating their 50th birthday and have named the smiths as the most influential artist of the last 50 years in the eyes of their paper. the guardian lists the whole of the top 50 with the beatles in second place and the stone roses in third.

the paper selected the list by counting appearances on the paper’s front cover, the volume of features, their positions in end of year polls and the number of letters from readers.

to my eye the list is very skewed towards the last twenty years with barely any artists from the fifties or the sixties featured. i wonder how extensive the nme archives are or if the early issues of the paper were a lot thinner than the later issues. i’m not denying that the smiths are worthy winners just that the skew towards recent artists seems a bit heavy.

i’m finding the bbc’s be your own chancellor game a lot more informative than any description of how small changes in one part of the economy changes things in another. i’ve made all the families in the scenario a bit better off, even the high earning ones, despite the fact that i raised higher rate income tax. i’ve managed to reduce unemployment and government debt and though my inflation rate has jumped up a bit too much i’m fairly happy with what i’ve done. now i have to wait and see what gordon brown does.

the game is produced by the virtual learning arcade who have a stack of other simulations to play with on subjects as diverse as alleviating child poverty and tackling traffic congestion.