A War On Terror board game has been seized by police who claim the balaclava in the set could be used in a criminal act.
The board game was confiscated from climate protesters during a series of raids near Kingsnorth power station, in Kent, last week. The game’s creators, Andrew Sheerin and Andy Tompkins, web designers from Cambridge, have expressed total shock at the inclusion of their toy among “criminal” items.
War on Terror, similar to games like Risk, revolves around creating empires that compete and wage war. But there is a twist – players can poke fun at the rhetoric of world leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair. Each player starts as an empire filled with good intentions and a determination to liberate the world from terrorists and from each other. Then the reality of world politics kicks and terrorist states emerge. Andrew said: “The terrorists can win and quite often do and it’s global anarchy. It sums up the randomness of geo-politics pretty well.”
Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava “could be used to conceal someone’s identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act”. Andrew fumed: “It’s absurd. A beard can conceal someone’s identity. Are the police going to start banning beards?”
All of which reminds me of this sketch by Monty Python.
Hat tip Schneier
