Monty's Gaming and Wireless Outlook - Issue 159

I once spent 24 months of my life planning to assassinate Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator.

It’s a long story naturally, but I had watched a 1982 film, the extraordinary Missing by Costa-Gavras, about the Chilean military coup on 9/11(!), 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown and killed by the Pinochet-led military, who went on to murder more than 3,000 of their citizens.

Like any impressionable, overly stimulated idiot, I then went around the world for 18 months meeting expat Chileans and telling them of my plan (how smart was that). But after living rough in the US for a month or so, my mission ended ignimoniously in a Mexican village called Ensenada when my ‘borrowed’ car nearly took me over a cliff.

Where I failed, it appears the Chilean government will finally get their man. After years of escaping human rights trials because of his ‘mental condition’, the Guardian newspaper has uncovered alleged payments to the 89-year-old Pinochet from UK arms company BAE Systems, and the tax authorities have subsequently pounced.

Remember Al Capone, General? You can kill thousands but you’ll never beat the taxman, a global judiciary we should be thankful for, but a collection agency we could do without.

This overdue clampdown was replicated in the mobile industry this week when MTV Central announced a ban on ringtone advertisements during prime time viewing hours. Viewers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland will no longer be blanket-bombed by ads that are misleading at best and are the decibel-equivalent of going into a Weatherspoons pub at 10.45pm on a Friday night.

Naming no names (Crazy Frog), MTV’s decision to do so was a reaction to the furore over a certain well-known ringtone (Crazy Frog) that was being advertised constantly on the channel. While not wanting to name the brand (Crazy Frog), MTV’s move is welcome and one that will ultimately protect all forms of mobile entertainment from over-exposure.

Finally this week, it appears that in the cricket world, the Ashes were won by an Australian after all. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV channel now owns the rights and terrestrial viewers will have to stump up (sorry) if they want to continue watching the game. Ah, Rupert Murdoch, another dictator I once thought about knocking off, but what the hell, we won, so I'll leave that one.