Olympics-Waterloo Sunset

Ray Davies, top man. But who the hell thought of putting George Michael in the closing ceremony?

Now it's over maybe the Londoners will stop whinging about public transport, too many/too few tourists, traffic jams/empty roads and whatever else they've been whining about this past fortnight. Actually they won't, whining is their natural state, it's the one thing I don't miss now I'm back up north.

Got to hear Waterloo Sunset again though:

The Tesco Olympics

The only benefit I can see from the Olympics is that our commissars have decided that if we buy alcohol before 10-00am and after 4-00pm on a Sunday we won't actually die and the world won't crash into the sun. So after watching Wiggo and Cav do us proud in Paree I decided that I would treat Mrs B and yours truly to a nice bottle of wine tonight.

So at 5-15pm I took advantage of our new found freedom and hit my local Tesco. But they'd forgotten to change their cash tills and were unable to sell alcohol after 4-00pm after all. Maybe a greater power telling us that we could indeed die if we buy wine after 4-00pm on Sunday. But as I went to Bargain Booze and got a better deal anyway, I doubt it. Unless of course the first sip kills us both. In which case the nanny state has severely let us down.

I certainly hope that the performance of our athletes is superior to that of Tesco.

Bread, Circuses And The London Olympics 2012

The Olympc Ideal?

There was a fuss in the media yesterday about people who have been carrying the Olympc torches through the UK putting them on eBay before they've even taken their trainers off and stopped sweating. There was the usual moral outrage with the granny of a sick child who hadn't carried the torch claiminmg it was terribly disrespectful to the sick child.

Another man from Lincolnshire phoned Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2 to boast how he had phoned the Olympic authorities to formally complain about this wicked, immoral practice. I had to giggle at the thought of some vulgar Olympic official, dripping in gold and Rolex, whizzing through London in a chauffeur driven limo (maybe a Zil) indulgently tut tutting at the gripes of Mr Lincolnshire as he heads to Heathrow to fly in a private jet to a pre-Olympic junket in Monaco or some banana republic in Africa.

We have heard for months the speculation about whether this, that or the other footballer will make the Great Britain Olympic squad. Nobody questions the morality of footballers earning £100,000 a week or more representing us in the Olympics. But an unemployed joiner from Exeter flogs his torch, which he'd probably paid £200 for in the first place by the way, for a few hundred quid and their is public outrage.

What outraged me was that millions and millions has been wasted on wining and dining (aka bribing) the wealthy and powerful to get this immoral circus to this country, then the tight bastards make the torch bearers pay for £200 their torches. I don't blame them for flogging them. What outraged me was hearing that an East London cafe had been ordered to change its name from 'Olympic' because of sponsorship deals, and the authorities made them do it. The whole vulgar mess outrages me to be honest.

If we had any doubts that our civilisation is in terminal decline the Olympics are the finest visible evidence. How apt that they were bought for this country by a New Labour government, but are taking place under an equally immoral social democratic coalition government.

The Joke That Is The Olympics

What I can't understand about the Olympics is how people who never go near an athletics meeting, or even watch one on TV start going gaga when the Olympics come round and would kill to get their hands on a ticket to see a race that lasts 10 seconds.

As if the cash involved did'nt make a big enough mockery of the 'Olympic ideal' we now have the vulgar joke of the British Olympic chiefs touting for athletes from around the world to join them in the hope of picking up a couple more medals when the vile circus turns up in London this summer. The latest, and there are several others, is Yamile Adama who has pulled on a vest for Cuba where she was actually born, Sudan and now Britain. Not only that but she could even captain the UK team.

So what has happened to the millions and millions of public money spent on facilities and training for the next generation of UK athletes? Or was it all spent on that huge politico/bureaucratic vanity project known as 'the Olympics' and stuff the future of our homegrown young athletes?

Like the Irish football team of old, when having once had a pint of Guiness qualified a half decent player to join the Irish national team, that athlete you are cheering on for a British gold medal may be no more British than the President of Argentina.

The Madness of the Middle East

Shalom!

If you thought the Middle East was on the verge of shaking off tyranny and heading for democracy, or at least something resembling sanity, remember Iran.

Iran is now calling for a boycott of the 2012 Olympics because the logo chosen is actually code for the word 'Zion'. They claim that it indicates that the dark forces of Zion will take over the world in 2012.

The Full Story.

Cuba's Cantona

Here is a video of a Cuban competitor kicking the referee after being disqualified. No doubt he will claim he reacted to a racist comment, and get off with it.

Chinese Olympics

In 1938 the England football team were asked to give the Nazi salute in Berlin before a game against Germany. It is still a shameful episode that occasionally haunts English football. Admittedly many people now look back with regret at the naivety of kowtowing in this way to Hitler.

This weekend a collection of sportsmen and celebrities took part in a similar action, this time a sop to the totalitarian dictators who govern China. They did it by carrying the Olympic Torch, on its relay route to China, and did it on British soil.

The Chinese government have called the demonstrations against this abomination "vile". Let's just put their vocabulary down to poor translation should we? Because what is really "vile" is the way the Chinese government subjugates its people, be they Tibetans, Christians or people who are even mildly critical of the regime.

And now that sport as a whole has sold itself to the highest bidder, the President of the IOC called for a peaceful resolution in Tibet, but saved his harshest comments for the demonstrators in London who stood in support of Tibet. His comments about them were: "it is not compatible with the values" of the Olympic Games. Well what about the mass slaughter and attacks on basic freedoms and human rights carried out, on a daily basis, by the Chinese government? How do they fit in with the Olympic ideals?

70 years on we have learned absolutely nothing.

Tibet, South Africa and Sport

As Tibet, or the Chinese brutality in Tibet, continues to make the news here is a link to the history of the conflict according to the National Democratic Party of Tibet. Although they obviously have their own 'spin' on events, I suspect it is more objective than the Chinese version and probably the BBC's.

Having said that here is also a link to a BBC broadcast of the demo, and attack by Chinese soldiers, that probably sparked the riots and growing unrest.

The problem for Tibet is that vested interests makes a boycott of the Chinese Olympics highly unlikely. The last serious boycott was of the Moscow games in 1980 over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Americans were forbidden from competing while our government 'advised' athletes not to compete.

Similarly, despite serious security concerns, and even doubts about the supply of electricity to the event, the South Africa Football World Cup in 2010 will go ahead, because it would be politically incorrect not to. Would the Euro Championships in 2008, in Austria and Switzerland, go ahead if they couldn't guarantee the power supply?

Sport is about money and power these days unfortunately, principle went out of the window a long time ago.