Be Excellent To Each Other

pull the udder one!

You can apply that to nearly every job, though. You can sure as shit apply it to mine.

I'm fine with funding for art galleries, theatres, and, especially, the BBC. I object to the seemingly-endless billions of public money being poured into a two-week jolly, and seriously object to funding the childish demands of the IoC. If the Games are so brilliant and popular, let some budding entrepreneurs carry the risk and make their fortune.

The Olympic ideals are full of shit anyway, when most events come down to 'who's got the most expensive bike/boat/horse/PEDs'.

You could say about most sports.

The sailing boats are all standard, aren' tehy?

It is. 'An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others' is the OED definition.

Running as fast as you can is not only tremendous physical exertion and one of the key methods of competing against others, but there are no silly rules or complications to bollocks up the entertainment. Just 'who's going to cross that line first?'

Its simplicity is genius.

I can't find a full set of rules for sprinting anywhere, but there will be loads.

Rugby is the worst sport I know of for impossible rules - over 100 for the lineout alone!

And they still all cheat.

True that. Not so much in the line-outs, but the fucking scrums are a joke.

It can’t be over soon enough for me, the ticket process was a joke, the way they have been allowed to just take roads over is unbelievable and all I will be getting is extra work and 2 weeks of shit trips to and from work .

One thing that the Olympics will do is highlight the piss poor transport infrastructure in the UK.

It only needs one small accident to grind M25, M4 etc to a halt.

They are saying that it could (worse case) take 5-8 hours to get a fucking train after the some events spill out!

Oh yeah. Stay in yer lane. Don't false start, etc. They're not silly rules though.

I don't even know how a team wins in cricket. Someone tried explaining it to me, but I think I fell asleep before he finished. Whereas the sprint is pretty self evident.

My favourite made up rule is the UCI's banned substances one. I can't smoke a joint before I race my bike, but I can sink as much booze as I like as long as I'm not visibly pissed!!!

I'm pretty lightweight these days, but I can still drink loads before it's that obvious!

False starts. Some might say the current rules with regard to them bollocks up the entertainment.


Everytime I watch Rugby, I'm generally amazed by quite how much of a say the referees interpretation of things has an effect on the outcome.

Hope you Londoners enjoy the nice colds, 'flus and other general diseases this huge influx of new travellers bring! Mwah. Also: ha and ha.

Still, I'm sure Lord Coe has really impressed all his cunty toff mates.

Derbyshire get nothing, diddly squat, not even tickets to be won via schools. But I lived near Sheffield when the world student games was held there in 1991. Sheffield back then was an absolute shit hole, there are some that would say it is now but trust me it's changed. It was a absolutely filthy city absolutely whomped by the recession with high unemployment and abandoned warehouses with 4ft of soot on the roofs, the whole place was essentially caked in crud. The impact that the games coming to sheffield was enormous, buildings were sandblasted and we got Ponds Forge, the Sheffield arena and Don Valley Stadium amongst other things. That's one major swimming complex and two music/sports venues. The economic impact of those games has been astronomical, even now 20 years on they are a huge revenue generator for the city, as the Olympics will be for London.

Well for starters it's not happening in England, it's happening in London. I too remember the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and that was ace, proper Mancunian stuff and on a manageable scale, it felt like Pride or D-Percussion or In The City or any of the countless other things that make Manchester BETTER THAN YOU. This isn't going to be like that was though, for all the above reasons and one other important one - the countries invited.

Commonwealth games is ace because it's a big sport party that happens because we've all got the same Queen and used to be in a lovely big Empire together* whereas in the Olympics they just let anyone in and you end up with Americans striding about the place talking loudly with their hats and their teeth.

It's the build-up that's worst though, there's a program about the Olympics that's been running since we got the thing awarded called, bizarrely, "BBC Breakfast News" and they simply don't have enough material for a three hour slot five times a week so that have to rob things off Today and get in popstars and such, it's daft. Particularly when News 24 do these things in the early hours where a reporter goes out and makes friends with some guy living in a cardboard box with his wife and kids in Gaza who runs up and down past Isreali tanks and is trying to qualify for the games but might not and so on. This shit is interesting, and makes me want to look out for those people in the game thing when it starts. Mostly though it's just some suitbelm gushing about how awesome it's all going to be while I have weetabix and fuck that. They don't really need to talk about it all that much before it's on, do they? Everyone knows it's the Olympics, everyone knows who the famous ones in a sport are, and we'll just tune in and see if they fuck it up or not like always.

Then there's the 'it being special' nonsense. It's not. This week we won the world record at cycling in a room on a tilted thing when there's lots of you. We went fastest out of everyone ever and beat Australia, who are our arch-rivals apparently. Same race is happening again in the Olympics and everyone's going on about how 'that's the real test', but setting a world record at a world championship should be surely? They could all go slower at the Olympics and then where are those words?

The whole 100m silliness is about being fastest, but if they get much faster there'll be no sport to watch. When they start a team game I usually haven't looked up at it for the first ten seconds. And they give it such build-up. 90 minute of football usually gets a half-hour's coverage before a sizeable match, maybe 90 mins of preamble to a World Cup Final or something, but you get an hour about some runner and then nine seconds of running. That's stupid.




* Not all subjects will agree on how lovely

I don't get why there has to be new facilities for everything, even if theres perfectly good ones nearby. How many Olympic sized swimming pools are there in London? I'm also convinced a country only needs one velodrome ever, and any velodrome-based cycling event should be held there.

Actually, fuck all this shit, Disney should build Disney's Olympic Land in Florida. It can have top of the line facilities for all Olympic sports, and the Olympics can be held there in perpetuity, and when its not in use, it can be a theme park with rides and stuff. Problem solved.

I don't know much about the designs for the pools but ponds forge has two pools the Olympic sized one and then the entertainment one with the slide, wave machines and whatnot. I would assume that the Velopark could be turned into other things as well if they covered the track, wiki says they are looking for an operator after the games but you could easily put any number of things in that centre part, would make a fantastic in the round stage so you could have music acts, wrestling, basketball snooker, ping pong and so on in there.

edit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... b_2012.jpg

No set dressing required in 1984.

edit:

That has been going on for years in London, nothing to do with the olympics. Try turning up at Canary Wharf or the Gherkin with a camera and hang around for more than ten* minutes, and you'll get accused of breaching security.

*number of minutes may be lower if you are non-white and/or not wearing a suit.

I'm uncomfortable with your disproving my prejudices.

Yes, but Canary Wharf is all private land, so they can do what they want.
The Gherkin I'm not sure about, that isn't on private land is it? (apart from the bit it is built on, obv)

I picked two random buildings, but it could be any, and it could be the police, not just private security.

I'm not saying that stopping people taking photos is a good or right thing to do, but that attaching this to the Olympics is a non-story, it is very likely that this would have happened absent the Olympics, and will happen in (say) 2013 just as much as today.

Other examples

I have personally seen a policeman hand out some sort of written thingy to a guy taking pictures Of Te Gherkin and Lloyd's.

Staff and transport police at some underground stations will also sometimes try to stop or warn people not to take photographs in or around tube stations, despite it being clearly written in London Underground's guidelines that photography IS permitted both in and around stations, and in trains (provided that flash photography is not used).

(again, it's been that way for many years, though)

The real tragedy here is that, as per usual, there'll be minimal coverage of the shooting events, despite them historically being one of the events we do really well in.

Depends if it is the Met doing the shooting.

Unlikely, even at point blank range, their accuracy wasn't great.

Huh. I was just about to moan about the lack of clay pigeon shooting from 2008, but a glance at Wikipedia reveals that Great Britain didn't even enter anyone for Skeet or Trap. WTF?

The positive thing about the Olympics is that it does offer a chance for sports that aren't football to be shown on TV. I usually enjoy watching the Biathlon during the winter games.

Shooting is such a minority interest in this country, however, that even during Olympic years it gets less of a look-in than over games, which is a shame.

(I found out on when in the US that I'm surprisingly accurate - meaning I actually hit the target with most of the shots - with a Winchester at 50 yards. A joy to handle and fire).

I'd imagine that the same could be said about curling, until it got a load of TV time.

With the difference that you don't get people writing ill-informed articles about how curling glamorises floor-scrubbing.

The Olympics would be awesome if it was being hosted in a seriously deprived area of the country that would have benefited, even for a few years, of an enormous cash and jobs injection into their local economy. The perfect opportunity to try to raise somewhere that's really struggling up a bit, and give it a chance.

But no, everything in this country is so fucking London-centric that naturally it had to be hosted there, despite it already being a gigantically wealthy and prosperous area, juxtaposed with the problem of finding space for the facilities, and having public transport, crammed at the best of times, struggling to cope with it. In that respect I think having it is a complete fucking waste. Same with the Royal Wedding - those unelected scroungers could have got married anywhere in the UK and given that area a fantastic burst of income for the event, but for reasons of 'tradition' and other bullshit, it's all in London, London, London. Fuck London.

The immediate counter-argument I hear to the above is that we probably wouldn't have won the bid if it wasn't London-based. So?

That post was brought to you by someone who has never been to Stratford.

You do know London isn't all shiny towers and bankers, right?

Yes, having it in a more central location near Birmingham would have made things a lot easier and, as you say, given a much-needed boost to wherever they decided to hold it.

I watched an interesting programme last night about Cambodia's disabled athletes - of which they have many, from disease, maiming from landmines and other war wounds - and how they can't compete in the Paralympics because they can't afford new-fangled sports wheelchairs and things like that. Indeed, they featured the only disabled basketball team in Cambodia - who didn't have wheelchairs at all, meaning games were an odd affair of hobbling around on prosthetic limbs while trying to bounce the ball.

The whole thing sucks.

You don't have to bounce the ball in disabled basketball, do you?

One of the GB paralympic basketball team could walk and run (and use his arms and stuff)

Yes, there are deprived areas of London, but at least they're next to areas of extreme wealth. Other parts of the country are poor surrounded by more poor.

Hmm, I do think it's entirely fair comment to say that London, taken as a whole, is greatly more prosperous, public service-rich and better public transport served (often vastly so) than just about anywhere else in the UK, most especially Wales and the north of England.

Me? I wouldn't even hold the Olympics anywhere in the UK. If a given area needs regeneration, public investment and jobs creation - as a very great many do - then do it regardless. One does not need the excuse or vast public expense of the Olympics to do it; indeed this is entirely counterproductive and wasteful, dragging much needed monies away from actual lasting, meaningful investment that would genuinely benefit people.

No, leave holding the Olympics to the likes of the Chinese, oil-soaked Gulf states and other BRICs, many with their own clear, crass, PR/dick-waving agendas and vast pots of money that they (scandalously) refuse to spend on their largely impoverished populations! (Hey, perhaps they'd also care to handle Royal weddings and Jubilees too, whilst they're at it? They're welcome to them as well, at least as far as I, and many other people are concerned).

(Incidentally, straw poll time - I've asked twenty or so people that I know what they think about the Olympics and not one of them gives a flying fuck).

So some of the most deprived areas in the country should be ignored because some people have a senseless aversion to the capital?

The deprivation of some parts of London being near the wealthy parts of London doesn't make that deprivation easier, it makes it HARDER to get by, compete, feel your worth.

Some of the London housing estates feel like the dog's arse end of the world. Kids growing up there won't understand your 'fuck London' attitude at all. Proximity means nothing. It just makes the contrast seem all the more stark and pushes you down further.

I posted this, which is a bit less straw-y: viewtopic.php?style=19&p=654115#p654115

And, of course, stuff costs more.

I asked a man and he said:

"I've been doing the modern pentathalon once a week for years, and what do I get? Nowt. No funding, and no recognition. Every Tuesday I go down t'Crofter's Arms, play darts, dominos and pool, cycle home and chuck t'cat out. What recognition do I get? Nowt. No MBE, and I've pissed on the road loads. Them don't care 'bout us here, been while 40 year since I went down 'London, probably 'asn't changed, not goin' back."

Somebody's getting a little defensive

London has a very annoying self-fulfilling prophesy of itself. London is big, loads of people are in London, so everyone does stuff in London for those reasons. London gets bigger, has more people, has more businesses, so more things happen there, and so on. This has created an enormous skew of wealth and population distribution that greatly favours the whole south eastern zone of the country. That would be bad enough if London wasn't also filled with people who think London and everything about it is just fucking dandy.

London might have poor areas, but there are jobs, business, wealth, and opportunity. You might be poor, living in a crap area, but at least these things exist in a way that is accessible to those that seek it. Compare that with places where there's fuck all jobs, fuck all industry, and fuck all opportunity without moving to somewhere like, oooh, say, London, and you'll see why I struggle to align with your argument that London needed the Olympics more than anywhere else.

But I digress. Regardless of my personal view of England's capital (I've got my own which is much nicer, cheers), the fact remains that the Olympic wealth could have gone to a much more worthy area.

Cavey is also right - no excuses should be needed but the whole thing is an international dick-swinging farce anyway. How much will those opening ceremonies fireworks cost? Fireworks are shit too. Do we need them? What for? What could that money have better been spent on? Etc.

Interesting mate, thanks.

That's roughly two-thirds of people not even looking forward to it, let alone approving of spending £15 billions or more of their own money on the fucking thing. Fucksake, that's really a great mandate, huh. Oh no...

Like I say, "Fuck the Olympics".