Be Excellent To Each Other

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Don't worry, I'm sure the Olympic Committee are working balls-out to top-trump that insanity soon enough.

You'd think that would contravene the contract which O2/Ricoh have. what is the point in spending a fortune sponsoring a building, if it is not known by that sponsorship when the biggest TV event in the world occurs?

I've just realised what those SAMs are for, to shoot down any skywriters who dare promote Pepsi!

The olympics bid predates the O2 sponsorship and also sports direct at st James. Not sure about Ricoh.

The advertising regulations doesn't predate the O2 sponsorship though. The date of the bid is irrelevant.

These stadiums are being used for the Olympics, of course. One presumes the owners are simply being paid enough to have agreed to these terms (and had they not, the stadium would never have been chosen). Which makes you wonder how much they are being paid.

The Millennium Stadium is a venue, do Brains have to take their name off their smokestack (visible on the other side of the station).

I pity the athletes. Dedicating themselves to training for potentially this one event and for what? To be immortalized in that fucking irritating radio ad about BP's replica medals? It's all about the sponsors, the politicians, and celebrity hangers-on as demonstrated by Doctor fucking Who carrying the Torch.

Edit: just been told that Will.I.Am carried it through Taunton.

No, but presumably any O2 sponsorship agreement will have carried an exclusion for the Olympics. The non-branding rules aren't new in Olympic terms.

I'd be amazed if it did. The O2 deal was signed a year before we won the bid, and I'm not seeing much else relating to the Olympics being a paragon of advanced planning. Also, no previous Olympics has chosen to implement the branding rules in quite such an insane way, as far as I am aware.

Olympic Torch Relay London 2012, Day 3,Taunton, Will.I.Am by Share 2012, on Flickr


On behalf of Coke. OhGodkillmenow.

I've seen some of the official branding guidelines for the Olympics at work and they are indeed, strange. I'll post some here on Monday morning if I remember.

It is easy to blame the brand, but these rules are the IOC, not the sponsors. The IOC are just using their power over the Olympic organisers in order to bend over backwards to please the sponsors - who have pumped in an absolute fortune. It sure as hell isn't a condition of Visas sponsorship that every ATM will only take Visa, it is the IOC who make that stipulation and force it upon the organisers.

(Of course, Visa aren't going to complain, are they? The IOC know they'll pay extra for it, and Mastercard can bitch all they like, but they'd jump at the same deal as well. As would Pepsi, Burger King etc.)

They'll just have paid O2 some cash, one would imagine. I'd be surprised if there wasn't something in the contract specifying unusual items, etc. Otherwise O2 could just veto any artist appearing, on a whim.

Wow, he was supported by the janitor from Scrubs!

I was going to post that, but then I zoomed in and it didn't look much like him.

Are those exclusion zone laws actually likely to stand up to appeal? I'd imagine the ECHR would take my side if was arrested for wearing the wrong t-shirt in the exclusion zone. Also, wouldn't all the brand stuff break various competition laws we have?

Good luck getting your case heard before August.

Ahh, but I might get it heard in time to help the poor lot who get hoisted with the 2024 Olympics!

Then we're 1-1 in nearly saying something the other did, but deciding against it.

The Visa only thing is especially stupid. Somehow I doubt there's an actual block on MasterCard payments actually going through from that area, so what sort of numpty is going to turn down sales because the customer wants to pay with MasterCard, or AmEx or whatever?

I mean, who's going to know anyway?

They will. They were making sure that Dr Who didn't go buying a bottle of Lucozade nor pay for it with his Mastercard.

The first time I enountered something like this was a few years ago at the NFL game at Wembly where they would *only* take Visa - we did not have a Visa credit card and yes Mastercard (and Amex) were both refused

The card machines will only take Visa.

http://www.culture.gov.uk/consultations/7760.aspx

Full list of the media exclusion zones around all the Olympics sites. Quite staggering. The one in Cardiff is massive, covers 2/3rds the city centre.

How can they possibly expect to get away with that? I mean, what's stopping Mr Shop Owner from putting up any sign he likes in his shop window?

Ronald MacDonald and his Coca-Cola Riot Canon.

The Olympics branding police - who can come along and force him to remove it (or simply remove it themselves).

The consultation PDF is available on the link I posted. It outlines the police powers. It's rather long, though; I haven't read it yet.

They can tell people what they can and can't display on their own property?

That makes me furious! Honest to God, if that happened to a place I owned I would stand in my doorway and go down swinging.

That can't be right, surely? What about the Burger Kings in the area? Do they have to shut?

They sort of covered this in Eastenders.

I don't really watch the show, but I do catch it from time to time. Kim (the really funny one) decided to call her B&B the Olympic Palace.

Apparently Olympics is a trademark and they made her take it down.

I remember that the Olympic Cafe in London which has been around for years and years was forced to change it's name recently.

This is making me angry, so I'm going to stop thinking about it.

There is a Burger King directly across the street from the Stadium and another right next to Central Station. If I go in and purchase a Whopper and then walk to work with it, will I be arrested? Will I be barred from driving through town (as I do to get to work) because neither my car or bike is a BMW?

I saw this on the front page of the local paper at the weekend.

http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/Ha ... story.html

Hey, I fancy being an Olympiad. It's got to beat working for a living, right?

If I use the products endorsed by the Olympics, do you reckon I could reach the desired pinnacle of fitness?

A Supersized(TM) McAthlete(TM) Meal(TM) with full phat Coke(TM) should surely do the trick. Yes.

(Makes me want to puke at how cigarette advertisers have (quite rightly IMO) been banned from sponsoring sporting events, but it's somehow OK for the supposed jewel in the crown of such events to be very publicly part-bankrolled by burger chains and sugary drinks manufacturers. Obesity is an even bigger killer than lung cancer, afterall. As ever then, money talks, people come last).

Just like any other event that this country ends up getting it will be used for greed based purposes.

I used to (when I lived down in London, or up in London depending on geographical location) go to Party in the park. It was a free thing every summer where some half decent acts turned up and performed. Go to buy a hot dog? why, that'll be seven pounds please. If that doesn't seem alarming consider that said hot dog was purchased in 1997. That was the last one I went to.

So upset was I that I decided to look into it, and asked one of the security guards why they were so expensive. Basically he told me that you needed to buy a license to pitch your hot dogs there, and £5 from every hot dog sale was to pay for the license.

Even something that is supposed to be free and put on for free involves plenty of golden hand shaking and profiteering.

The Olympics is no exception. I bet back handed bungs were flying around as soon as they announced that London had got it. Kind of makes you laugh really. There was the press statement from the leader of the country to say "A good thing for England. Small businesses etc will do very well from it".

Yeah, right. No one will do well from it unless they pay out of the ass for it. Same old, same old.

I have absolutely nothing against the sports part of the Olympics (except the horses, obv) but the sheer amount of greed, and the rewriting of the law books to facilitate that greed.

The whole brand exclusion stuff, in any other situation that'd be horrifically illegal, but it's the Olympics, so that's fine. Infringing on personal liberties to the point of banning entirely non offensive clothing from being worn by members of the public in a public place. That's fucking scary.

They have a big event in Cardiff in the summer called the Big Weekend. Back when, before the "alcohol free zones" to deter drunken chavs fighting, there was nevertheless a beer trailer selling warm Carling in cracked plastic cups for £4.50 a go.

As DocG will recall, the solution employed by us and many others was to go to the nearby Sainsway's, buy a case of beer, sit in the little park just outside the entrance and down them all. If you needed to top up your drunkenness, several pubs were also just outside the event.

Fuck the greedy cunts.

Everyone involved in it is complicit. I'd like to see one athlete speaking out against this bullshit.

Uhh, I will?

What the fuck is this shit? Sure, speak out against the people running the one thing you are spending your life aiming at competing in. A group of people who you have already accused of being corrupt and not caring about rubbing people up the wrong way. Yep, that would be a great move.

Didn't you come with us? I'm sure at least a certain cricketer and a ginger did.

There was an 'olympic cafe' in Dawes Road, Fulham (although there are likely others with the same name). This one even had the rings logo on the sign. I wonder if it is still there... It looked a bit tatty when I used to go visit Lady T when she lived nearby, and that was 8 years ago.

There used to be a bad restaurant near my grandparents' cottage in Elmvale, Ontario, called the Olympic Flame. As a connoisseur of cheap food, my grandfather loved it.

Streetview and Google suggest it's long gone, but, incredibly, the torch relay for Vancouver passed through the town!

Paul Collingwood?

I dunno, I reckon some athletes could get away with it. "Seb, Seb, one of the athletes is dissing us! Should we ban him? He's one of the rifle shooting dudes, really accurate. Used to be in the army!" "um, no, I think we'll leave him alone.

You'd never see a footballer rugby player crickiter jockey F1 driver golfer tennis player basketball player snooker player someone from every other sport ever doing that!

I'm sure there's probably someone moaning about the Olympics too, if we look.

This being modern Britain, said athlete would be arrested for firearms offenses and trrzm and be deported to the Isle of Man to be Ramsea's houseboy.

After all, they've needed special dispensation of the law (again!) to allow the shooting events to go ahead, and Team GB's pistol shooting team has been forced to practice abroad.

I've had an email from TfL:

Crikey, they've even taken the roads.

My neighbour is furious - the dedicated olympics only lanes are, as you say, Games vehicles only. He's a cabbie - so he can't use those lanes, and the fact that they're there means that traffic will be barely moving the whole time. Effectively, if someone wants to go anywhere in East London, he's got to just refuse the work.