What did you do when the Olympic Torch passed by?

[biffvernon]

I can just imagine people being given 'corporate' free tickets as 'perks' and wondering how to get out of paying £100s for a day out they didn't really want.

Indeed. As I've pointed out before, there was no need for any corporate sponsorship and so no corporate 'free' tickets. If the Olympics were about sport and nothing else, with all the tickets going to people who really wanted to watch sport and nothing else, the whole affair would be a lot better.

Sadly, it is too much about money, greed, nationalism and militarisation.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

And some police action that didn't make the news:

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2012-07-27/arrests-after-critical-mass-cycle-ride-in-london-near-olympic-stadium-stratdford-and-waterloo-bridge/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imoSpvfJz_A&feature=player_embedded

Sorry Biff, at this point I finally lose patience with you.

"didn't make the news", and as proof of that, you link to a news website which tells the story.
I picked the same story up from the BBC news website some time ago, less uncritically reported:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19023104.

But I can't help thinking that the protest cycle ride was rather cynically organised to engineer precisely the results it's had.

You aren't all that much better than the idiot Tory MP who tweeted about the opening cermony being full of "PC leftie multicultural crap", because obviously green fields, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, James Bond, Elgar, the Queen, the armed forces hoisting the flags, Chelsea pensioners, Churchill, the Red Arrows, Mary Poppins and pearly kings and queens are all part of some diabolical Communist plot.

 

[philpjuk100]

I noticed that! They look so amazing practising here.

I'm staying very grumpy about the opening ceremony and the hosting. I didn't really like it as a spectacle and the music was excruciating, I just felt the whole thing was noisy, bizarre and an obscene waste of money that is needed elsewhere. Plus my little hen disappeared for three days and only came back yesterday looking partied out, I'm convinced she went off to be at the beginning bit.

Why are we hosting the Olympics? I thought we were in financial trouble? Don't understand, at all. Fond of you lot though, so I'm glad it made you happy.

Olympics! chickens!!

 

[biffvernon]

You aren't all that much better than the idiot Tory MP who tweeted about the opening cermony being full of "PC leftie multicultural crap", because obviously green fields, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, James Bond, Elgar, the Queen, the armed forces hoisting the flags, Chelsea pensioners, Churchill, the Red Arrows, Mary Poppins and pearly kings and queens are all part of some diabolical Communist plot.

But I enjoyed the opening ceremony!

(And I don't think I've ever been rude to you.)

When I said "didn't make the news" I meant as in not making the TV or Radio news bulletins, though it was reported on various websites, so technically you are correct though I guess most folk knew what I meant without my having to spell it out.

(Is that being rude to you?)

 

[biffvernon]

I've just walked across the field between my house and the village and found four empty plastic bottles labelled with the same of some 'sports drink' and bearing the five rings logo and the words 'Official Olympic Sponsor'. Since when was littering the countryside an Olympic sport?

 

[LadyArowana]

.........................from an organisation that values rich people more highly than poor, giving free tickets to the over-privileged who don't care enough to bother to turn up and care even less that those who would have enjoyed the event have been prevented from so doing.

Maybe it's completely the reverse problem, maybe they gave lots of tickets to poor underprivileged people. Their initial enthusiasm for attending probably waned when they realised how much extra money they would have to spend to get to the venue and stay somewhere within a reasonable distance.

I've just walked across the field between my house and the village and found four empty plastic bottles labelled with the same of some 'sports drink' and bearing the five rings logo and the words 'Official Olympic Sponsor'. Since when was littering the countryside an Olympic sport?

I hope you didn't collect them and put them in the recycling. Clearly someone of strong anti-sponsorship persuasions has carefully placed these items to defile the countryside and therefore by association sully the name of the sponsoring company. By removing them you have negated this well orchestrated protest.

 

[MatthewC]

I can't really understand the fuss about empty seats - they've all been paid for or given away as planned haven't they?

I think the fuss is that the seats bought by the public are at the back/top of the seating and are sold out, while the ones given out to whoever-it-is-who-is-not-there (the sponsors say it's not them) are at the front (and thus get seen on TV!). This sort of thing was clearly visible at yesterday's swimming.

Apart from giving the wrong impression, those people at the back would like to be nearer the action, while those who couldn't get tickets at all feel hard done by, and rightly so.

 

[Flyfisher]

From what I've read (and heard on R4 Today, today) most of the empty seats are assigned to the IOC 'family' and were a contractual requirement for the games, along with loads of other 'demands' such as 40,000 hotel rooms for the IOC delegates and guests, 700 of whom must have dedicated cars and drivers and 400 more must have access to a 'pool' of cars! I wonder how many of those hotel rooms are also lying empty, though of course this would not be so visible.

This article describes the IOC 'demands' in more detail: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/8190503/London-2012-Olympics-to-be-held-in-French.html

Interestingly, it also describes the 'sponsor protection' measures required by the IOC so while we may dislike this corporate aspect to the games it seems a little unfair to lay the blame at the door of the UK government.

 

[MatthewC]

That's a good link, FF. I think that this side of the event is what I find difficult to swallow. Why does LOCOG have to pay for 7,000 hotel rooms and provide so many cars if there are only 105 Olympic members? Who ARE all those hangers-on? If the empty seats are theirs as well, then Rogge should be embarrassed but I guess he's in the same mould as Sepp Blatter.

 

[Flyfisher]

Some good questions there Matthew, especially the Rogge/Blatter comparison. Institutional corruption? I couldn't possibly comment.

 

[Nigel Watts]

I liked best the dancing capitalists with the destruction of the English countryside going on the the background. It was all bonkers, especially the hospital bit, but very visually stunning and very entertaining.

I am off to see the women's hockey tomorrow.

 

[biffvernon]

It was all bonkers

That's what being British is all about.

The IOC, on the other hand, are just wrong in oh so many ways.

 

[Zebra]

I wanted to go to see the egg-and-spoon, but couldn't get tickets.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I wish restoration were an Olympic event and the athletes would use our houses as the track

 

[philpjuk100]

"Team GB appeared to have snatched a shock silver in the men's team gymnastics at London 2012, until Japan's protest moved them into bronze".
maybe we should have protested about pearl harbour! :shock:

 

[LadyArowana]

"Team GB appeared to have snatched a shock silver in the men's team gymnastics at London 2012, until Japan's protest moved them into bronze".
maybe we should have protested about pearl harbour! :shock:

The Americans did that already at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and if anyone is going to protest it should probably be the Chinese.

 

[biffvernon]

What has sport got to do with the second world war?

 

[philpjuk100]

What has sport to do with period property?

 

[philpjuk100]

I am really very tolerant(just a bit of a stirrer!) I drive a Citroen even after agincourt but refuse to put money in the accordion playing buskers beret,muttering "looser" as I walk past him (he mutters somthing in gallic in reply!)

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I've just walked across the field between my house and the village and found four empty plastic bottles labelled with the same of some 'sports drink' and bearing the five rings logo and the words 'Official Olympic Sponsor'. Since when was littering the countryside an Olympic sport?

Oh good grief, biff. This is the most desperate clutch at the straws of doom you've yet sunk to.

Please stop. It ceased being funny long ago. I thought you might have been ironic, but the absence of a winkie dashed that faint hope.

When you inveigle even Gareth to weigh in against you, one of the most generously spirited and patient folk imaginable, it really is time to stop and think before posting naysaying nonsense again.

Or are you just a troll?