Looking for legacy, that's the game now. How do you bottle the butterfly moment, siphon off the spirit? Can we at least prove the Olympics made money, changed lives in east London or turned couch potatoes into runners? According to research on previous Olympics, probably not. But that misses the point.
video by jamierbrown85
A video shown just before the Men's 200m Final at London 2012 by the BBC. Claims that natural selection through deaths on Atlantic slave ships is why many people descnded from African slaves are good runners. Reminds me far too much of Brass Eye. "There's no real evidence for it but it's still scientific fact".
The London Hunger Games Welcome to the Hunger Games. The function of the Hunger Games is to suppress antagonism, via spectacle and terror. In the same way, London - 2012 preceded and accompanied by the authoritarian lockdown and militarisation of the city - are being held up as the antidote to all discontent.
A few days ago, I got wind of some of the arrangements prepared for the Olympics opening ceremony. Danny Boyle was readying a celebration of the NHS and multicultural Britain. It was going to be a New Labour-tastic re-imagining of Cool Britannia some fifteen years on. Two things were immediately apparent. The Tories would hate it; and some on the Left would temporarily lose their reason and find their patriotism.
This is all very well in a way. After all, this isn't 1997 - the NHS is under unprecedented attack, and Britain's multiculture has been hammered for more than a decade. We are living in an age when celebrating these things is seen by some as 'too political' or, for the riper pundits, 'left wing propaganda'. And if the "people's history" found empire too touchy a subject to encounter except obliquely, through the prism of Commonwealth immigration - the sole complaint of Boris Johnson who otherwise professed to be delighted with its focus on the NHS, the rise of the industrial working class, and "the triumph over the capitalism" - its acknowledgment of any social antagonism amid the diorama of 'Britishness', from bucolic prancing to industrial dancing, was probably a little unexpected for most viewers.
An ideologically interesting gesture was the binding of what Owen Hatherley presciently called 'austerity nostalgia' (that reverence for the virtuous Forties when everyone pulled together, backs to the wall, living off rationed food and facing down the enemy with stoical good humour, their struggle eventually rewarded with social peace and plenty) to a vaguely critical left-of-centre politics. Perhaps this was not dissimilar in tone to that UK Uncut 'Great British street party'. It was nationalism, but it was a decidedly Labourist nationalism.
My point, basically, is that one can always grin through it while perfectly normal people find various reasons to be #ProudOfBritain, and pundits fall over themselves to worship at the shrine of Boyle's genius. (And really, his films are enjoyable, but if anyone thinks this guy is a creative mastermind they really need to check out his Twitter feed.)
Still, amid the general Sunday morning hangover, I hope those on the soft left who threw aside their probity for a saturnalian flag-fest are now in the mood to confess and repent. Lawks, Mary Poppins saving the NHS from Voldemort to the tune of Branson's money-spinner Tubular Bells! Let the Tories dare privatise the NHS now! (They're already doing it. They'll still be doing it on Monday. The fine nurses and doctors from Great Ormond Street Hospital danced in vain if this was supposed obstruct this determined class assault.). James Bond and the Queen! Britain loves to take the piss out of itself! (This is the sort of self-congratulatory dribble, in this instance referring to an insufferably smug streak of meconium passing itself off as wry British humour, that proves patriotism cannot be genuinely self effacing; it is only in the service of its amour propre that it allows the slightest critical reflection.). Boyle loves Britain's modern social and racial mobility, and so do we! (Every bit as real as the dark legions of Voldemort.)
Whatever the creators' intentions, whatever people now do to appropriate elements of this spectacle for their own agendas, the fact is that it's major achievement was to induce people to forget temporarily what a disgrace the Olympics are; how hated they are in the East End where the Olympics Green Zone has been implanted, protected by rooftop missiles that residents don't want; how poor people have been drive out of their homes as they always are when the Olympics comes to town; how much our civil liberties have already been attacked in the name of suppressing criticism of this ugly metro-plasty, as legislation and police exercises have been framed in the assumption that protest during these events is a potential terrorist plot; how preposterous it is that the 'security' for this montage of pointless exercises is being supplied by thousands of soldiers fresh from hunting shepherds in Afganistan; how fucked up it is that the major sponsors of this debacle, their names glowingly referenced all over the city's billboards, are corporations like McDonalds (which specialises in heart disease, bowel cancer and obesity), and Atos (which specialises in throwing disabled people off benefits and will no doubt have a special role in the Paralympics); and above all the fact that this is sports, pointless, boring sports, and the only reason anyone really wants to watch someone else swim forty lengths or jump over sandpits is because they're doing so on behalf of the nation.
Those leftists who did have a patriotism binge this weekend can report here to expiate their craven indulgence first thing tomorrow morning. I have some chores for you to do.
I'm trying to imagine a different world. One in which a female mayor of an Olympic city, writing in a legitimate publication, would celebrate the presence of "half-naked" men engaged in a sporting event - synchronized diving, perhaps? - and comparing their bodies, with a lascivious wink, to those of animals.
Games have pulled 100,000 foreign tourists into the capital, much lower than the 300,000 expected in a typical summer Leading London attractions see visitor numbers fall by 35 per cent Hotel bookings in London 'very substantially down' Businesses near sailing venues in Weymouth and Portland say this year's summer tourist season is the worst in half a century By James Chapman and Hugo Duncan PUBLISHED: 17:55 EST, 30 July 2012 | UPDATED: 18:56 EST, 31 July 2012 Overblown warnings of Olympics travel chaos are turning key sites into 'ghost towns' and threatening Britain's economic recovery, say business leaders.
Which "multi-cultural" image did Aidan Burley found so offensive? Nazi-partying Tory MP Aidan Burley is in deep trouble for describing the Olympic opening ceremony as "multi-cultural crap". Are these scenes - featuring multi-ethnic family life, Empire Windrush immigrants from Jamaica and a kiss betweeen a black man and mixed-race woman - what he found so offensive?
video by galleryofsports
Boris Johnson hails 'Olympomania' for torch at Hyde Park speech & Opening Ceremony 2012
Like all sensible news operations, the Guardian have have spent the weekend recreating the Olympics out of Lego. Since they lose £91 per minute, by Guido's maths*, the cash-starved newspaper has lost nearly £400,000 in the time it must have taken do it. And they wonder how they haemorrhaged some £44 million last year...
video by DemRapidResponse
RomneyShambles https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?via=thedemocrats&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D7lnhVWtT0YQ ...
video by PokeHQ
Olympic Minister Jeremy Hunt accidentally hit a woman with a bell during this morning's celebrations. It needed a disco soundtrack. http://www.facebook.com/PokeHQ http://www.thepoke.co.uk/
Aidan Burley is just the latest politician to prove Cameron's Law of Twitter. This hasn't been the best year for Mr Burley. When 2012 began, he was a rising star on the Conservative benches, favoured by No 10 and a parliamentary private secretary. Then came a story about a stag party in France and a [...]
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Whitewashing the economic context of the Olympics reduces them to a mediocre musical - let's see some balanced coverage Yesterday, I had to travel clear across London for work. It was neither green nor pleasant. As it turned out, I was about as prepared for the experience as a US Republican nominee is prepared for the Arkham asylum escapee we affectionately call mayor of London.
Danny Boyle and Lord Coe faced pressure from Cabinet ministers to change elements of the controversial Olympic opening ceremony. "Suggestions" were made after senior ministers saw a 20-minute video of highlights of rehearsals of the director's Isles of Wonder spectacular - which won praise on Friday night for its eccentric celebration of British life.
Aidan Burley - the Tory MP who attended a Nazi-themed stag party in the French Alps - has taken to Twitter to describe this evening's Olympic opening ceremony as "multi-cultural crap". The event, the brainchild of film director Danny Boyle, featured a tribute to the NHS and an extended sequence based around a multi-ethnic British family.