London Olympics 2012

[Stavros]

May as well initiate the Olympics thread.

At the moment the main talking points appear to be

1) the inability of G4S to provide the security they were contracted for; they have had to concede they cannot train enough security guards in time for the event, so the British Army has had to commit 3,500 troops to meet the shortfall. The management fees charged by G4S have risen from £7.3m to £60m; the total value of the contract to G4S is now £284m ($442m). There is now a 'ferocious' row taking place between the Home Office and 10 Downing Street; Theresa May will almost certainly lose her job after the Olympics, if not before -the potential nightmare of foreign visitors waiting hours to get through immigration at Heathrow won't help her career...

2) there is now another 'ferocious' row taking place between the London Organising Committe for the Olympic Games [LOCOG], and the British Olympic Association over who should light the flame in the opening ceremony. LOCOG want Daley Thompson to do it; the BOA want Steve Redgrave to do it. Thompson won two successive gold medals in the Dedcathlon; Redgrave won five successive gold medals in rowing. Thompson is mates with Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman of LOCOG (see below).

3) A Zimbabwean I know says he is going to watch the 100m because he wants to see Usain Bolt get beaten! What he wants for Robert Mugabe is rather more gruesome...

LOCOG
http://www.london2012.com/about-us/t...s/locog/board/

BOA
http://www.teamgb.com/boa-board

[rodinuk]

1) SNAFU - an MP noted yesterday that some soldiers will return from their tour of duty in Afghanistan have their leave cancelled, made redundant and handed a P45 as part of defence cuts on their way to the Olympic Stadium for their last posting.

2) I'm surprised McDonalds would allow anyone except Ronald McDonald to light it

[rodinuk]

Other talking points are:

the OlympicRouteNetwork restrictions and the affect on some businesses who will find it hard to re-stock their premises.

the hijack of the Olympics by the presenting partners in particular McDonalds who will only allow chips to be sold by fish&chip vendors the rest of the 800 vendors cannot sell them.

[Stavros]

Yes it beggars belief that junk food and drinks are major sponsors, or rather it merely underlines how much this is about money rather than sport. I read in today's Independent that also banned in the Olympic Park are frisbees, vuvuzuelas, and picnic hampers! But since it is probably going to rain throughout I don't suppose a picnic on the grass would be a good idea anyway. Is this all really a shambles, or is it just typical of Brits to assume the worst before it has happened?

[rodinuk]

We now term these things omnishambles apparently.

The Brits have a bipolar schism - on the one hand the receptive population gets orgasmic over the Olympic Torch, won't hear a word said against the Olympics and think the sun shines out of Lord Coe's butt and the rest of the populous who can think for themselves (non-Sun/Mail readers) seem concerned with the sponsorship sell-out and disruption to people's lives and the aftermath.

There's going to be a teeny sense of anti-climax methinks, I'm all in favour of the Olympics but the taint of the sponsorship really devalues it imho.

[Stavros]

I read somewhere that it began in earnest at Montreal in 1976 and that the cost of putting the games on has become so great they need sponsors to do it, which gives those corporations with money to spare an opportunity to ring-fence their product so athletes who are sponsored by a rival (eg Nike -vs- Reebok) are not allowed to exhibit the logo if its not of the official sponsor, and so on. The fuss being made over the use of the five Olympic Rings is weirder and weirder, David Bintley the choreographer of the Royal Birmingham Ballet had to change the name of a ballet -Faster, Higher, Stronger, to Faster... because the former is the official motto of the IOC.

But I agree, I think there is a tendency to sneer at such things before they have happened, we can at least hope that the events themselves will overshadow the arguments about the sponsors and security.

[Prospero]

I am neither excited nor do I sneer. But I am concerned that the capital's infrastructure simply won't be able to cope. Especially public transport and the roads. Just last week the heavy rain shut the Piccadilly Line for a couple of hours causing considerable disruption. The previous week rain took out the district line to Wimbledon for an afternoon - fortunately after the crowds had arrived for the tennis. With the vast addtional numbers riding the system - and the limits on road traffic - the scenario is set for a very difficult time.

I also deplore the inept way tickets were distributed and, while appreciating sponsors must get a fair number of tickets, it seemed wrong to me that certain companies were able to offer tickets if you did business with them (and clearly had huge allocations of tickets) when that same public could NOT buy them any other way.

The BBC satire 2012 meanwhile probably is less absurd than the reality.

[Prospero]

You could not make this stuff up.....

Just over a week to go and security for the Games is a debacle. The chief executive of the multi national company commissioned to look after the security G4S today admitted it is a "humiliating shambles" after failing to supply the agreed numbers of people to look after the event. The army and police have had to be drafted in. But they still say they'll demand their £60 million management fee!

Meanwhile athletes are beginning to arrive in London. Yesterday one coach load of jetlagged Americans were taken on a four hour mystery tour of London after their driver got lost trying to find the Olympics site. Later another driver who also lost his way from the airport to the athletes village admitted he'd never driven in London before - a Liverpudlian he said he felt "like a tourist."

It as reported that some relied on Satnav systems (GPS to you Americans) but then discovered the address for the olympics was not recognised by the devices.

[rodinuk]

At this rate they'll be using Mr.Buckles as fuel to light the Olympic flame

[english1000]

I travel up to London each day and the already over-crowded trains and tubes are beginning to show signs of more people. Most firms, including my own, don't have any plans to let people work from home.