The London Olympics are already achieving the number one aim of the politicians who brought them here, which is making our politicians feel very important indeed.
The media is quite frenetic in its efforts to make us all believe we should be terrifically proud of the fact we are hosting the Olympics, as though there were something unique in this achievement. If we can’t competently do something that Greece, Spain and China have done in recent years, that would be remarkable. Of course the Games will be on the whole well delivered, sufficient for the media and politicians to declare it an ecstatic success. Some of the sporting moments will be sublime, as ever.
But did it have to be in London? We won’t know the total cost of the Games for months, but it will cost the taxpayer at least £9 billion and I suspect a lot more. I also suspect the GDP figures will, in the event, show that the massive net fall in visitor numbers has hurt the already shrinking economy further.
But to take the most optimistic figure, holding the Olympics in London has cost every person in the country an average of £150 per head in extra taxes. That is £600 for a family of four. Actually it is in the end going to be well over £2,000, as of course the money has been borrowed on the never never, and taxpayers are going to be paying it off their whole lives, along with the sum ten times higher they are already paying direct into the pockets of the bankers through their taxes.
The very rich, of course, don’t pay much tax, so they are not worried.
But to take just the figure of £600 extra taxes for a family of four, the lowest possible amount, and not including the interest. Is having the Olympics here really worth paying out £600 for? If Tony Blair had approached the head of the family and said “We are going to have the Olympics in London, but it’s going to cost you £600, would the answer have been from most ordinary people: “Yes, great idea, this is that important to us”?
People are not disconcerted because they don’t see that they have to pay. There is no special Olympics tax, and they pay their taxes in a variety of ways, and individuals are not the sole source of taxation. But this is nonetheless real money taken from the people in pursuit of the hubris of politicians.
I love sport. I hate the corruption of the International Olympic Committee, Fifa and the rest; I hate the vicious corporatism and militarisation of our capital and absurd elitism of the transport lanes; the sport itself I love. But with the economy contracting, and the NHS being farmed out for profit, is it really worth £600 for a family – and many families are really struggling in a heartbreaking way – is it worth the money to have the Olympics here rather than in Paris?
Of course it isn’t. I think many of us will feel an extra pleasure watching the Opening ceremony because it is British. Patriotic pride will surge. It is not wrong to enjoy the spectacle tonight on TV. The corporate well connected and ruling classes will enjoy it in the stadium.
But after you have watched it on TV, ask yourself this question. How much more did you enjoy it than enjoy watching the Beijing ceremony, and was that margin of extra enjoyment something that everybody in the room would have paid out £150 for?
Because they just did.
‘It’s now ‘good’ immigrants like Koreans v ‘bad’ ones is it?’
Only a fool would assume that ‘immigrants’ from different countries share the same characeristics. You seem to want us to believe that, regardless of their background, all immigrants to the UK ‘enrich’ it. I’ve posted conclusive evidence to the contrary in my first comment , and further evidence to suggest that sweeping statements concerning ‘immigrants’, of the type you extrude, are worthless.
‘You object to immigrants, and are prepared to go on about it. You still haven’t provided any reasons for it: perhaps an unhappy experience in your youth with someone from Ostend’.
Yeah, I ‘object’ to immigrants so much I’ve spent the last decade happily married to one. And I think you missed a question mark after ‘Ostend’.
Don’t hum ‘Kumbaya’ too loudly on your way to the shop.
“Bandar is back!”
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“He is a special mission guy”
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“Bandar will be better able to perform many of the needed tasks—for example, helping the Syrian opposition or hatching sabotage plots against Iran.”
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/bandar-back_648978.html
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Elliot Abrams, Oi Vay! Not starting wars? Lie.
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Get back to Nicaragua where they want you for running death squads in the 1980’s.
Mark Golding – Children of Iraq,
How many princes are there in the ruling family of KSA?
Not that any of the four thousand princes could seeking to be the next king, and could perhaps help himself to improve his chances, through the elimination of the competitors?
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Look closer home, Qatif uprising that is not getting reported, and the imprisonment of the Cleric “Namar” and the four shot dead and many wounded are not going to roll over and play dead.
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Finally the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius goes on record “Arms have been supplied to [the rebels], according to our information, by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, probably others . . . but not us,”
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The headlines scream:
Syria regime lashes out at Saudis, Qatar, Turkey,
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Too quick to dance to the tune of “debka” are we not?
@Technicolor 1) To feign ignorance
2) To make an unfounded accusation against a person.
3) Time Constant
So not a good look
What does this mean? As for Old ‘I’m married to an immigrant’ Mark – I don’t even assume that all politicians in the UK enrich it.
For the last time, stop wasting my time and explain just what our history of immigration has done to you? What *damage* has it done to this country? You are, as several people here have pointed up, obsessing up the wrong tree and blaming the vulnerable and the victims – presumably because it’s easier than dealing with the reality.
Oldmark:
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“Only a fool would assume that ‘immigrants’ from different countries share the same characeristics.”
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I’ll share with you the Australian experience. Post WW2 there was a big influx of Italian and Greek immigrants, and those against immigration wished for the old days when only the Brits and Irish came to Australia. In the 70’s and 80’s lots of Asian immigrants came to Australia and those against immigration wished for the days when Italians and Greeks were moving to Australia. 90’s and 00’s lots of Middle Eastern and Africans came to Australia, and those against immigration look back fondly on the previous Asian immigrants. See a pattern? Of course the communities are not identical, but after one or two generations they all become integrated into the mainstream society. One of my recently deceased family members came to Australia from Italy right after WW2, when he died he still couldn’t speak English, but his grandchildren are as occa as they come.
Komodo: I did question whether you were attacking refugees. Question remains, what is ‘horrendous’, to whom, and why?
Passerby, I hadn’t noticed this blog, nor the Internet in general, running slowly. This blog sometimes has database problems, but not often. What usually slows it down is a slow response from the Gravatar server, which serves the avatar images. If you use Adblock or similar, or if you know how to edit your Hosts file, block these two addresses and see if it helps:
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0.gravatar.com
1.gravatar.com
Passerby, it did seem as though my e-mail was being filtered a week or two back; encrypted e-mails and e-mails containing advice on implementing encryption went missing without trace, while other e-mails continued to get through. But even then I was posting my progress reports here, and those comments were getting through fine.
Violence and pornography.
Torture and pain.
Murder and death its all insane.
Why do we create, make and duplicate,
For money , entertainment, believe thats sick.
You or the one watching.
who cares? plenty.
We are all sick, affraid some getting sicker.
Liberalism is a disease.
As long as you are getting fucked
BBC News at 6. Time given to Irish writer Maeve Binchy’s (never heard of her) death: 180 seconds. Time given to the death of international arms dealer, Saudi Prince, head of Saudi Intelligence, Architect of the biggest arms deal in history,friend of the rich and famous including the Blairs, the Bush and the British royal family: 0 seconds.
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This is what I’m paying £145.50 per year for – To be kept in the dark and fed shit. Of course, they’ll be telling me what a unique broadcaster they are and how their lack of ‘commercial interests’ (that’s a f*cking joke in itself) means they can be honest about ‘telling truth to power’.
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Paxman, Marr, Dan Snow, Kate Humble and the rest of these intellectual dwarves are all multi-millionaires because of the unique way the BBC is funded. I wouldn’t piss on any of them if they were on fire.
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In fact I’m thinking of organising an online campaign to get people to stop paying the TV licence. They can’t lock up 30 million people – who’s with me?
@Screaming lord sutch.
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Count me in – but far more needs to be done – we need everyone to spread, through social netorks etc, how the BBC and all the other mainstream media are lying and spreading disinformation about the situation in Syria and about Natos huge deception in general
In fact I’m thinking of organising an online campaign to get people to stop paying the TV licence.
but then who would people here link to for news?
(sorry)
Komodo: “Technicolor”
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That’s the American/Canadian spelling. We use “colour” in British English.
My pals in southeast London failed to get tix for any Olympic events. Many others didn’t apply because they couldn’t afford the rediculous prices – u can get cheaper holidays.
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My flatmate didn’t apply at all, yet she got corporate tix for the tennis at Wimbledon through her work in a bank. Last week she decided she wanted to see a track-n-field event, so she phoned her dad – a foreign politician – who pulled some strings. She’s just received tix sent direct from the Embassy – for the men’s 100m final, no less.
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These Games are all about corporates and cronies. What about the jolly British sense of fair play?
Back on topic; The Olympics.
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Team GB is doing so piss poor that the BBC, ITV and C4 has decided to fill in the slots that they had saved for hours-on-end of gushing, fawning, puke-inspiring reportage of newly created UK commercial assets (Gold medal winners) and instead would like you all to know that the Chinese are drug cheats – not that they have a single shred of evidence mind, just some American guy said so, but that’s good enough to make it the lead story on BBC, ITV and C4. I dare not watch C5 news due to my heart condition.
Prince Bandar story on YouTube:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD5hjEK178U#!
This “racism” argument looks to me like a small but ugly storm in a small but ugly teapot. Does anyone here really think that (a) Komodo or (b) OldMark would support:
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# Repatriation of immigrants,
# Legal inequalities on the basis of ethnicity,
# Restricted access to employment, education, healthcare, social provision etc. on the basis of ethnicity,
# Concentration camps,
# etc?
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There is a debate about how many people from abroad should be permitted to settle in the UK. In this debate, people both influence, and are influenced, by the media. Different “news” media outlets spin the facts and arguments to appeal to different sections of the population. This polarises the debate.
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There is plenty of evidence that politicians also have polarised this debate for their own diverse ends, including gerrymandering. I advance an argument that we avoid polarisation here on this blog, and indeed actively look for ways to counteract the polarisation.
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Also, has no one noticed the irony surrounding all this? Komodo pointed out that the exploitative class of the British Empire were almost exclusively white, but that non-whites were used in a theatrical event to depict them. That actually seems rather unfair to the non-whites to me. But probably it had to be done that way to avoid “discrimination”.
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It’s all very odd.
I went to a bar in central Chelmsford last week, and I got chatting to a man who had been a pub landlord most of his adult life. Chelmsford town centre is full of clubs playing loud music catering mostly to the under 30s. This man was lamenting the erosion of the pub culture to which he’d contributed for decades. He missed quiet conversation, moderate alcohol use and people of diverse ages socialising in a common environment.
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What he had to say had nothing to do with race, but it was a similar argument as is often advanced by those calling for tighter immigration controls. Something he had lived with, loved and contributed to was, is, being displaced by changes, and he disliked that.
Abuse of mosques in Syria by terrorist rebels inciting violence.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0lEZ_YkMqg&feature=plcp
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CIA handler identified.
If Bandar is still alive, it is most peculiar that he has not made a public appearance since the reports of his death started appearing. It is also most peculiar that the Saudi authorities have not denied the reports.
I dunno Clark, why don’t you ask them? could of course be sound and fury, signifying nothing. i do hope so.
as for crappy venues serving overpriced drinks with crap loud music (unless they’re a dance place) not sure that anyone of any age would be loving it.
and btw the ‘debate’ was not about what should be ‘permitted’ in the future but was about how ‘horrendous’ things were already.
@Clark – Surely you can see that the much needed discussion on immigration is about sheer number of people entering countries (or an island in this case),which roughly averages around 250,000 a year (net) since around 1997 according to ONS figures.England especially, is now one of the most over poulated countries in the world relative to size. The issue is a very simple one: the more people that are allowed to be crammed in to a county or countries (unnaturally so in the case of new labour, post 1997 especially) the more problems you are going to have in providing resources/food/water/welfare, employment and effective social cohesion to everyone,whatever their creed or colour. Since when has this basic concept so difficult to comprehend?
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@screaming lord sutch – i noticed the mainstream news reports trying to discredit the whole chinese competitors with absoloutely no evidence as well – truly pitiful and going against the whole spirit of the Olympics.
Technicolour, I’ve suggested here before that the political Left is a mass expression of the evolved human capacity for altruism and mutual support, while the political Right is a mass expression of self-interest and respect for self reliance. I’ve argued that rather than the boringly familiar Left vs. Right ideological battle, a mutual respect would help the political debate progress.
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Well, here goes my attempt to do the same for the immigration argument. Xenophobia and xenophilia are both psychological tendencies with evolutionary roots, because there are both risks and opportunities in making contact and interacting with people outside of ones familiar group.
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There is no point in labelling either sets of feelings as “good” or “bad”; it is just evolution in action, Nature exulting in her abundance of creative diversity.
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One day, I hope, there will be no political borders on Earth, and people will be able to come and go as they see fit. But that cannot even be contemplated until there is equality across the entire globe.
Sorry Clark and thanks Suhayl. I got the wrong end of the stick. I feel very uneasy at the moment. Something is in the air and I cannot explain it.
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I have just seen this about Grieve keeping the lid on what Blair, Straw et al were up to prior to April 2003. There is obviously a joint decision between this government snd NuLabour to keep the secret in spite of the Information Commissioner’s ruling. This is slipped out in a recess when everyone is preoccupied with the Limp Ics etc.
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Tony Blair’s Iraq meetings to remain secret after government veto
Attorney general overrides calls from freedom of information watchdog to release cabinet minutes from before 2003 invasion
Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 July 2012 18.32 BST
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http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/politics/2012/jul/31/iraq-invasion-government-documents-secret
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Dr David Kelly RIP We have not forgotten you.
Pity the poor souls in darkness and sweltering summer heat in Nothern India.
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http://ibnlive.in.com/news/heavy-rains-lash-delhi-waterlogging-in-some-areas/276879-3-244.html
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India blackouts leave 700 million without power
Power cuts plunge 20 of India’s 28 states into darkness as energy suppliers fail to meet growing demand
{http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/31/india-blackout-electricity-power-cuts?newsfeed=true}
Look at where Humanity stands at this point in our development. For thousands of years the global human population was roughly constant at between one and two billion. Then humans invented engines which found application in agriculture and transport, the food supply increased, and with it the human population.
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For thousands of years there had been no overall pressure for societies to expand. Humans developed in groups separated by geological barriers. Those groups evolved differences in law, custom, religion and language. Suddenly the population started to rise at an unprecedented rate, and engines and fuel enabled unprecedented mobility.
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So the groups were forced by circumstance to overlap and mingle. Diverse systems of laws, customs and religions were forced into interaction, and the struggle to find consensus was complicated by differences of language.
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Considering the scale of the potential problems, I’d say that humanity are doing pretty well at sorting it out.
I feel quite proud to have been one of the first to have signed one of the most important petitions. Everyone should sign and spread.
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http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_human_rights_whistleblower_Bradley_Manning/?cCNkdbb
Mary
Can you copy and paste the pertinent bits, for those of us whom do not have any FB accounts. (yeah there are many of that sort of souls kicking around)
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FAO the racists;
There seems to be a circular debate, taking place among those afflicted with autism combined with OCD Syndrome. The arguments forwarded are so original and so well thought out (bullocks they are):
overcrowded……… little island ……. stop immigration ……. bullocks …..pizel … no more room at the inn …… stop the wages decline …… government too soft ……
Fucking well stop!
FFS stop!
Jesus Allah Buddha Stop!!!!!!
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Why are you all regurgitating what has already been said, and is written every quarter in at least umpteen inch farticles in the print “media”. As ever vilifying the immigrants, illegal asylum seekers, and Muslims.
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Who do you intend to hear/read your message that has not heard it before? Is this a tactic to inform the wider world of the nature of the inhospitality on offer by the little islanders in a bid to discourage any would be wannabe: immigrant, illegal asylum seeker, or Muslim from even contemplating to come to this neck of the woods?
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ON the other hand is this tactic to inform the government from the displeasure of the “masses” about the fact that there are too many bloody immigrants kicking around, in our septic isles?
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Why in hades none of the same bunch of reactionaries ever shout out, to the same fucking government: Stop fucking around with other nations resources and systems of governance, and let the indigenous populations to be free to eke out a livelihood without the interference and without sanctions, or attacks and invasions, or fomenting of “revolutions”, be it of the colour kind or the violent kind?
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It is as clear as pike staff that when the said government is sending its military and secret services to sabotage and invade various countries and or setting sanctions, trade barriers, copyrights, patents, and other restrictive and closed shop practices to disqualify the same nations from any kind of economic prosperity in case the new found prosperity could “embolden” the said nations to stand up for their rights and stop paying fealty to the self appointed masters of the world. The same reactionaries pour in to the streets to support our troops and make a song and a dance about the it all.
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It is sickening to see the same bunch of reactionary tossers engage in the same fucking circular argument without any intentions of seeking a resolution. Why these “luminaries” never ever think (wheeheeey that needs a brain cell) of Stopping to blame the economic migrants, and start getting their government to stop fucking around with the fate of the nations that are the source of the economic migrants, as likes of: Iraq (invaded and occupied), Afghanistan (invade and occupied), Syria (in the process of getting invaded and occupied), Libya (invaded and occupied), Palestinians ( invaded, occupied, and currently getting ethnically cleansed), Somalia (Petri dish for the coming lawless corporate world), Iran (3o years of continual sanctions, and under state of siege, constant harassment and promises of attacks on a daily basis), Yugoslavia (invaded occupied, and broken up), Former Eastern block (foment revolt and change and then buy the country for peanuts, close down the factories and turn these countries into massive super whorehouses), ………
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Unless these reactionary stop their fucking government from creating destitute and dispossessed, all around the globe, then they ought to accept there will always be queues of hungry and dispossessed running away from their nightmares only to find themselves out of the frying pan into the fire: to be further exploited because tossers the likes of these reactionaries are putting the blame on these desperate people, and in any opportunity are kicking them in the head and killing them any which way they can. Pysho Stapleton shot the Indian Immigrant in the head and went to get a tattoo to celebrate his first blooding, because the hairless monkey could not understand the guy he shot and killed was paying over the tops, in fact thrice the price of university admission fees to get educated in this country. The in breed only saw a brown face and an immigrant that was OK to kill.
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Often in the debate the fall out of these toxic attitudes somehow are never entertained. Yeah why should these facts come in the way of a good two minutes hate ritual, the sick bastards that the racist wankers are.