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.
“The battle in Syria, in my eyes, is none other than a Reformation taking place inside Islam between a kind of Catholic, formulaic religion in which the formulae are obviously different to Roman Catholic rituals, but the effect is the same, which is to allow the person to continue to avoid the challenge of nGod to men, to do good and be rewarded for it in Heaven, instead of doing evil and being selfish , by following certain formulaic rituals which generate automatic forgiveness …”
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Notwithstanding that everything you say is predicated on this doubtful existence of this ‘god’ and of ‘heaven’ for which there is not the slightest evidence; mention of these fantasy concepts does however serve as a convenient indicator that everything else can be discounted. Christianity and Islam have both long gone through endless substantial schisms, news of another split hardly seems startling, rather it’s an everyday occurrence. Not that good people or bad need some list of rules or commandments to distinguish right and wrong, unless insane, for which religion is an ineffective treatment and the lunatics are very much in put in charge of the prominent asylums. Religions themselves provide endless examples of their own encouragement of and wholesale participation in the bloodiest of slaughters, for which their own rules of good and bad are quickly disposed of. There isn’t a civil war or a blessed religious war in Syria, these are smokescreens there is just war, invasion, occupation and subjugation to powerful external enemies. The intention is to portay the Syrian crisis as inscrutable impenetrable religious ding-dong at which we ought you think should just shake our heads at their antics and let it happen, chuckling at their superstitious medieval backwardness. People would be less concerned by events in Syria if it could be assured that the gangster Israelies did not gain by it, instead that Syrian integrity is restored and the Golan Heights returned and that Syrian independence is maintained, complete freedom from foreign influences not of Syrian choosing, assuming Iranian, Russian and Chinese influence are uncoerced. As we in the UK are wrestling with the problem of undue US, Israeli and whoever else is pulling Cameron, Hague’s and almost all of parliament’s members’ strings, of all parties and by that means gutting our democratic practices, dictating our foreign and defence policies, in other words complete secretive undemocratic foreign domination and control, we can hardly accept this crude attempt to topple one of the few truly independent un-trojanned governments in the world left standing. Even as we’ve long been the victims of the same process and are helplessly snared.
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Please don’t try to mask aggressive premeditated acts of war, targetting civilians, with a religious veil of opacity.
Herbie, sorry it’s taken so long for me to answer your question about the Olympics Opening Ceremony and the placement of black people in the historical tableaux. You know, there was criticism of these aspects from both Left and Right – for rather different reasons.
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It’s good that black people played roles from early ‘British’ history (remember that it wasn’t really ‘Britain’ from shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire in 410 to 1707). There were people of colour in these islands from the time of the Roman Empire, onwards. More recently, what happened to the freed slaves post early C19th? They intermarried with working class communities, assimilated into the population, so that many people in this country who consider themselves white actually have significant African heritage. Some are still visibly black/mixed heritage. When I lived near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, there was (still is) a large extended family of black/mixed heritage people who were descended from slaves. They were well-known in the area.
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Furthermore, it is important that black actors (I know these were volunteers, but they were acting, performing) get more roles playing classic and other parts – not just Othello – as right now, it’s very difficult for black and Asian actors in the UK to get roles that are not the obvious ones. I know black and Asian actors and some are absolutely magnificent actors – but they don’t get the roles. So, even if there had been no black people in British history – and there were many – it would’ve been right in my view to expand the public platform visibility of black people.
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But you asked the question, Herbie, so what is your view on the matter?
Cryptonym at 10:51pm, I agree with you about Syria and the Sunni-Shia/Iran-Saudi Arabia dynamic, independence and so on.
Samuel Pepys referred frequently in his diaries to black women who apparently were in the highest and lowest stations of that day, and seemed to be intriguers behind everything in 17thC England, black women in that time meant black-haired, of course.
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Haven’t many (not me!) rather fallen into the trap Craig laid and are discussing the circus, the clown princes and the acrobats, candyfloss and elephant dung, the shocking cost of tickets.
Interestingly ‘Jesus’ has been acknowledged eight times so far here in this thread. For some reason it prompted me to ask the question, it is absurd the Bible contains just four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John when there are many more that were rejected by the ‘church’ for reasons of consolidation some 1500 years ago around 150AD.
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One in particular that was cast aside and burnt or virtually eliminated is worth mentioning. The Gospel according to Mary I think (I am no expert here) quotes directly from Jesus. Obviously written by a scribe after Mary’s death it clearly demonstrates the importance of women in Christ’s teachings. We learn that the Jesus was against places of worship such as churches, against religious ritual or ceremony and against any person in authority who represented Christianity or religion such as a clergyperson, priest or cleric.
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In fact Jesus was quoted in simple terms as saying, ‘any person or everyone can retain a spirit strong enough to survive’ which translates to many as anyone can be like Jesus.
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My own argument here is why are we taught from, deem a ‘sacred’ writ, asked to swear an oath on and treat with authority an entity called a Bible that is not complete or has been abridged to avoid anything unacceptable, unsuitable or just plain unwanted by so called leaders of the church or persons of God?
Yes, well, I think we all here are likely to know the hard neoliberal rubric behind it all, Cryptonym. It doesn’t stop us looking at the candy-floss as well, it doesn’t lessen our lucidity; these things are complex, polyvalent phenomena. PR effect, etc.
Mark, you’ve been searching for Jesus!
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Good points, all.
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“Jesus was just alright,” as the song goes.
The Gospel of Thomas is a good one, too. Very Gnostic/Sufi. The Miracle of Cana, “drink from my mouth…” and so on.
Interesting about Pepys. Raven beauties, eh?
About the moderators / moderation taking place here – this is making me distinctly uncomfortable. Craig Murray has explicitly said that this is a place for free speech, right up to the point where certain trolls were blatantly taking the piss, and he declared them banned. Even then, he tolerated their intrusion – way more than I would have, but its his blog, and that’s the sort of thing that made it a rather special place.
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But now we’ve got moderators who – not content with deciding who can and can’t post here, occasionally deleting posts outright – have taken to editing out things they deem objectionable. Presumably, they consider the users of this blog insufficiently mature to take on board the stated views of long time (and respected) contributors without their protective censorship.
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Who is supposed to be benefiting from this line-item veto power the mods have assumed? Are we only allowed to see what the adults (i.e. mods) consider appropriate for our delicate sensibilities? By all means, throw trolls and spam out. But when the post is not spam, and not from a blatant troll, credit us with the intelligence to make our own judgement about the post, and kindly stop treating us like children!
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My neighbour just got back from the circus: he had been serving as a volunteer in the Olympic village. Not much bread for volunteers, of course (who also have to pay their own transport costs). That’s the Big Society in operation: well-paid consultants getting the lower orders to do the actual labour for free.
Well, yes, Suhayl; trying to stitch together the arguments I noticed the word ‘Jesus’ was appearing in one form or the other in contributions. I then did the search; in that order.
Glenn_uk: I confess I’ve had similar misgivings. There has been a lot of nannying recently, which has gone beyond the standard troll patrol. I think it’s intended to nip potential flame wars in the bud, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. Obviously, we can still get insulted and incensed by implications even while using ostensibly civil language.
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I think it would be much better to have a proper forum, like phpBB, with a main area (for Craig to post his messages), stickies about netiquette, theme-related discussions and even a bearpit for people to tear lumps out of each other if that’s what they want to do. I guess it could be set up independently.
Thanks, Suhayl
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I was thinking that there may have been a much greater dramatic effect in seeing more clearly the transition from a relatively mono-racial culture to the diversity that emerged post war.
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I’ll have to watch the whole thing again to give a fuller feeling, and I’ll be looking particularly for anything that betrays an unease with the issues. That might be illuminating.
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I’ll get back to you.
Glenn
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Don’t worry. It’ll all get back to normal after the summer.
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Jon and Clark are just preparing a summer paper for uni.
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It’s a kind of Milgram thing, and we’re the muppets.
In other words a metamorphosis to oblivion or a mutation into the WWW ‘black hole’ of phpBB et al. Consider our ranking ‘Nextus’ and status. We are loathed by the establishment and highly regarded by thinkers. We are too precious, too valued, too loved to change our clothes and fade to black or white. Change is an ugly noun; we are evolving, which is painful but necessary.
Nextus: A couple of threads back I had a run-in with a fellow who clearly didn’t like me, and wanted to make it personal. That’s fine, he can do that if he wishes, I saw no need (and actually clarified my statements which he might have taken as belittling but were not meant as such). Jon (mod) pointed out to the fellow that such personal insults were not necessary. That was a diplomatic gesture from Jon, and appreciated as such.
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But taking lines out of Komodo’s posts, with an explanation that, quote – “[* Jon/mod: minor item redacted. I realise some insults are playful, but nevertheless this is a charged thread. Please tread carefully]” – is simply not acceptable in a supposedly free and open forum! Suggest that, fine – suggest they walk it back, fine – but you’re imposing that we cannot be allowed to know what they said?
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What do we – free-thinking people – think of censorship generally? How do we regard those that would shield our delicate little minds from matters considered (by our more enlightened elders) too troubling for us? As Ben Elton (back when he used to be a good guy) pointed out, the censoring of material is always done on behalf of someone else. The gentle reader cannot be trusted to form their own opinion.
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“If I don’t like it, nobody else can be allowed to read it.” This is the self-appointed position the mods have now taken, on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I mentioned a few days ago that moderated forums should not become the mod show, or the Clark N’ Jon show in this case. A form of “light-touch regulation” would actually be appropriate here.
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Come on, fellows. Kick out the blatant trolls. Delete the spam. You’ll have my sincere thanks. But right now, you are in the process of pretty much ruining one of the most vibrant blogs going.
That seems to be the historical jesus essence , strong enough as it was to be recorded and distorted, probably needed turned on its head. Forget the old testament -there is no new one!, forget the churches and priests etc. drink with the sinners, everyones a sinner, dont value riches, dont throw stones etc… oh dear im not up to doing the real jesus justice, but all good advice.
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I did get caught out by the simple meaning in cryptonyms peice. I was also a bit nervous about the prospects of people with rare features in tough feudal times in britain, from 4-17C ,though iirc there were some fare antique ages and scenes in days yore too.
I didnt find the diversity of the ceremonies actors silly, because it was theater, it might have done with more drag?
The closing is coming up soon, i think many will be watching.
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Glenn, if the made up while cleaning and chatting mod policy is sounding contentious, it doesnt seem that any of the cropped have minded much yet.I expect it is evolving. No ones sure how long craig will keep it running.
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The pipes do very well on monitor speakers, ive really had a hankering for immigrating to a highland outcrop.
“[* Jon/mod: minor item redacted. I realise some insults are playful, but nevertheless this is a charged thread. Please tread carefully]“
i think that was were he/she called him/her a cunt, again. :/ – but its blown over, i think…
Nextus: wrt your neighbour doing necessary work for free. This seems to be what we’re coming to in this country, and it’s remarkable that we’re sleepwalking into it on such a conscription-level scale.
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The minimum wage has been set to just about the lowest amount one can possibly earn, and still survive (perhaps with some additional benefits thrown in, to supplement the employer – not the employee). The benefits system has also been designed around the principle that you give the recipient the absolute minimum that is necessary to live in a reduced, bumping-along-the-bottom fashion.
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So we have the now standard wage equal to the dole payments, or maybe even a bit less. What is the incentive to work under such conditions? Why, to take away the benefits altogether unless they do! And what sort of work do we get – some social good, surely? Urban beautification, something that uplifts society in return for taxpayer money granted for this person to live, right? Good Lord, no!
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The good of the bottom line for the most profitable companies (Tesco, Morrisons, G$S, sorry, G4S) is what we get instead. Profit making companies have their staff on the taxpayer’s payroll, for jobs that need doing in order for them to operate. If the taxpayer were not providing free labour, a genuine job would need to be filled (and tax paid by that employee, NI from the employer, etc. etc.). The idea that Tesco is going to take someone on completely unnecessarily, just to push a broom around or man an idle till to get the conscript used to the idea of working again, shouldn’t pass the laugh test.
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We are seeing a massive taxpayer funded workforce being gifted to hugely profitable enterprises, and we often find ourselves paying these same companies huge amounts for their services!
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It is just unbelievable.
This thread has expanded a lot since I last had a look, and haven’t really the time to go back and look at it in detail, but:
I gather a rude comment of mine was redacted. That is absolutely fine by me. That is what mods are for, and I accept the terms and conditions of posting on the blog. The point being made by using the word in question was a trivial one, no harm done. Thanks to those who questioned the mods but IMO freedom of speech is thankfully not in danger on this blog or in its comments.
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A nos moutons: here’s Enoch emphasising that the bearer of bad tidings should not be treated as the person who caused the problem. Emphasis is mine.
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“The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing. Hence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: ‘if only’, they love to think, ‘if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen’. Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it, deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.
(Enoch Powell, Birmingham, 1968)
I see that Ms Madonna Ciccione who is performing in St Petersburg and Moscow has joined in support of Pussy Riot, no doubt knowing that they are useful tools in the West’s attack on Putin.
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http://music.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=1033195&showcomments=true
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Q. Will the exhibitionist be displaying her breasts on this tour?
It’s a wonder the Typhoons weren’t scrambled at Northolt and the Rapiers launched from the top of Fred Wigg tower!
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Olympic party blast forces evacuation in King’s Cross
One person suffered minor injuries in the explosion
Up to 700 people have been evacuated from New Zealand’s Olympics hospitality house after a fire.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19184803
Another step on the road…
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Suppressing Dissent at the Olympic Games
“Total Policing” in London
by Jules Boykoff
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/08/total-policing-in-london/
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[..]
This is a classic example of what the late Alexander Cockburn described as “emergency laws” and measures that “lie around for decades like rattlesnakes in summer grass.” When activists take to the streets, the rattlesnakes pop their heads up to sink their fangs into the nearest ankle. And should campaigners make their way into an Olympic venue or training facility, another serpent lurks: the remarkably vague “Olympic Offence,” which is defined as “Any crime that has or may have an impact upon the effective delivery or image of the Games.”
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This is the state of exception writ large. The concern for activists — and for anyone who values their fundamental freedoms — is that the Olympics will serve as a historical hinge, swinging toward a grim future where these temporary measures become the new normal, where the exception becomes the rule.
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Hi Glenn,
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I still think this place has an excellent liberal commenting policy in practice. Neither Clark nor myself have ever changed the substantive meaning of a post on this board, and our general practice of adding placeholder text is a sign of transparency.
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This thread amply demonstrates that even respected long-term posters can fall out, and in order to keep the discussion productive, +very occasionally+ gentle tweaks are helpful (four or five edits on a thread like this? that’s pretty good!). I take this approach because I believe I have the support of people here to do so (although it’s Craig’s blog, he chooses not to get involved in moderation discussions). If most people here thought I was too heavy-handed, I would modify the approach.
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Anyway, have fun today, I have the day off 🙂
Private Eye this week publishes a ‘poem’ by Louise Bagshawe aka Sister Bagwashe aka Mensch. They are threatening to publish more. It may well be genuine.
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Myself
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I am winged, for I am a wild angel,
My blood rushes black as the high winds,
My hair is a banner on wide plains:
And I am Louise of the City of Glass,
Louise the dreamer, the shaper of worlds.
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Haematologist, quick….
It isn’t just bad news in the MSM. The USA finally agree to cleaning up area’s of Vietnam from Agent Orange. You can bet there is an ulterior motive and no compensation to the victims families unlike WW II which I believe Germany is still paying out for.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-19190509
Lest we forget, one of the Circus Ringmasters and corporate sponsors of the Olympic games is none other than Dow Chemical. The same company responsible for Bohpal and still waiting for the survivors to die before paying out compensation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
Okay, perhaps not a nuclear bomb, but WMD all the same and still killing after almost 40 years.
Of course Dow wasn’t alone. Monsanto are in there too. Both of them environmental. terrorists but highly praised as sponsors of the poisonous London games.
O/T
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from Helena Cobban’s blog (like Craig, a very intermittent blog, but well worth reading – and one of the very few I read regularly)
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“Thus, the key issue now is not, as so many westerners still frame it, “whether Asad goes or stays.” The issue is how Syria’s people can best be helped to pull out of the vortex of sectarian violence into which they are now very rapidly being sucked. Based on all my research and experiences relating to societies mired in, or managing to escape from grievous inter-group violence, it is clear to me that only a pan-Syrian negotiation over forms of government, accountability, and intergroup relations going forward can achieve that.
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“And to succeed, this negotiation must include, not exclude, the current regime. It was a negotiation of this type that succeeded in South Africa in bringing about a relatively peaceful transition from vicious minority rule to full democracy. In Burma/Myanmar, Sec. Clinton is fully engaged in helping to broker just such a negotiation. The actions of the apartheid government in South Africa and the junta in Burma, were no less brutal than those of the Asad regime in Syria.”
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http://justworldnews.org/archives/004283.html
Komodo (sigh): you haven’t brought any bad news, bless you. I would give your ‘bit of a cunt’ a hug and tell him to stop being so paranoid: it’s bad for the digestion.
Glen/Nextus: yes, massive con trick. On the other hand, not that this excuses anything, all the volunteers I spoke to were glowing with pride – it’s been a curious couple of weeks all round.
Big deal. Only 51 years too late.
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And one of the manufacturers Dow (the other was Monsanto) still have their horrid ‘wrap’ encircling the Olympic stadium in spite of the protests about that other outrage committed by one of their acquisitions (Union Carbide) at Bhopal.
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Vietnam, US begin historic Agent Orange cleanup
http://www.arabnews.com/node/420429