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.
Boles again. Chutzpah.
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Tory MP learns lover’s language and puts the £678 cost of lessons on expenses. Nick Boles has put £678.80p on his expenses for language lessons. He entered a civil partnership with Israeli Shay Meshulam last year and says he is ‘entitled’ to learn the language.
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MPs can claim for language lessons if it helps with their job
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Last month Mr Boles said rich pensioners should be stripped of some benefits
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185893/Tory-MP-Nick-Boles-puts-private-Hebrew-lessons-expenses.html#ixzz233M2fbR7
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In March Boles was one one of 30 Conservative Friends of Israel who complained to Hague that the FCO was pro-Palestinian. Hague strongly denied it.
Start growing your own. As I said before, we are in for some massive rises in the price of food even if some of them are not justified.
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Global food prices rise in July due to extreme weather
Drought in the US has hurt crops, and the world’s poorest
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Related Stories
Nestle blames biofuels for high food prices
Q&A: World food and fuel prices
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Global food prices sharply rebounded in July due to wild swings in weather conditions, a UN food and agricultural body has said.
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The rise has fanned fresh fears of a repeat of the 2007-2008 food crisis which hurt the world’s poorest.
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Untimely rains in Brazil, drought in the US and production difficulties in Russia drove the rally, said the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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Food prices jumped 6% in July from June after falling three months in a row.
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/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19193390#
Rothchild puppet Nicolas Sarkozy has opened his diminutive mouth and called for another ‘Libyan massacre’ and dodgy terrorist aftermath in Syria where civil war fed from UKUSIS’s ‘contra arms’ cache and stoked by foreign ‘death squads’ rages amidst fleeing and frightened civilians abandoning bombed and wrecked homes.
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http://www.rt.com/news/sarkozy-urges-syria-intervention-208/
Technicolour:
I didn’t mention the next article in the Eye, immediately below the unmenschionable woman’s poem….
(lol)
A fresh mystery and wonder for (prematurely commercialised) Genetic Science:
“DNA Code Shapes Gold Nanoparticles”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808163208.htm
Lol! Whereas I am posting this highly on-topic extract from today’s Independent:
“And one of the greatest British victories was the astonishing run by a man who came here as a Somali asylum seeker. So presumably the newspapers who, up until now have campaigned daily against asylum seekers with headlines like, “They’re Literally Pouring Into Britain Like Asylum-Seeker Orange Squash” and “Now They’re Planning to Eat the Queen” will now say, “When we insisted they should be sent back immediately, we meant sent back to the start of the track and encouraged to do one more lap so they’re fit enough to win us a gold medal.”
Politicians will make statements such as, “When we said we will be more vigorously menacingly ruthless than ever with any asylum seekers coming across the Channel, we meant we won’t allow any lorry in unless it’s bringing at least six. ‘Go and grab a random bunch from Sangatte’ we’ll tell the drivers, ‘You never know, one of them might end up getting silver in the archery'”.
And Migration Watch will produce figures that prove that if the rate of immigration continues at current levels, by the next Olympics we’ll win every single medal in everything including sports that haven’t been invented yet like dressage on a forklift truck.”
Pheww! Sharp intake of breath (at the dragon post).
This poem is so good I feel like posting it again 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.
Ouch! I know that if I had penned such a thing as that, this would also make me run away to New York, if indeed not further .
Can you imagine it being recited in a speech in Parliament by (say) Dennis Skinner or George Galloway. Not exactly resignation material, but would she be able to show a face again after causing the apoplectic demise, in laughter fits, of so many our elected representatives.
Can this truly be the product of an Oxford English graduate? (Please oh please let it be true). I think there must somewhere be an Oxford tutor who is wriggling or squirming-even if he is already interred.
Well, yes. Roughly what I’d expect from the Independent. As the other stuff is roughly what I’d expect from the Daily Numnuts. If running very fast is the criterion for our society’s success, come on, whatever your name is. Here’s a passport, go out and win.
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Pity I can’t bring myself to name and shame the Bangla restaurant near me (not the one in the Eye piece) which appeared to be an assembly point for illegals awaiting onward shipment to the Midlands. The owner’s a good guy, and the bhuna lamb is to die for (not of, as in some cases). And no doubt the local fuzz is well aware of his sideline already. They certainly patronise the place.
“And one of the greatest British victories was the astonishing run by a man who came here as a Somali asylum seeker …”
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Twitter went wild over Mo Farah’s historic win. One wit did a photoshopping job, suggesting how the Daily Mail might report the event the following day:
http://twitpic.com/7l917b
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At least “dressage on a forklift truck” would leave out the beautiful but humiliated horses. Roll it out, I say!
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Someone on Sky News said:
“… about Louise Mensch resigning in order to save her marriage.” I wonder was it a slip of the tongue.
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Meanwhile, Ireland has a female boxer up for a medal in about five minutes (4.45pm). Katie Taylor. Someone in the Telegraph, over-excited about Team GB, started a column with the words, “Can anyone in the world beat Britain’s Katie Taylor?”
“Richard Meddings On U.S. Regulators: ‘You Fucking Americans. Who Are You To Tell Us, The Rest Of The World That We’re Not Going To Deal With Iranians?”
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Will this become a ‘standard’ among banks? Perhaps not! I expect to see Richard booted without the golden hand-shake. Give it a week…
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/richard-meddings-us-regulators_n_1754888.html?utm_hp_ref=business
Sarko is only doing his masters’ bidding Mark.
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SARKOZY accused of working for Israeli intelligence http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/229986
Hollande is finishing off what Sarko started.
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French government targeting travellers http://libcom.org/blog/french-government-targeting-travellers-09082012
More!
…Another success of the Games has been the growing enthusiasm for women’s football. I went to the semi-final between France and Japan, where the fans were so gleeful they’d be evicted from the ground at an England men’s match for being too amicable.
But there was something unsettlingly unfamiliar about the game. Because the women appear to have different rules from the men, in that as a free kick is awarded they don’t all surround the referee and pull that “Oh, my God I can’t believe it, how can that be a foul, I wasn’t even in the country at the time”, expression, and no one dives on the floor clutching their head claiming the defender has just given them brain surgery without an anaesthetic and therefore must be sent off and executed.”
smiley face –
Mary, thanks. Just read this too. The Roma situation is – well, a traveller support group who substituted the word ‘Jew’ for ‘gypsy’ in headlines came up with ‘Sarkozy orders fingerprinting of all Jews” and “Sarkozy orders Jews to be expelled from France”. And now on and on. Here in England travellers have been brutally evicted too, most recently at Dale Farm, and moves are afoot to evict people everywhere else (last I heard was from a site in Devon) leaving them with literally nowhere to go. We should all be looking at this but the media are spinning it so well (I guess travellers don’t buy that many papers) that it only turns into entertainment. Any ideas?
Katie Taylor has the gold. Goodonya Katie!
Yep, I have.
This decision to give Roma special recognition will shake up UK’s councils to the core. About time reality sinks in.
Well done Berlin.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-world-from-berlin-the-roma-are-eu-citizens-everywhere-in-the-european-union-a-715900.html
Islamist sect found living underground near Russian city for nearly 10 years:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/09/islamist-fayzarahmanist-sect-underground-kazan
Bizzare, and this seems to be the crazed religious meaning of ‘Islamist’, distinct from than the crazed terrorist one.
Nevermind: sadly that link was from June 2010, and concludes:
“Sarkozy is by no means the only European leader to be tough with the Roma. Germany’s current repatriation of Roma refugees to Kosovo poses the question: are we really checking every individual case here too?”
this seems to be the crazed religious meaning of ‘Islamist’, distinct from than the crazed terrorist one.
Ergo the whole thread worth of poppycock later.
‘And Migration Watch will produce figures that prove that if the rate of immigration continues at current levels, by the next Olympics we’ll win every single medal in everything including sports that haven’t been invented yet like dressage on a forklift truck.”’
Yeah, Migration Watch, that racist pressure group led by the guy who’s a supporter of Medical Aid for the Palestinians.
Technicolour clearly prefers to take his line on immigration from the Institute of Directors, whose report I linked to a few days ago. Their research is clearly so ‘unbiased’ , and they obviously have no axe to grind.
This interminable thread has at several junctures touched on the topic of propaganda.
What are we to make of the Beeb and other MSM outlets for seemingly giving little or no coverage to this snippet, highly relevant to the conflict now raging in Syria-
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/08/lawyer_who_defended.php
It is interminable, isn’t it …
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COME BACK CRAIG! ALL IS FORGIVEN!
Here’s a cute little primer on how modern markets actually work.
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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-common-sense-view-stock-market
Hello All,
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ALERT: I’ve just approved five queued comments on this thread; it may be worth taking a look back at the stuff that you haven’t seen.
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I’ve had a busy couple of days, I haven’t had time to read the comments, let alone to post any. I hope all’s well and no one has been sent to (genocide in) Coventry. Oh wait, that was Leicester, wasn’t it?
That was quick. Mensch hasn’t even gone yet.
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http://iwc2.labouronline.org/172037/andy-sawford-for-corby–east-northants
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She told Crick of Ch 4 when he called at her home that she didn’t want to speak to him as she needed to spend time with her children today, her final day as MP. He said that in spite of that, she has tweeted three dozen times today.
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Sawford’s father was Labour MP for Kettering 1997-2005 when he lost to Hollobone. He opposed the war on Iraq.
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Sawford is CEO of a think tank which has an income of over £2m.
The Local Government Information Unit.{http://www.lgiu.org.uk/}
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From Technicolour:
Yes. Build up contact with your local Travellers, if you can. This isn’t easy, as there is a lot of mutual distrust between travellers and the “settled” population. You can’t just walk onto a site and start chatting, you’ll be sent away, probably with threats.
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But the distinction is illusory, really, and over emphasised by the attitudes in the corporate media (polarisation, polarisation…). There are degrees of being “settled”, and you’ll find people of Traveller background on smallholdings, within the horse-keeping community (look for the black and white ponies with very hairy feet!), and in social housing. Get chatting in the right pubs. But Travellers who no longer travel keep quiet about their background; who can blame them?
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When people discover that they have objectives and difficulties in common, it dissolves mistrust and builds community, but making links takes time and perseverance. We modern townies are really going to need these people if the coming financial crash hits our areas hard, because they still have the old skills that are needed to live life with less corporate support.
Kom – your local restaurant sounds good – where is it? I’ll treat you to a lamb bum any day; I’ve had to take to my bed just readin through all this.
Great, queued comments.
Crab: “England Is heavily populated and contained for now in cities, probably unable to feed itself without helpful trading conditions.”
The UK can feed itself. On organic, if it wanted: transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/CanBritain.pdf
What part do ‘immigrants’ play in this discussion, please?
“in the course managing to mention the all too chilling and plausible existence and possible involvement of crazed military mind control assassins in the American gun massacres.”
er, the latest crazy was brainwashed by far right wing music and white supremacist slogans…
OldMark: so sad old axegrinders can support the Palestinians too, who’d have thought.
Craig, please come back. Am so bored of marking.
“He said that in spite of that, she has tweeted three dozen times today.”
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Well, either he’s wildly exaggerating, or she’s deleted a lot of them since.
https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch
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Starting 12 hrs ago, I count 18, and they’re nearly all re-tweets which is just a forwarding process and doesn’t involve writing anything. I heard and saw Crick doing that report, and he’s always trying to be a smart-arse. He’s a pain in the neck.
From Mary:
Has anyone checked the global grain reserve figure recently? There’s a major and a minor harvest (northern and southern hemispheres) each year. The global grain reserve figure is how many days worth of grain is left over when the current year’s northern harvest comes in. That figure has been dropping for about a decade, I think.
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“Circuses, but less bread“.