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.
@ Mary & all,
Here is what Mary posted re. Israel and the BBC:-
“It all began with a letter from Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev, to the Director of the BBC’s Bureau in Israel, Paul Danahar. Regev asked why the BBC had failed to list Israel’s capital on its online Olympic profile for the country, but had named the capital of all other countries and ‘non-country’ (by which we presume he meant Palestine, which had East Jerusalem listed as its capital). The BBC made an immediate change to its webpage, adding Jerusalem to Israel’s country profile as its ‘seat of government’. Not ‘West Jerusalem’, but ‘Jerusalem’. Changes were also made to the Palestinian page. The actual capital of Israel – Tel Aviv – received no mention whatsoever.”
Now, read this from Mitt Romney’s speech in Israel today:-
“It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.”
So – you see Mary – there is not just a media accomodati0n from the BBC on Jerusalem, but there is a total intended accommodation from the presidential hopeful Mitt – who effectively warns what he has in store for the Palestinians relative to the 1967 borders.
I also found it quite ironic when I listened to this part of Mittt’s speech:-
“It would be foolish not to take Iran’s leaders at their word. They are, after all, the product of a radical theocracy.”
So if Iran is a theocracy – what is Israel to be classified as if one were to be honest:-
1. The land of Israel ( formerly Palestine) was bequeathed to Jewish people by God’s will. As Romney expressed this thought, he said:-
“To step foot into Israel is to step foot into a nation that began with an ancient promise made in this land.”
God’s promise land – of course.
2. East Jerusalem, as Mitt has informed us, is to be no more for the Palestinians; thus, international law and the 1967 borders become irrelevant, and again logically if God gave the Jewish people Israel then he must also have included East Jerusalem.
3. There can be no equality in Israel based on the concept of equality before the law and the electoral principle of – one person – one vote. If that were to be upheld under a secular Constitution and with free and fair elections for all then the Palestinian component in the state of Israel would be afforded a parliamentary voice that would reflect the aspirations of that section of the population. Thus, one people under God within Israel – and the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians is the order of the day. The element of racism in this cannot easily be obscured or lost – is it only Israelis of Jewish descent who have equal rights – or equal rights are extended to all Israeli citizens?
4. The Zionists from 1948 dislodges some 700,000 Palestinians; reduce the size of Palestine continually over the years; build an Apartheid wall; divide up the remaining Palestinian lands into de facto Bantustans and make the likelihood of a two state solution unachievable; expand beyond the 1967 borders recognised under international law; have a group of fanatics within Israel who justify all the foregoing on the basis of theology – then see no accuracy or factual description that would make these events aptly deserve the label of “radical theocracy”?
5. Albeit alluding to the 4 points above – no less a publication than the Jerusalem Post accurately identifies the nature of the demographic and political problem:-
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=218125
I can see huge problems looming if Romney is elected in November with his policy position on Israel in mind for implementation. Obama is no saint, and neither is he a special friend of the Palestinian people – nor has he been a fraction of what he stated he would be when he was seeking the office of President on a ticket of “hope” and “change”. More like “despair” and “degeneration” as the reality on the ground exists today in America for the majority of ordinary Americans. But with Romney and the prospect of a war with Iran – no doubt to uphold Jerusalem as the capital and move the American Embassy to East Jerusalem*, as he has implied, gives us not so much the inverse of Obama – just a more right wing radical version of the same belligerent and failed policies on the Palestinian question and on Middle Eastern policy in general.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – and the wars go on.
• Subject to correction – no American President since 1948 has taken this position or publicly expressed this idea that Jerusalem in its totality belongs to Israel?
Here, OT, but interesting points made by a russian media. The article claims that during a recent visit of Putin to Israel, israeli warlords made it clear that they support rebels in Syria because the war will weaken Assad’s regime and makes it possible for Israel to attack Iran.
You may try google translate it.
http://kp.ru/daily/25923/2874568/
not Bono/Geldhof this time, but Becks, and no chance anything will actually be done to alleviate child hunger:
26 July: BBC: David Beckham discusses global hunger plan with PM
David Beckham has met Prime Minister David Cameron to urge the UK to ensure child hunger remains a global priority.
The ex-England footballer and Unicef ambassador gave Mr Cameron a letter, calling on him to lead the way.
The UK is to host a “hunger summit” on the final day of the Olympics, hoping to use the global sporting event as a catalyst for progress on the issue…
During their meeting at Downing Street, Mr Beckham handed the prime minister a letter signed by 50 sports and film stars, urging him to “pick up the pace” on the issue and keep child hunger at the top of the global agenda…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19004101
Looked up mormonism, for Romney.
Made me realise religion is natures way of destructing
Our systems of survival.
move away amd be free.
Thanks Courtenay for your elucidation, clear and concise as ever, if that is not patronising.
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Also Oddie. Becks is ‘owned’ by Anschutz amongst many other ‘properties’.
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I see that the O2 has been renamed the North Greenwich Arena for the Oympics gymnastics etc. Nice little earner for LOCOG’s friends in AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group) who got hold of O2 on a long term lease after the NuLabour fiasco. Remember the Millennium do with Cherie doing a good impression of a letterbox and the Queen looking really uncomfortable?
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http://www.london2012.com/venue/north-greenwich-arena/
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{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_O2_(London)}
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{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Anschutz}
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Miserable looking cove in spite of the $5 billion. {http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-richest-people_Philip-Anschutz_DSAK.html}
@komodo “Neither the “stars”, nor what looked like a majority of the extras were white (as, I perhaps should remind my critics, the majority even now of the English population is) , and there was rather a lot of shite ghetto “music”, which IMO is not British culture”
….for all your apparent enlightness, your still confusing Englishness and Britishness and thinking they are one and the same. Come now, it really isnt that complicated.
This ceremony was really about London and Englishness to be honest though – no real Celtic element,Celtic languages or history/culture to be seen or heard – i suppose they are called the London olympics after all: maybe it would have been a bit more genuine to call them ‘The Victorian empire opening ceremony’ ?
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I’m not sure I see your point. The majority of the English population is white. An even larger majority of the British population is white, but I didn’t mention it. If Englishness is now to be defined as embracing in their entirety a random selection of immigrant “cultures”, including a second-hand version of LA’s gang mentality, well, that’s your p.o.v. maybe, but it isn’t mine. London’s always been a melting-pot, like any big port city (and I remember when it WAS a port city), but the movement has always been away from the immigrant areas, accompanied by assimilation. The communities concerned (Jewish, Caribbean, Indian, etc) have always been free to enjoy their own cultural modes, and that’s understood. But why do I have to subscribe to them? Do they even want me to?
Or, to put it more succinctly, is gangsta rap specifically part of English culture? If yes, it is automatically part of British culture. If no, let us for god’s sake use our musical talents to produce something better to supplant it utterly.
Wendy – Dreadful headline on this link but it shows the segment you refer to. I think that the lighting gave the effect of the colour orange. Sick anyway.
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Sunday, July 29th, 2012
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Revealed: BBC1 Shows the Olympic Memorial to Victims of Islamic Terrorism NBC Refused to Show
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http://www.videotruffle.com/2012/07/29/revealed-bbc1-shows-the-olympic-memorial-to-islamic-terrorism-nbc-refused-to-show/
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Off out now but I will put up some links about 7/7 later today.
Just to get away for a minute from the wall to wall coverage of the London Olympics, its Zionist creators have come under the cosh from a delegation of UK lawyers, including former attorney general, Baroness Patricia Scotland. The report, to the UN, is about the way Israeli Police and Soldiers make night arrests and torture Palestinian children.
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http://www.childreninmilitarycustody.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Children_in_Military_Custody_Full_Report.pdf
Komodo:
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I’m not particularly up on the U.K hiphop scene (it’s a pretty localised style, much like aussie hiphop is), but the few acts I have listened to, remind me a lot of the aussie style. Both aussie and UK acts have a much more down to earth style, rapping about everyday life that most people would know.
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If I were English, I would be proud to claim Braintax, Roots Manuva, The Herbaliser or Dubbledge as part of my culture. If you expand the scope a little you can easily add Massive Attack and Portishead to that list.
Oh and I forgot The Streets.
Cheebacow – there are those, and on a bad day I am one of them, who would consign everything post- Who (or even a time slightly pre-Britten) – to the bucket marked “Ephemera”. The ornate chest inscribed “Culture” should contain only material which has stood the test of time, and preferably the death of its creator. And the drawer marked “English Culture” in there should not contain Afro drumz-n-rantz about which there is nothing English whatever. Even if it is great to fade out to as you draw deeply on the bong.
‘Newspaper Uses Photoshop To Make Syria Look Even Worse Somehow’
gizmodo.com/5929952/newspaper-uses-photoshop-to-make-syria-even-worse-somehow
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From Kronen Zeitung
Clickable link (I hope) to the Photoshop job:
http://gizmodo.com/5929952/newspaper-uses-photoshop-to-make-syria-even-worse-somehow
“Britain’s for the British mate, back to the days
Of the Empire state when Britannia ruled the waves
But the slaves are coming back home to roost
Welcomed by immigration officers with shiny boots
And they want it so bad that they’re running
Through the channel tunnel barefoot
Fuck it mate, cheap labour, work late
Plus they gave the BNP a brand new target to hate
So the refugee took the heat off me”
– Dubbledge
In the interests of an alternative view, here’s someone whose take on the opening ceremony differed from Technicolor’s…
I have to admire the subtlety of the political message. It posited 1948 as the turning point in British society. At that moment, we reward ourselves for inventing industrialism and saving democracy by giving ourselves an entitlement to care from cradle to grave. At the same moment, the Empire Windrush arrives with the immigrants who will do the work which we now feel is beneath us. We spend the next 54 years entertaining ourselves with pop music and films and comedy instead of working, while still being in thrall to an establishment personified by the royals and the Archbishop of Canterbury (looking fidgety in the VIP box).
We then finally lose our grip completely and fall into a pit of internet addiction, where everyone’s attention span is so diminished that we demand an ever shorter series of blipverts. This vision is then cemented by a parade of narcissistic youth carrying video cameras, many of them pointed at themselves. The revolution will not be televised, because it won’t happen; we’ll all be too busy updating our Facebook pages.
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(Guardian reader, Letters, today)
R4 this morning features a lengthy representation on torture.
Who would have known, there are two forms of torture, so they tell us. One is aggressive and is done by dictatorial states and then there is ‘good torture’ against terrorists.
I have never heard so much cR4ap in my life, whatever next good and bad nuclear weapons?
Craig made his points well, but I bet it was edited about throughout.
Never heard of them, Cheeba. Look, the definition of a nation is that its inhabitants have stuff in common. Not a hotchpotch of miscellaneous styles. And the standard of English betrayed by the above is abysmal.
I thought you were pulling my leg before. Your idea of British culture strikes me as stale… Is India a nation? a culture? How about Australia?
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I guess Dubbledge forgot how pure the English language is =P
India? Good question. Before partition, an even better one. Australia? Dunno. They seem to have created a common identity to me. Your point?
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Legpull? Actually, I just get sick of the uniform PC reflex-Left which predominates here. I’d like people to think about the issues raised by the uniform xenophobe reflex-Right….which are not necessarily invalid.
Komodo, you’re not Canspeccy back in another disguise, are you?
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“One is aggressive and is done by dictatorial states and then there is ‘good torture’ against terrorists.”
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Jesus Christ, that’s going out on BBC Radio 4? Shame on them.
Komodo you said “Look, the definition of a nation is that its inhabitants have stuff in common. Not a hotchpotch of miscellaneous styles.”
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My point was that I would argue that both Australia and India both combine many styles and cultures into something unique and their own. The artists I listed before all rap about everyday life living in the UK, if that isn’t an expression of British culture, I don’t know what is.
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“gangsta rap”, “Afro drumz-n-rantz”, “draw deeply on the bong”, can komodos hear dog whistles?
@CheebaCow + komodo – You totally and amazingly miss the simple point i was making about your own lack of awareness. I was pointing out to komodo that he confuses and interchanges Englishness for Britishness – they are not one and the same. Britain is an island of three different countries/nations,.
In 2012,does it really need to be explained that Britain is made up of three countries/nations;England,Wales and Scotland? And surely its not too much to comprehend that ‘English’ is not interchangable with ‘British’and does not represent the other countries of Britain?
On the same kind of theme – this opening ceremony was slightly deceiving as it claimed to represent Britain but only gave Scotland, Wales and Celtic culture about one minute of coverage in its full 5 hours. These are Englands, if not Londons olympics really – nothing wrong with that but the organisers of this ceremony especially to claim otherwise is disingenious.
In essence of course they are not even Englands or Londons but the games of the bankers and special interest groups-and,as Craig mentions,we are all paying for it.
Olympic Alert
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1319&
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It’s not really that funny though when you know what is going on in this ‘country’ of ours.
Cheeba – These concerns are real. Pretending that only evil people hold them does not make them less real. Dog-whistle phrases? No more so than the basic assumption that anyone who describes and values his nation differently from you is a fascist. I rather like “Afro drumz ‘n rantz” as a phrase. Concise, and synoptic description of a variety of musical maladies. I shall use it again. And I’ve probably done more dope than you have*, so that aligns me with the Caribbeans and Indians, doesn’t it?
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Chris J. I certainly missed your point if you were saying that the ceremony wasn’t very British: as an ex-member of the SNP I found this too obvious to comment on from that standpoint, but chose another. But it goes rather to the heart of another matter: why are the Games awarded to cities and not countries? Many questions arise.
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*in my youth
Did the ‘organisers’ have the permission of each of the victims of the 7/7 false flag to project on the ‘wall’? And why were images of Coe’s father and Danny’s dad thrown up as well. Schmaltz.
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I remember how the three trains and the only bus that was diverted were blown up the day after that psychopath Bliar ‘clinched the games’. There must be a connection. Was he not in Gleneagles that day? Had he been beamed from Singapore to Scotland in 12 hours? Anyone heard of that male ballet dancer from Cambridge who was injured in one of tube trains and who stated the explosion blew the floor UPWARDS. Nice and brave fellow. Was he at Baroness Hallett’s inquest? Is it true that 48 never had a post-mortem? These questions have more import than the circus.
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NO Post mortems were performed on the victims of 7/7. All completely illegal. When I Googled post mortems’ of 7/7 victims. This is the first that came up
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http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/02/28/77-london-bombings-morgue-prepared-in-advance-no-post-mortems-had-been-performed-on-the-dead/
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It appears to be very well researched, and is utterly shocking.
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See { http://77inquests.blogspot.com/2011/02/colonel-mahoney-in-porton-down-with.html}
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and the picture of the mortuary – the ‘Resilience’ bit. See the size of it – erected in the 24 hours immediately after the bombings. 52 bodies could have been accommodated in about five London hospitals and relatives would have been able to see their loved ones fairly promptly and not after seven or ten days. Note that at least some were not given the bodies.
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The media is using mega/giga watts and millions of live and recorded broadcasts to din this damned stuff into the millions sitting watching it. That media will continue to make sure that the circus dominates whilst the deepest evil flows silently by. The carcase of the UK stinks. The circus, the lights, the bloody fireworks, the ‘Queen’, and all the rest of the giant illusion will not erase it.
Whenever I hear the word white, I look out of my window and see a lot of vaguely pink people. But pink and brown doesnt sound quite as dramatically divisive, or judgemental as black and white, does it.
Marvellous to conflate all the people with more melatonin with rap music. Worthy of a high court judge.
Otherwise, what concerns does Komodo have, I wonder, that are shared by evil (sic) people. What are these issues we should address.
(apologies for lack of apostrophes and question marks, on someone elses computer which seems to have lost all punctuation)
English as a language is a hotchpotch itself of course.
Blair was certainly at Gleneagles when 7/7 happened. But he’d been there a day or so. He was helicoptered out again sharpish to Leuchars. He’d previously arrived in Singapore on Sunday 3rd, and is not reported as having been there on the 6th.
‘If you commit a crime here you will be forensically tagged.’
Signs have gone up in my street with this announcement.
What does that mean exactly? You get a chip injected behind your ears like a sheep? Is that legal?
‘For those who have no shame let them do whatever they like.’
Hadeeth of my prophet May Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him.
i.e. their case will be dealt with by Allah because they refuse to listen to human beings.
Judgemental? WTF are you on about? All I want is an identifiably British society instead of the rich panoply of conflicting interests and blind spots we have at the moment. I don’t care what anyone’s fucking colour is. If I walk through my nearest small town and 50% of the pedestrians there are talking Polish, there’s something badly wrong with national identity.
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Yes, English is a mixture (like most languages). Cue taxpayer funded support for people who can’t be arsed learning it and using it correctly, eh?