Or is it? That corrupt junket, Lord Coe’s appalling, expensive and wasteful vanity project, may have finally come to an end, sparing us the wall to wall coverage, but the “legacy” is to continue. Not that we want a “legacy”, but we are going to get one because the politicians; venal, corrupt and vainglorious little shits that they are, like to hang on the coat tails of such unpleasant events to make a name for themselves.
Not only that, the whole thing has reminded me of the behaviour of repressive regimes of the past – what with putting missiles on peoples’ roofs without their consent, the whole paramilitary anti-terror panic and over-reaction, the oppressive laws to protect the commercial interests of the few organisations that sponsored the dreadful event and the Zil Lanes, but lower down the food chain, we get people being arrested for apparently not looking as if they were enjoying themselves.
A man with Parkinson’s disease who was arrested during the Olympic men’s cycling road race while sitting beside the route has said he wants a “letter of exoneration” from Surrey police, claiming their treatment of him was disproportionate.
So what happened?
Mark Worsfold, 54, a former soldier and martial arts instructor, was arrested on 28 July for a breach of the peace shortly before the cyclists arrived in Redhouse Park, Leatherhead, where he had sat down on a wall to watch the race. Officers from Surrey police restrained and handcuffed him and took him to Reigate police station, saying his behaviour had “caused concern”.
A breach of the peace. Oh, well, that’s okay then. He must have been doing something pretty bad to need arresting for that.
“The man was positioned close to a small group of protesters and based on his manner, his state of dress and his proximity to the course, officers made an arrest to prevent a possible breach of the peace,” Surrey police said in a statement.
Ah, right. So… He wasn’t actually breaching the peace,then, was he? He might have in the opinion of the police officers concerned because of what he was wearing and his demeanor. What demeanour?
Worsfold, whose experience was first reported by Private Eye, claims police questioned him about his demeanour and why he had not been seen to be visibly enjoying the event.
What the fucking fuckittty fuck? Wasn’t appearing to enjoy himself? We are supposed to be wearing mandatory smiles unless we are deemed by the hard-of-thinking rozzers that we may breach the peace with our frowns, now? Bloody hell, my lack of smiling will cause a small riot at this rate.
When I attend the IOMTT every few years, we will gather at our chosen spot well in advance of the start of the race. Sometimes we will doze in the summer sun – yes, sometimes the sun shines on the Isle of Man. We don’t all sit around like a platoon of Cheshire cats. If the fuzz started arresting us for not smiling the jails would be overflowing.
Combine this appalling attitude with that of the idiot David Cameron – who thinks it is his business to dictate to us on everything from volunteering to being happy – now wanting to force children to play football.
Competitive team sports will be made compulsory for all primary school children in England, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.
A draft new curriculum this autumn would require participation in sports such as football, hockey and netball.
It is untrue to say that I do not like football. I have for it a deep-rooted, lifelong visceral loathing in every fibre of my being. My sister has similar feelings about netball. Yet this facile unimaginative cretin of a man wants to force a new generation of children to endure the abject misery that we suffered because he wants to hang his hat on the Olympics “legacy”. This is about him and his selfishness, not about children. If he genuinely considered their needs, he wouldn’t be forcing this crap on them. He would close down the department of culture, media and sport and give us back the tax money stolen from us to pay for it. With that money parents could afford to indulge their children in the activities they wanted to practice – like, oh, I dunno, martial arts, cycling, archery and so on (not just because they are my chosen sports, mind).
Whenever this subject crops up, my BTL comments are invariably filled with people making the same points as me, remembering the same miseries. And, lets be fair, even those who enjoy sport cannot gain much satisfaction from trying to compete when others in the team don’t want to be there and are as disruptive as I was. Indeed, in the blogging world, only James has offered a contrary opinion on this one and he was very rapidly shouted down by those of us who do not want to see the latest generation suffer as we had suffered.
We get the usual cockwaffle about it being good for development:
Damian Hinds, Conservative MP for East Hampshire, said competitive sport taught children “the power of a team, pushing yourself, and learning that life involves losing some things as well as winning”.
If you want to be there, then yes, it can. If you don’t, it does none of these things. I learned nothing from two sessions of football every week. Nothing, that is, except a deep rooted hatred of the game and those who forced it upon me – and how to rebel. I am an individual who can, should the need arise, take part in a team and manage them. I did not get this from football. You do not need team games to do any of this. Nor did I need team games to teach me that I could lose at things, too. A few judo bouts taught me that well enough. But then, so did playing Monopoly.
Politicians are without exception, self-serving arseholes on the lookout to make a name for themselves. David Cameron and Boris Johnson have sunk to a new all time low this time with their Olympic “legacy” as they are willing to torture thousands of school children in their quest for infamy. A pox on all of them – now and forever more.
As ever, I heartily concur.
I think it’s safe to say Dave and Boris have a somewhat rose-tinted view of team sports; the reality is more likely to resemble this Deputy Head’s description (spotted by JuliaM):
“Children are really into their games and, just like the professionals, they will sometimes misinterpret tackles and perhaps reply in a way that would get them the red card if it happened during a real game.
It was causing problems. Come the end of break-time, children were still upset and it was spilling into their lessons. Teachers ended up spending valuable lesson time sorting out problems.”
It’s also worth considering that Eton probably didn’t have this problem either:
‘Last year primary schools expelled nearly 300 pupils aged 11 and under for violence and handed out almost 17,000 suspensions. This means that on any given school day in 2010/11, 90 pupils were ordered out of school for attacking a member of staff or fellow pupil.’
Now, who fancies becoming a primary school sports teacher?
Don’t worry about “legacy” and “two hours sport a day”, it will never happen. Hopefully. They can’t get those playing fields sold off quickly enough, if you ask me.
Well, we all know all politicians like nothing better than to watch a gang of children in shorts, playing with their balls. Normally from behind some bushes.
‘it’ might be over but now we face the spectacle of Camoron handing out gongs like it was his own personal recommendation. Isn’t a gold (silver or bronze) medal award enough?
Just suppose (say) Ms Ennis gets an OBE – will she wear the OBE on visits to TV studios, schools etc or will she wear her gold medal?
I would be (semi-) interested to discover what the full cost of this vulgar bun-fight has been; a full and forensic audit of both the front-end and opportunity costs, the unaccounted damage done to the local area in both the short- and long-term and the unavoidable attendant costs regarding maintenance, dismantling, (esp. of that appalling scaffolding dildo) re-construction and re-location of presumably compliant residents, all in the name of ‘regeneration’.
I have no doubt that some of the current estimates, which start in the region of £24 big ones (or twice the stated cost) may not be too wide of the mark and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it approach rather more. A billion per gold medal?
So the great panjandrum rolls on to Rio. It is now the turn of Brazil to be occupied by a foreign power. I wonder how they’ll like that outside the girls’ beach volleyball team…
I’ve enjoyed some of the events, mark you, but there has been a dreadfully totalitarian sub-current to it all which I fear will not go away; at least, not if the BBC has anything to do with it.
To be strictly accurate, when Tessa Jowells announced the cost back in the day, she reckoned about £2.3B
So anywhere between a five and ten-fold cost over-run. Thanks Seb.
My other half is a team sports animal and thoroughly approves of the whole thing; I’m waiting to see what he says when I head off to the next January sales with a budget for shoes and come back having spent five times as much.
I’m sure the concept of ‘legacy Louboutins’ will go down well!
I’m going to be the lone voice of dissent here, and I’m also going to admit I was wrong to be scornful of the Olympics. In truth, I’ve watched more of it than I ever intended, and I’ve enjoyed it, too!
And the Worsfold story isn’t quite as simple as the newspaper reports would have it.
So yes, it’s been used by politicians. What hasn’t? That’s what they do.
But it’s still been a delight, a feel-good factor.
I have managed to go the whole two weeks without being exposed to a single minute of it. A record, I think.
Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t justify arrest and all that goes with it, though. The fact remains, the general approach has been overly authoritarian.
So when did that suddenly become okay, then?
Sure, you enjoyed it. I still have to pick up the bill for that enjoyment and will be for decades to come. That is wrong, terribly wrong. How do you feel about stumping up for a new bike for me? Seems like a fair exchange… In fact, you will probably be quids in.
I object vehemently to having to pay for this circus but will admit to being quite astonished (and disappointed) by how many UK taxpayers seemed willing/delighted to pay again just to get in to watch that for which they had already paid.
I just can’t get excited about watching people whom I don’t know carrying out their chosen hobbies – I wouldn’t pay to watch folk knitting or train-spotting, so why should I pay to see them, jumping, throwing things or getting wet ?
At the very least, HMRC should have given vouchers to all positive UK taxpayers from Tax Year 2011/12, allowing them free entry to the jamboree if they could be arsed to go there. I still wouldn’t have gone, but at least I’d feel a bit better about the cost/benefit formula and having some marginal choice in the matter.
Being a “telly free zone”, I had no difficulty failing to see any of the farce.
No, it doesn’t justify arrest. But then, that’s the default for the police now, regardless. It would have happened if he’d been outside Asda not just the Olympic event.
It is not a question of whether the Olympics is good or not. The question is, if you had the choice of London hosting it, or Paris hosting it and having £300 in your pocket, which would you have chosen.
The Olympics does serve one purpose. It allows us to see the collectivists and cowards in government more clearly than any other matter. Only the truly principled liberal will stand against these junkets.
100% agreed. And isn’t this issue a touchstone for separating libertarians from the authoritarian Right?
And there seems to be an awful lot of them lurking about.
Just wait for the Q3 GDP figures (and attendant excuses)…
Tour de force, LR, tour de force. Feel dat passion!
I may have to revise my opinion after that Cosing Ceremony!
Oh..forced ‘sport’ in school. It put me off for life.
I reckon all the athletes should be made to take performance enhancing drugs – it might make it interesting. Imagine have air exclusion zones for the pole vault with the jumpers needing space suits. We could aim the javelins and shot put things at France. Win – Win I say.
Legacy: Yasmin Alibhai-brown today in The Wail…”But over these Olympic days, even I found it impossible to stay on my soapbox and lament the discrimination and segregation that too often blights this country still.”
Now, if she can just manage to stay off it…
L-R
As ever very fine rant, and I agree totally with all your observations re lord coe, the IOC, the zil lanes and the pigs’ behaviour and the olympricks legacy and all that shite.
And yet, and yet what a shame that just so far as the athletes themselves are concerned I thought they were fantastic, some terrific sport, and very fine people.
I don’t agree with blowing 10bn or 12bn of our grandchildren’s money on an IOC wankfest, but objectively, leaving aside the fascistic bits it has been a great sporting event.
I don’t want the crap bits to overshadow the sport itself which most of the comment on this site seems to do.
Don’t you worry your little heads about compulsory football at school. The Women’s Teaching lobby that Dominates our schools, all force-fed feminism, will ensure that no small boy is allowed to win and competition will be the last (and conveniently ignored) item on the agenda.
Teams will be mixed, with girls obliged to play on the boy’s teams – but not vice-versa of course. Don’t want to be silly, do we. And no-one will be allowed to tackle, unless a girl wants to. What a girl wants is sacred. She can kick a small boy in the goolies in mistake for the goal and no doubt get a Gold Star to boot.
To reverse the anti-competetive dark spirit that has been forced into our schools will take a generation, even if there was a will instead of a knee-jerk and fatuous eruption of political burpery, and it just will not happen until the female domination of education is eradicated by affirmative action for male teachers. There is not a hope of a polythene dog in hell of that happening.
Wise words.
We are in a double recession.
We have been robbed by the corporate Banks
The Corporate State is being set up ,with the Politicians
joining in.
Wall Street has Robbed and Looted and Goldman Sachs
has just been “Let Off”.
Public service cuts are running up and down the country
Hospitals have been closed
Shops are closing(in this town anyway)
Barclays has been fixing the Interest Rates
HSBC Bank has been “caught” doing deals with DrugGangs AND terrorists too.
20 banks are under investigation by the FSA
Charity Food Banks are on the rise in the UK
And Cameron and Lord Coe etc have blown 10/12 billion pounds.
On a global sports day…..
I am pretty disgusted and angry.
Go and ask the families ,who have been thrown out of
East London,and told to go live somewhere else,or else.
Go and ask them” how much they love sport”
And now its over.
The News on BBC/ITV/CH4/SKY have to report on whats happening in this world.