Jackart, at A Very British Dude, dismisses criticism of the British Olympics as
…a meme going round the Libertarian Blogosphere that the Olympic games should be scrapped.
While he appears to accept that the Olympic circus is irretrievably corrupt and a complete waste of money, the idea of scrapping it does not appeal:
£9,000,000,000 is the kind of money Governments lose down the back of the sofa. And the damage to Britain’s reputation and prestige will hurt Britain and British business to a far greater tune if the Games were cancelled. Britain gets a reputation for failure to deliver? – no thanks!
This does somewhat presuppose that those forming the opinion are as convinced of the virtue of the circus as are the trough-fed politicians and their commercial chums who will do so nicely out of it. I wonder whether this is justified. One might suppose that some other countries, at least, would instead form the opinion that we are admirably prudent as opposed to glamour-crazed tax-wasters.
So like it or not, the Olympics are coming to London and the best thing we can all do is tighten our belts and put on a good show.
I do not like it. Nor do I much like this form of words. It is far too easy to imagine it being uttered by someone in the government.
There is nothing at present that I can do about the money which is to be squandered on this absurd exercise in national self-congratulation (all done, as according to Everett, in the best possible taste), but I am still capable of boycotting businesses whose snouts I find in its trough, and telling them why. The nearest Olympic target is fortunately a long way from Redneckshire, so I don’t suppose I’ll bother going all the way there to be hustled away by anti-terrorist police for staging some kind of demonstration (assuming this hasn’t already happened for some other reason). But I certainly won’t be watching it on the telly.
Do we really have to undertake this absurd, repetitious and offensive hijacking of the once decent world of amateur sport by the political establishment and the marketing and entertainment industries merely to avoid being ill thought of by exactly the sort of people who caused the problem in the first place?
‘Pig-headedness is a vital component of Libertarianism.’ Discuss.
“£9,000,000,000 is the kind of money Governments lose down the back of the sofa.”
Good Lord, this bird IS morally insane. WHOSE nine billion I would like to know?
In any case, our Thomas Jefferson was a complete ass and a jejeune, whining n—r trader, but the dreadful neurotic DID say there is something fundamentally swinish (“pigheaded”?) about people who “do” sports.’
Basically, most athletes are a load of foul balls and false alarms on any level beyond high school. And I’m a guy (60 in January) who does a hundred and eleven reps on ALL of the USMC “Daily 16″ exercises. But these overpriced “games” are mostly just, well, gamey! Like golf, NONE of this stuff is suitable for real adults.
Case closed.
I’m just making a cost-benefit analysis of scrapping the games. I don’t think we should have bid for them in the first place, but now we have ‘em we should make it a success!
Hinges somewhat upon the definition of ’success’…