Mea maxima culpa

Well, once again I was wrong. It turns out that the logistics of the Olympics actually ran pretty well. Even the road fuckery near the village and elsewhere was minimal, apart from a very few fuckups on the Central line, the Tube ran well and everything was pretty slick. You could niggle about some things, to be fair: the insane costs, the fact that volunteers were doing all the work despite the vast sums of sponsorship, the army acting as security guards, the insanely political opening and the insane closing; but the games have been and gone and all my fears about the unmitigated disaster it was going to be turned out to be pretty unsubstantiated. So well done to all those who made it happen. Just one question: why isn't it always like this?

It takes two to tango

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but I have to wonder why it's always business that gets the stick.

Whenever we get a blatant case of corporatism, where government is peddling its influence or using its monopoly on violence on behalf of a specific business, it's always "Oh, what a nasty, corrupt company" and never "what a nasty, corrupt state".

At the moment, we're similarly faced with McDonalds, who have paid a metric fucktonne of money to sponsor the Olympics, insisting on something that was in their contract being honoured. No-one is as outraged at the naked profiteering that the Olympics has become as they are at someone who paid a lot of money trying to recoup it legally.

I don't agree with the laws, I don't agree with all the crap that's come with the Olympics, but it's funny how the rule of law and morality have become divorced.

No-one really objects to the rule of law being applied to murder, theft, assault, etc. But it's almost as though the law has taken on a life of its own and has become divorced from being a clear codification of reasonable morals and ethics and turned into a Hydra of arcane, hair-splitting nonsense that drains us of our reason and stamps all over our will.

What moral purpose is there to a law which defines "ZIL lanes" for Olympic plutocrats? What moral purpose is there to a law which defines what you may eat in specific parts of London? What moral purpose is there to a law which disallows you from using the current year in your own marketing efforts if it is not approved by LOCOG?

There are really too many laws, regulations, statutory instruments and rules in our lives. You can't reasonably be expected to comply with things if you're not even aware they exist. "Ignorance is no excuse for the law" was a reasonable thing when there weren't hundreds of thousands of laws, rules and regulations micro-managing the minutiae of our lives. I think, perhaps, it is time to rethink that maxim.

But in the meantime, remember that it's business taking advantage of things that are offered to them by corrupt authorities. In the American parlance: don't hate the player, hate the game.

Snide

There are many things to like about living in Britain. The history, scenery, diversity and a largely benign environment are wonderful as are many other things.

But the thing that seems to irritate me the most is the depressing attitude towards achievement. This tweet sums it all up:

Oh, that would be amazing RT @colm_ryan: Or the gold medal note could be "Well done you, but it's not like you cured cancer or something".

Not everybody is interested in being a cancer researcher. Not everyone is a towering intellect, capable of curing cancer (something I note that neither Richard Wiseman or Colm Ryan have done either.)

 And don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the Olympics - it's a massive corporatist money-grabbing operation and I wish London hadn't won the 2012 Olympics. As far as I can see, it looks like there is certainly the appearance of massive opportunities for fleecing attendees, sponsors, governments and probably the athletes as well.

 But given that there is a forum for people who are motivated by their sports to compete and achieve things, the one thing that I cannot abide is the constant shitting on their achievements, or indeed anyone else's achievements.

Just because you have a set of interests and priorities does not give you any right to sit in judgement of someone else's. As long as someone is not harming someone else, I really don't care what gives them a buzz, and if they do exceptionally well at it, well, good for them.

I might not give a shit about how fast you can run 100 metres, but if you can run it faster than anyone else on the planet, well, good for you! Well done for trying to be the best at something, even if it's not going to cure cancer. And the same argument applies to any other kind of achievement: legally made lots of money? Good for you! Won a crossword competition? Aces! Won the Champions League? Great! 

There's nothing wrong with someone else achieving, other than it may make you look at your own lack thereof. And if you don't like what you see, don't blame people who get off their arses. They don't do it to make you look worthless, you do that all by yourself.

I could go on about it

Or I could just point you at this.

Fucknut and Anal

Christ on a fucking trike. Every fucking time I think our national self-esteem cannot fall any lower, I'm proven wrong.

Another treacherous leak

Oh boy:

Ministers ignored evidence from their own experts who found scant social or economic justification for bidding for the 2012 Olympics, The Times has learnt.

A 250-page strategy document, signed off in December 2002 by Tony Blair as Prime Minister but selectively distributed, found little support for the claim that the Games would produce significant economic returns or more people playing sport.

The Game Plan document, whose findings are not widely known even in sport’s upper echelons, has emerged as Games chiefs meet today to agree funding cuts for Olympic sports such as basketball and hockey.

UK Sport, the funding agency for lottery cash, has a £79 million shortfall in its £300 million budget because hoped-for private sponsors have been hit by the credit crunch. The existence of the report will strengthen calls for an “Austerity Games” in the image of 1948, when London was last host city, as the recession forces a squeeze on public spending in 2012-13.

This is going to be such a fucking embarrassment of a games. If I wasn't paying for it, I'd be laughing my tits off.