I thought the logo was bad but the coins are truly awful

[Flosshilde]

And how do I manage to get an hotel room during Proms 2012?

Try booking now. It's not rocket science. And even if you're unsuccesful, the Olympics probably won't come to the UK again in any of our lifetimes, so I'm sure you'll survive. Go on holiday instead. There's a big wide world out there.

So you know what the 2012 Proms programme is, Mr Pee, so that you can decide when you will need a hotel room? What source of inside information do you have?

This so-called 'once in a lifetime' event has happened twice in a lifetime for anyone over 65.

I'm not opposed to sporting competitions per se - as outlets for patriotic rivalry they are probably better than invading other countries - but to the way in which they are hyped & become grotesquely over-inflated. Staging the Olympics has now become a bigger competition than anything that happens during the event itself, & creates huge disruption - not to mention destruction. All the talk about 'legacy' is just that - there is no evidence that it leads to increased, ongoing, participation in sport, & the claims that athletes' housing can be used subsequently are dubious. A large number of small businesses have been cleared - if they have managed to re-locate the people working in them either have further to travel or lose their jobs; allotments, which people have spent years esablishing as thriving gardens, have been destroyed; and people living near the site have had years of byuilding works with more to come afterwards, when buildings are demolished or altered for new uses, car parks & roads dug up, etc.

Glasgow's winning bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games was based on the use of existing facilities. I'd like to see Olympic bids made on the same basis in the future. (If a country doesn't have much in the way of existing facilities perhaps there could be an 'Olympic fund' contributed to by other countries to help build facilities.) And, given that the whole country pays for it, perhaps the fiction of an individual city bidding could be dropped, & event spread around the country far more.

[mercia]

I'm sorry I missed Boris's comedy speech in Trafalgar Square
apparently it was a cracker

[Mr Pee]

Olympic athletes are just doltish attention-seekers. I daresay that being able to run/swim/throw a javelin/jump up and down faster/further/better than anyone else count as achievements of sorts, but they are all of stupefying irrelevance.

What an ignorant and small- minded comment.

I find it disturbing that these village green idiots are given knighthoods and damehoods almost automatically for their five minutes' in the spotlight.

The only village green idiot I can get a whiff of around here is your good self. And the "5 minutes in the spotlight" are the result of a lifetime's determination and dedication. Perhaps you also believe that being able to play Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto happens at the drop of a hat?

Anyway, it's too lovely a day to sit here wasting my time with such idiocy.

Here's a link to Boris's speech- the highlight of yesterday's ceremony as far as I'm concerned!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14319461

You've got to love him!

[LHC]

Anyway, the British are useless at sport and athletics....always have been, always will be. We should devote our time and money to the cultivation of things we do actually have some talent for, like putting on plays.

The British are actually quite good at sport, even if several contributors to this thread were rather it was not so. Great Britain came 4th in the 2008 Olympics medal table and were only bettered by China, the US and the USSR; nations that are all considerably larger. Just this last weekend Lewis Hamilton won the German Grand Prix; England beat India (the no 1 ranked nation) at cricket; Mark Cavendish won the Green Jersey in the Tour de France; and Amir Khan won a boxing world title.

Just because you have a personal antipathy towards sport doesn't mean that the rest of the nation have to share your views.

[Flosshilde]

The British might be quite good at sport, but they (we?) are also quite good at art - but where are the headlines when a British artist wins an international art prize? Or when a British orchestra goes on an international tour? Or a British conductor is appointed to a European or USA orchestra? It's the overwhelming media attention paid to sport that gets me.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Anyway, the British are useless at sport and athletics....always have been, always will be.

Didn't we come 4th in the world at the last Olympics? That's rather good, and is hardly useless.

My concern is that the excellence is limited to relatively few. We have elite athletes who train for many years with considerable dedication, but at the other end of the scale, we have half the population of Bridlington riding around on mobility scooters because they are lazy and overweight. (I exclude from this generalisation all those good people of the aforementioned town who have genuine disabilities not brought upon themselves by indolence.)

[Mr Pee]

The British might be quite good at sport, but they (we?) are also quite good at art - but where are the headlines when a British artist wins an international art prize? Or when a British orchestra goes on an international tour? Or a British conductor is appointed to a European or USA orchestra? It's the overwhelming media attention paid to sport that gets me.

The fact is that a lot more people are interested in sport than classical music, and fewer still have any interest in modern art. That's the world we live in. Although I remember plenty of meeja coverage when Sir Simon bagged the BPO job. And I would be surprised if "Orchestra Goes on Foreign Tour" ever made a headline. It would be akin to reporting "Pope Catholic" or "Bears perform ablutions in woods shocker."

[Ferretfancy]

Flosshilde,

I would like to see headlines about art or British conductors, but to the bulk of the population the arts are meaningless or seen as "highbrow" to use an old fashioned term. T
his situation is unlikely to change, especially where classical music is concerned.
I remember having a drink in a down to earth pub with a friend who saw himself as a bit of a Trot leading the workers towards the light. He looked around the happy drinkers and said that he "looked forward to the day when all these people can enjoy a Mozart quartet" -not very likely.

The great appeal of the Olympics is that they can reach us all, whether we have intellectual interests or not. I accept that they are vastly expensive, and we could certainly argue for a more modest display, but they stimulate the enthusiasm for so many people that they should not be discounted as valueless. more cynically, sport sells newspapers and Oliver Knussen does not.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm sorry I missed Boris's comedy speech in Trafalgar Square
apparently it was a cracker

Mercia - it was. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14319461

[burning dog]

. I think there should have been a huge UK/Olympic Arts Festival next year as well, an opportunity missed, not at the same time, probably in the Spring. .

[mercia]

UK/Olympic Arts Festival next year as well

cultural olympiad?

http://www.london2012.com/cultural-olympiad

[burning dog]

Its great but minute compared to the Sports one. its the 'huge' I was hoping for. Massive respect to those organising and partcipating though.

Ps Brits are dominating golf too, mainly via Northern Ireland

[mercia]

money's tight ........... I expect

[Mary Chambers]

Very few things make me truly furious, but whenever I hear the Olympics mentioned I feel very angry indeed. What an utterly appalling waste of money, in a country that hasn't enough money for schools, the NHS, care of the elderly and so on - and all to feed the silly vanity of nations and individuals who for some reason incomprehensible to me think it matters whether one person can run half a second faster than another.

[burning dog]

money's tight ........... I expect

Yes, but the sponors of the Games part could have been asked to pay a reasonable % towards the Arts if the political will existed.