Olympinonsense

[Bryn]

Can somebody please help me with a cryptic crossword clue - try as I might, I can't work it out. Thank you.
Fresh ablutions for Olympic champion (5,4)

You're trying to pull a fast one (or two) aren't you?

[John Wright]

Is it over tomorrow?

Oh dear, are you forgetting...

[scottycelt]

Is it over tomorrow?

Alas, not tomorrow, but all this ghastly happiness is due to expire on Sunday and then we can all get back to good old misery as usual.

Not long now ...

[Bryn]

Talking of miseries. that Kezie Uchechukwu Duru Akabusi chap was being a right old misery re. Usain Bolt's larking about before the race.

[JohnSkelton]

all this ghastly happiness is due to expire on Sunday and then we can all get back to good old misery as usual.

Not long now ...

So much for the Olympic Legacy then.

'The first thing the London Development Agency (LDA) said, when they came to talk to the Clays Lane community at the end of November 2003, was “your estate is going to be demolished even if the Olympics don’t come to London.” They even showed us a plan setting out what was in store as part of a non-Olympic scenario. We did a little research and asked a Freedom of Information question of the LDA and were told there was no plan! Later, we found in the evidence to the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) Inquiry of the Olympic masterplanner, EDAW, that this non-Olympic plan had only been commissioned in June 2004. This was six months after the LDA visited Clays Lane, and the plan was then abandoned as unviable. They had deliberately lied and this set the tone for what was to happen from then on. They just wanted to demoralise us and convince us opposition was pointless.'



'The sale of compulsorily purchased land to developers is supposed to recoup the cost of the Games. This, of course, required the destruction of the industrial sector around Marshgate Lane. The LDA presented this part of the Lea Valley as an extensive rubbish tip. David Higgins, Chief Executive of the ODA, called it “a scar”. However, this industry provided 1,200 jobs for local people which have now been moved out of the area. These jobs will be replaced by “clean” high tech jobs, which, for the most part, will not match the skills of local people. Existing businesses in the Olympic Park were selling land to housing developers before the Olympics came. Now the LDA will reap the profit from these sales and most of the land will have to be sold for expensive private development with a lower proportion of “affordable” housing.'

But you do have the Commonwealth Games to look forward to.

Margaret Jaconelli, a homeowner facing dispossession to make way for the Commonwealth Games' Athletes' Village. In fact, the process began some years earlier when Glasgow Council decided to 'redevelop' Glasgow's East End. The newly created wilderness was then discovered to be a suitable site for the Commonwealth Games. She has found herself left in sole occupation of a tenement block after all the other residents, who were tenants in social housing, had been moved out.

'We were only in the house a few years and the Housing Association came in and bought it back off us. Then we had to be in it another 15 years for me to go back in to buy it [back] from the Housing Association. We started renovating it for the long-term, because we’ve got four boys and we thought one of them would have wanted it. We had only owned it again for a few years and that was when they came [in 2000] and said the building’s coming down. When they came to tell us the building was coming down, they took my details and asked about what we would need in a new house [a new scheme was being built nearby], and I said I would like an apartment. They said that’s okay, and put me down for that. But then later they said we can’t give you a house, you’re not entitled to it.

You’re an owner-occupier. See if they’d given me a wee house down there, I would’ve been quite happy to go. I wouldn’t be here.

Anyway, that was us. We just had to sit tight then, and wait.'

Her account deals with the difficulties an owner faces when dealing with a local authority which fails to negotiate a deal for her removal and abandons her in a wasteland of its own creation.

'the next morning I had a letter from the Council. My lawyer wrote back and said we were willing to negotiate. Never heard any more until last week a neighbour round the corner came in and said, “Margaret, they’re compulsorily purchasing you, I’ve got the letter here with your address listed on it.”

I’ve never had any negotiations [with the Council], we’ve never sat down and talked about
money.'

'I’ve been here six years myself . . . . six years alone. The last person before me, my neighbour upstairs, she went away in 2002, round to the new houses in Dalmarnock Road they built. And I’ve been here for six years alone.'

http://gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/931

[Northender]

You're trying to pull a fast one (or two) aren't you?

[Flosshilde]

So much for the Olympic Legacy then.

...

http://gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/931

& that's been the underlying theme in most recent Olympics - the destruction of thriving communities & businesses, because they don't fit in with what the authorities thnink business should be. They are untidy & not easily controllable, but they provide employment & services locally, because they are local businesses, they aren't controlled by 'head office', or owned by major corporations that make political donations. People's homes are detroyed, & they are re-housed a long way from their employment, which means they are faced with high transport costs - sometimes forcing them to give up their jobs because they can't afford to get to them.


Feel good, factor?

[John Wright]

& that's been the underlying theme in most recent Olympics - the destruction of thriving communities & businesses, because they don't fit in with what the authorities thnink business should be. They are untidy & not easily controllable, but they provide employment & services locally, because they are local businesses, they aren't controlled by 'head office', or owned by major corporations that make political donations. People's homes are detroyed, & they are re-housed a long way from their employment, which means they are faced with high transport costs - sometimes forcing them to give up their jobs because they can't afford to get to them.


Feel good, factor?

Wow, so how many people were affected in that way? Was it three or four?

[Sydney Grew]

. . . He wants schools to have two hours of compulsory sport a day . . .

Arthur Christopher Benson, one of our finest writers, taught at Eton for many years. His book "The Schoolmaster" has therefore great and lasting authority; and in it he views the practice of athletics with considerable disfavour:

"It used to be asserted that athletics were valuable from a moral point of view, and kept physical temptations at bay. I do not think that this can be maintained, and I am sure that the personal popularity which the athlete enjoys, the almost adoration with which he is often regarded, is of itself a great danger if a boy is prone to sensual faults."

"Prone to sensual faults" indeed! We begin to understand why to this day the Cambridge authorities refuse to authorize the publication of Benson's vast Diaries do we not.

[Lateralthinking1]

Arthur Christopher Benson, one of our finest writers, taught at Eton for many years. His book "The Schoolmaster" has therefore great and lasting authority; and in it he views the practice of athletics with considerable disfavour:

"It used to be asserted that athletics were valuable from a moral point of view, and kept physical temptations at bay. I do not think that this can be maintained, and I am sure that the personal popularity which the athlete enjoys, the almost adoration with which he is often regarded, is of itself a great danger if a boy is prone to sensual faults."

"Prone to sensual faults" indeed! We begin to understand why to this day the Cambridge authorities refuse to authorize the publication of Benson's vast Diaries do we not.

It would be quite interesting to see exactly what would be in New Conservatism's Book of Morality.

Boris - No rules save disallowing biting and gouging of the opponent’s eyes

Boris has told BBC Radio 4 he’d like to see pankration – "it means ‘all powerful’ and is ‘a blend of boxing and wrestling but with almost no rules save disallowing biting and gouging of the opponent’s eyes’" – re-introduced to the Olympics. First introduced in 648 BC, victory in pankration is secured through ‘knockout, submission or death’. Increasingly popular versions of this "sport" have been waiting for semi-authoritative endorsement. Now they have it and how it aligns with the new "do or die" capitalism! Will the funny man be the one finally to offer the trump card in policy - the reintroduction of capital punishment? I wouldn't rule it out.

Jessica - It’s all about the love and enjoyment of the event

Meanwhile, back in more normal life where "only" two hours of compulsory sport daily is seen as a suitable means of bolstering the new "ethic", the following article from a Blairite has more substance than one might expect from a Tone stooge. I thought that this paragraph was one of the most revealing in summing up the dark otherworldliness of the Eton Mess mentality:

Team GB have enjoyed an Olympics beyond their wildest dreams. Team Cameron, on the other hand, have had a bit of a shocker. Yesterday Jessica Ennis, the recently crowned queen of British athletics, was asked if she agreed with the Prime Minister’s comments about needing to introduce a more competitive attitude to sport. “You don’t want it to be too competitive at the start,” she responded. “It’s all about the love and enjoyment of the event”. Cue attempts by certain members of the Downing Street press office to grab gold in the hotly contested final of Putting Your Foot Through The TV.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100175788/david-camerons-attempt-to-gatecrash-the-olympic-party-has-backfired-spectacularly/

Dave - His balls manage to miss the table more often than they find it

The accompanying clip of the Prime Minister playing table tennis is also worth watching. He has what appears to be a strong, determined, approach but in essence the style is just pat-a-cake, albeit ramped up to the nines. His balls manage to miss the table more often than they find it but there is a viciousness in his facial expression which we are seeing increasingly, along with the occasional violent looking strike. Those are supposed to convey that he is on top of his game. I doubt that I am convinced.

[scottycelt]

So much for the Olympic Legacy then.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19167287

Of course, there is nothing to stop Les Miserables going on a protest march campaigning for a swift return to the vast, post-industrial, chemical-ridden, rat-infested, stinking dump of a wasteland that existed beforehand.

I suspect Flossie and his 'We Want Our Allotments Back' banner would be very much to the fore ...

[JohnSkelton]

Wow, so how many people were affected in that way? Was it three or four?

http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/558

http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/1840

http://fryingpanfire.com/2012/07/local-heroes-the-olympic-unwanted/

http://www.timeout.com/london/features/1501/The_travellers_tale-real_stories_behind_the_2012_Olympics.html

http://www.spectacle.co.uk/projects_page.php?id=175

... probably the wrong kind of people (and SO miserable!)

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-neoliberal-games/

[John Wright]

Well now miseries, I have sympathy with displaced people (the cottage I lived in as a toddler in Denny is now under the M80), but if governments had been populated by your likes we would have no railways, no motorways and no reservoirs.

So having boycotted the Olympics, will you now refrain from travelling by train to Edinburgh, driving on the M25, or drinking water from your tap?

[Northender]

Usain Bolt - not just a splendid example of athleticism and modesty, but also the ultimate record-breaker and destroyer of reputations. How wrong he has shown Andy Warhol to be, for example. Andy said that everybody would be famous for 15 minutes. Then along came Nicholas Parsons, who became famous for Just A Minute. 'Surely', the world thought, 'this is a record that simply CANNOT be broken'. But now the self-professed 'living legend' has become famous for a total of less than half a minute.
(I see Mr Wright's had another attack of the miseries. Is the phenomenon of the synonym totally alien to him? )

[John Wright]

Usain Bolt ..... now the self-professed 'living legend' has become famous for a total of less than half a minute.

Indeed, and there's now comparisons with Clay/Ali, in that everyone in the world (just about) knows him. There is a difference, Bolt isn't running around shouting 'I'm the greatest'. Listen to his interviews, a real gentleman of his generation, of his country.

(hey Northender, we're on the wrong thread!)