2012 London Olympics

Well, here comes the insanity. I'll be in my fallout shelter for the next few months.

No need to let my grizzling get you down, though. This is the unofficial London 2012 Olymic Games thread! Go nuts, guys!

Oh hey, it's that time of four years again. Only this time there's that special level of London grime and fake patriotism. Ah well, at least Aberdeen hasn't succumbed to the Olympic craze yet. Though having Aberdeen host the games would be... interesting.

No-one in the West giving two shits either.

Oh, those things. I'm keeping away from Olympic stuff as much as I can at the moment. I will watch the women's gymnastics, since they're impressive and it's not their fault there is so much hype and merchandise around the Olympics, but that's it.

The only folks that really care about the London Olympics apart from the athletes/crawlers/hangers-on/arse licking commentators are the several thousand squaddies who have been dicked to do stewarding duties at the gates etc instead of going on leave/seeing families/getting ready for next deployment; and Al Quada, who see the 'lympics in the Lesser Satan as their first chance since 9/11 of really stuffing things up and getting the sort of spectacular in the West that they have been craving ever since.

Australia was too far away from their base, and China had that problem as well as being too heavily guarded and being hostile as fuck to those who even look Arab or Western.

London, by comparison, is wider open than a dirty woman's drawers. And that goes double for the venues outside the capital. I am not saying that there will be a massive attack. I am only saying that I would be surprised if there was not one. Or at least a credible attempt.

Especially, thanks to G 4 S being up to their usual standards, they have not been able to recruit enough folks to do the job and most of the ones they have recruited have English as a second language, have no local knowledge of the environment they have to work in and most likely have been infiltrated by those who wish to cause harm.

edited 15th Jul '12 11:35:11 AM by TamH70

^ A lot of the reason why there is such lackluster interest in the London games is because well...

I'll be frank. London is an ugly place. All grey, no variation. At least Beijing had some nice countryside once you got out of the city.

As far as aesthetics go, the Winter games got the Summer beat any day.

It's not just that. Even the Olympic football games to be played at Hampden Park are attracting no attention - it's gotten to the point where they're just giving 50,000 tickets away to schools in an effort to get people to go.

I think to most people the Olympics are just a byword for a bloated, expensive, corporation-saturated waste of time and money at a time when these things are very much not in vogue. No one cares about any of it. It's of no interest to anybody. We're all bored already. Plenty of us were rooting for Paris to get it in the first place!

The London Marathon is far, far more relevent to people than the Olympics.

edited 15th Jul '12 12:54:20 PM by TheBatPencil

So...is anyone still going to watch the opening and closing ceremonies around here?

@ Bat. Indeed.

Also, this is the biggest military and homeland defence operation since the Second World War. We have battle-grade surface-to-air missiles stationed on top of residential tower blocks while the residents were still living in there. Put simply, not even pigeons can enter Greater London airspace without being shot down by an attack drone.

Also, it's in London, Really? That's giving it an ego boost, right there. When being the only city in Europe (as far as its concerned) we go and give it the biggest sporting event in the world.

The country's in recession and we spunk away billions of pounds on a sportsday for chronic drug-abusers and the benefit of a huge and corrupt private company.

Yay.

Won't really say that about Australia nice they hit Bali. It's more like that was before 9/11 and Bush.

And let's not forget China's not exactly on the West's side and she got the Hui (the Chinese Muslim minority) to vouch for her. And the fact that she was one of the few countries who recognized Taliban's claim on Afghanistan before the Afghan war helps.

@phoenix: Me!

Uhm, I'm kinda looking forward to the Olympics. I like London and I think Norway has a few good athletes going there. It's really too bad about Alexander Dale Oen (RIP ), but we've still got the Women's Handball Team, Andreas Thorkildsen and that runner who won the European Championship. I mean, it's not the Winter Olympics, but still. There's a fraction of a chance.

Also, all the tennis superstars are gonna be there, on the Wimbledon grass (go Federer!) and I'm excited to see if the new Women's Football World Champions can take the big title (go Japan!). Yeah, I'm excited. It's gonna be fun. Maybe not euphoric levels of fun, but...nice.

edited 15th Jul '12 8:01:55 PM by Lemurian

I pretty much only watch The Olympics for the hockey. I think a lot of the hype for it here in the states died down when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Fuck, no.

It'll just be a huge and expensive display of little-English racism. We can get that on the BBC all year.

I bet it's going to happen, and we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

I usually only watch swimming, gymnastics and track. Mostly swimming. I thought the Olympics started a bit earlier, but they start the week before I go back to school, so I don't know how much of it I'll be able to catch.

It's usually on in the afternoons and evening in my household. My brother, who likes sports, says it's the only thing interesting for him in the summertime. By that time, I'll be in my daytime classes and won't watch much.

...I am sensing a lot of hatred towards the Olympics around here.

Mainly because it's expensive and shit and there'll be nothing good on TV for a fortnight.

They've completely forgotten the whole point of the bloody thing, too, what with all the corporate bullshit and professional athletes taking part. It's a bad joke.

I'll be watching whichever of the swimming, diving, track & field, gymnastics, weightlifting, and basketball events my schedule will permit.

XD So do all Brits have depression or is it just the ones who make movies and post on the internet?

Seriously, I'm genuinely impressed at the apparently universal self-hatred on display here; you lot don't half-ass making up for being the Americans of the 19th century, do you?

The British have a long reputation for whinging to uphold. Plus, a number of the people here are British but not English, and will always thus complain about what the English are doing; the English, likewise, will complain about Londoners. Since English nationalism has been passé since the 50s or so, nobody with an education takes much delight in it (or at least won't admit it in public) except for the most toffee-nosed of the toff set, who are universally hated anyway.

But I'd say that the British are not self-haters. They hate all the OTHER people they must share a crowded island with.

Hey, neat, it's like the reverse of Canada's problem! Over here our cultural identity is so nebulous and constantly-warping that we haven't even got a proper handle on what it means to be patriotic yet (though I've no doubt the Conservatives will be all too willing to tell us once they put the finishing touches on ruining the few good things we have going), so we latch on to anything and everything promising, including beer commercials and the Winter Olympics. One of those things involves hating Toronto.

Unless you're from Toronto, in which case you hate Vancouver for being Snow White to your Evil Queen.

edited 16th Jul '12 5:56:55 PM by FurikoMaru

No self hatred at all whatsoever. Plenty of hatred for an expensive, corrupt and utterly pointless whit elephant foisted on us as the result of a knob-measuring competition between a bunch middle-aged five year olds in London and Paris, as if there's any real difference between travelling to one or the other as far as most of the UK is concerned.

Nobody actually asked the people of Britain if we wanted the bloody thing. Mostly, we don't.

edited 18th Jul '12 4:15:24 AM by InverurieJones

What about all the people that campaigned for the Olympics to be in London this year?

Lord Coe and his cohort of vested corporate interests friends?

They are a very vocal, very small minority.