What did you fight the war for again, Daddy?

Censorship Beijing would be proud of

Jobs worth?

Well, it's worth pay, perks, pension... all guaranteed for life, no matter what. No chance of being held to account for anything and certainly not losing job or any of the above no matter how egregious. With the provision of a wall of state-backed police and/or legal official obfuscation and/or threat and intimidation if challenged on any aspect.

Welcome to the Brown Blair Comintern that is today's UK after the last decade.

I am thinking... weightlifting

ie: my lardy butt off the sofa to the fridge

Cadbury is official confectioner of London Olympics

And to achieve this, I am inspired to immediately commence a diet of deep-fried Creme Eggs as part of my training regime, to add to as many Big Macs and Coke as I can cram in!

Methinks we do not protest enough

I am on a few 'activist' lists for enviro info.

More often than not this means I get emails drumming up support for all manner of protests which, frankly, are usually not for me.

However this one struck a chord:

Tom and Rita Glenister, Isitfair supporters, will be appearing before Hendon Magistrates Courts at 10am on Monday 15th September 2008
They have decided that the levy placed on the London council tax payers for the Olympic Games in 2012 is grossly unfair and that they will not pay. They are quite prepared to pay the rest of their council tax demand.

Tom tells me that they would be quite willing to pay this Olympic tax if it was collected across the country. The Government is very keen to call the London Games, 'The Nations Games', in which case the Nation should help to pay for them.

When:- Monday 15th September at 10.00am
Where:- Hendon Magistrates Courts, 19 The Hyde, Hendon, London
NW9 6LE

Leader of Barnet Council:- Mike Freer e mail cllr.m.freer@barnet.gov.uk

Mayor of London:- Boris Johnson e mail mayor@london.gov.uk

You know what to do. Please support Tom and Rita. Please no abusive e mails. If you can spare the time and live close by, please attend the court. Posters for downloading are on the website if you should want them

Not sure I will be hitting the streets, but I was gobsmacked to learn just how my old stomping ground has been lumbered with costs* they did not agree to in a less than fair manner by a bunch of pols and others who are not really going to have to personally deal with the consequences. Like too many things these days.

*If thrilled that I have been, so far, spared. So if the 'solution' is to make it fairer I might have a few things to say on that, too. Hey, the authorities can't win.

Well, there's a surprise

The Beijing Olympics is bringing the IOC into disrepute

No, not that fact that the author has pretty much been universally slammed (nothing to read into that, really. I rather depends on who is trawling and trolling that day)... in the Telegraph!

It was this bit that, though only by one person's word, caught my wistful attention 'I imagine that for those watching in Britain through the misty-eyed lens of the BBC, the Beijing Games are living up to expectations. The view from the pressroom, however, is altogether gloomier.'

Not so much for what was written, but that there was no real sense that it was odd that our national, publicly-funded broadcaster, especially its news-bearing arm (quite big and well funded, not to say represented there, I'd imagine) is 'different' to those others in the press room, and oddly capable of bearing to its paymasters a different 'alternate reflection of accuracy' than all others. Quite makes the licence fee look worth... what... again?

Addendum - Well, another, though confirmatory voice, this time from Ch4 (and suggsteing the Gaurdian too)...

FROM ALEX AT THE BEIJING OLYMPICS
Hail from The Jing. It’s been a weird kind of day with, on the face of it, rather a lot by way of heats at these Olympics and rather less in the way of finals and particular ones of British interest.

So I went off to the BOCOG/IOC press conference this morning – that is, the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee.

Sounds impressive eh? And in its way it is. Though not, sadly, as a press conference. It is, for instance, a sensational situation comedy. Or a rare example in the modern world of truly Ruritanian politics. Or perhaps it is the nearest you will get to an extra-terrestrial out-of-body experience without taking a vast whack of acid.

Because these two bodies very obviously inhabit a different time-space-continuum to you or me.

This morning's edition was mint. First off, Mr Wang Wei took us through statistics about how many officials, journalists and athletes had been at the different venues and ended, as ever, with the weather forecast for the various Olympic sites.

Then a radical shift, as his colleague then took off on addressing cultural affairs. The man from The Guardian in the row in front of me wrote THIS IS A DELAYING TACTIC on his notebook and passed it to me.

Well, perhaps it was. Whatever the truth of it, we needed to talk about whether or not the IOC is embarrassed in any way about throwing in its lot with a government which has so patently failed to keep promises on press freedoms and human rights. This lies at the heart of these games since assurances on this were one of the reasons China got the games in the first place.

You can see what happened tonight when we tried to find out. And what happened when the Chinese allowed protesters to make legal demonstrations in three parks in the city. You need permits to do so. And guess what, nobody seems to have got one.

Evasion and untruths: an everyday tale from the land of the Chinese Olympics. Cheers, Alex T

Alex Thomson takes on the IOC: http://tinyurl.com/6pwjlf

Alex Thomson’s Beijing blog: http://tinyurl.com/67zsm5

Danny Vincent’s blog: http://tinyurl.com/5lzwqg

The Register - Olympic Committee wins gold for foot shooting - Oh, and ITV

Olympics 2.0

Faster. Higher. Stronger. Just hope it doesn't also all end up in ER.

I love the Olympics. For 3 weeks my dear Mum can watch something moderately healthy that isn't News 24.

I really can't get too excited on a personal level about the 'sport' for a few reasons, from an aversion to narrow nationalism to a loathing of media hype. And frankly my idea of an athlete was Alf Tupper in the Victor, and he didn't really exist either.

Let me just post this quote from Ch4:

GREETINGS FROM BEIJING
It is the day of the Baltimore Bullet. Michael Phelps somehow almost owns competitive swimming right now. He has won 11 Olympic gold medals in his lifetime, four of them in this year’s games, and he could win three more in Beijing.

Phelps has surpassed every other athlete in the modern Olympics. He routinely smashes world records etc by, er, Michael Phelps.

So fair play to him, good going for a lad diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in his formative years.

He is someone who appears to shun the limelight and work hard and give something back to his local swimming club in Baltimore and young people there. He has no plans to move to Malibu.

But out here in Beijing there is a growing debate about what swimming has been turned into by the LZR suits, on the one hand, and the special fast swimming pool here. Yes, it seems pools can be faster or slower, as I will explain tonight to people who do not know. Put the two elements together and records are being ripped up like confetti. But does that mean they are now winning swimming medals or swimming technology medals? Is all the techy stuff in a traditionally low-tech sport, messing with the essence of it?

Put it another way, what would happen if Phelps took the Spitz Test just wearing Speedos, in the Munich pool and swam the distances Mark Spitz swam to win his golds back in '72? There are three possible outcomes -

1. Phelps swims slower than Spitz (unlikely)
2. Phelps swims faster, but not as fast as he does in Beijing (almost certain)
3. Phelps swims as fast as he does in Beijing (almost impossible)

Well, how would the Beijing gold haul look then?

Not a chance of course. The last thing sponsors are likely to do is expose the young man they are making seriously rich to this particular challenge.

Indy - NEW - So is Michael Phelps really the greatest athlete in Olympic history? - Or, and here's a funky notion, is trying to compare anything on any basis when you are talking such different skillsets, rules, etc simply plain silly? Or just a good way to sell stuff?

Your licence fee at work

Reporting the Games & Friday, 8 August, 2008

'...allegations by the Georgian President that 150 Russian tanks and other vehicles have entered South Ossetia.'

I know everyone is on holiday or at the Games 'reporting' sports, but it would be awfully nice to get some news of value from elsewhere?

Perhaps if there was a suggestion that the Russian synchronised invasion team was using steroids to help lift the shells?

I'm sure it's on the BBC somewhere, but I clicked on just now for an update on what I thought was the news channel, and ended up with wall to wall prancing ponies who, apparently, 'The hosts had spared no expense to put in a/c stables'.

The world can rest easy.

pps: Meanwhile, this from SKY, my new source of actual News: 'Russia On Verge Of All-Out War'

ps: Speaking of cutting edge news gathering, reporting and editorial, looking top right on this page* is there something I don't know?:

Reporting the Games
ADMIN USE ONLY Fri 8 Aug 08, 06:23 PM

'This is the Newsnight editor's blog, where editor Peter Barron, and some of his colleagues, will discuss issues affecting the programme.'

Farewell
Peter BarronWed 30 Jul 08, 01:39 PM
Ok then, I'm off.
After four years at Newsnight this is my final editor's blog. I'm off to Google

* I know the temp (sweet, isn't it. It's summer hols so news is in the hands of the work experience guys) has mentioned it in the first line of her piece, but one might have thought a week was enough to adjust the template to reflect reality:

'This is the Newsnight editor's blog, where there is currently no editor, so some of his inexperienced, rudderless colleagues will discuss issues affecting the programme and certainly nothing of world-shattering importance.'

Addendum: I find it 'interesting' that after 24hrs there is nothing to follow my comments. It's a pity wars don't take the weekend off.

Gaurdian - These two appalling sets of old waxworks utterly deserve each other

'By the time you read this, world peace should have broken out.'

I have been beaten to the punch much earlier and much more subtly, but may I repeat the unfortunate irony of this as I look at my SKY news:

'Russia On Verge Of All-Out War'

Indy - Georgia: Russia steps up 'peace enforcement' - Now that's a new one to add to my collection of interesting double speak.

BBC - Olympic overdose? - Well, she asked.

Well.. you asked.

It's a major international 'sporting' event that probably deserves a decent level of coverage for those who give a flying fig for contests between those whose sponsors can afford to tune them to ever greater micro-improvements in human endeavour.

Not the only thing on the planet. And certainly not worth draining a £3B+, tens of thousand-strong, publicly-funded national media entity of staff and money to the exclusion of all else.

However, this inconvenient war in our own geographical and economic backyard has at least highlighted that even though we knew the tea-lady was running the show at the weekend while editorial was on 'don't lie to the public; it's bad' training at a Cornish retreat, at the moment the entire BBC is in the hands of a security guard and a work-experience activist from Kingsnorth while all the rest are 'reporting' from the next 'fun' location in Beijing.

You are... the weakest link. I'd like my money back.

Or specious?

Lots of talk on the BBC about the auspicious timing of the Beijing Olympics

Just wondering, is it 8pm at 08/08/08 on the Chinese Calendar, and in Chinese-related time zone locations East or West of Beijing?

I always wondered when and where the Y2k apocalypse was going to strike first... Sydney or San Francisco.

Maybe Nostradamus didn't have GPS.

Olympian ineptitude

'BBC wastes Olympic opportunity'

Be fair. There's only 400+ odd of them going, and they have to have time to pack and stuff.

I am sure that, once there, should any Brit come within a glimmer of a gong, we will be heartily fed sick of the coverage.