Olympic Insanity

I ought to give up on the Olympic Games but hardly a day goes by without some new piece of nonsense that leaves me both depressed with the ludicrousness of it all, with the pathetic exaggeration of the importance of this three weeks of school sports and with the strange economics which allow the price to go up and up without the cost increasing.

This week, we are, apparently, trying out the security measures for the games. We have radar spy planes flying around, RAF fighter aircraft flying over London, very heavily armed troops and police operating in the streets from Heathrow to Barking. The police are being equipped with 2 automatic pistols each as well as sub-machine guns, gas canisters, security scrambled communication systems — all of which are unavailable for controlling ordinary crime.— and they are all masked. Why? They are not MI5 or MI6 men — are they? But most ludicrous of all: there are to be missile systems installed on the roofs of east-end flats — without the local inhabitants being consulted. Do they seriously intend to fire missiles at something over Central London? Can we expect to see a high-jacked airliner being blown out of the sky over Canary Wharf? The whole thing is utter madness. This security system will cost £1 billion+. Is this included somewhere in the unmoving Olympian Budget of £9.5 billion? I suspect not. On my reckoning we have about £2.5 billion in total to add to the £9.5 billion but I am sure that much of these cost will be lost in such add ons as road repairs, thousands of extra staff at Heathrow, etc. The final cost — if everything is included, is edging inexorably towards my budget of £15 billion. All very well worthwhile, of course and only an old miserable cynic like me would think otherwise.

The BBC has told us that they will show everything. Every run, jump, swim, throw or stand still of the whole 2½ weeks. This ignores the build-up which will drive us to suicide before August.

Oh, to be in England in September when the daises are in bloom

And no more an Olympian feat before our aching eyes doth loom.

This morning, news reaches us that Argentina has put out an advertisement on its TV stations showing one of their athletes taking part in the games but training in the Falkland Islands. Who this pathetic bit of propaganda is supposed to impress, I have no idea. It has not gone down too well in the Falkland Islands of that we can be sure. The government in Argentina is in an economic mess and the president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has been batting on for months about her country's ownership of the Falkland Islands — which at the nearest point, are some 300 miles off the shore of Argentina and the capital, Port Stanley, is 400 miles away. And the people living in the Falkland Islands want to remain inhabitants of a British Overseas Territory. All of the 2,500 people there are of British descent and the islands have been occupied by the British since 1833. Still Argentina pursuing its claims for sovereignty fits all the criteria for the sort of logic that thinks spending billions on sports days in the east end of London makes any sense.

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