GRIMLY FIENDISH

Precisely, and we're still spending well over double this amount, even going by today's standards.... Also, that fact that the above amount is in dollars too, so, the London Games will probably end up costing about THREE TIMES in sterling terms what the Montreal Games would cost today.....

Errr, you dont consider £12 bn and counting to be an obscene amount of money...? I think the vast majority of Londoners would disagree with you on that one....

That's simply not true, most Olympics LOSE money for their host cities... Hardly did Athens any good, did it...? And, it took Toronto (or was it Montreal..?) almost 30 years to pay back the debts it racked up.... If you honestly think that London is going to make 12bn off of these games, you're either ridiculously optimistic or you've drank the Olympic Kool Aid like everyone else who's NOT a Londoner....

Yep, indeed they have, especially people in the Stratford area around the Olympic stadium, and people around Wembley as well... Many claims were made, but very little has actually changed for people generally...

I've no idea why on earth you think the games will make us any money... If anyone makes money, it will be the Corporations... You can kiss that £12 bn we put into this goodbye.... And just saying "find me a games that wasn't so corporate" hardly makes it alright... Especially when you look into the nature of many of these "sponsors"... I mean, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Dow Chemicals, Atos...?? Are you f**king kidding me??? All over London I'm seeing signs up on bus stops saying "routes served by these buses are subject to change during the Olympics", meaning that routes will be either diverted or roads will basically be closed to public transport during the games.. I do not find this acceptable, we live and work in London, it's OUR city, NOT f**king LOCOG's or the IOC's.....

True... Actually, what would really bugger things up is basically hundreds of protesters getting travel cards and travelling the tube system all day.... Or organising thousands of Londoners taking to the streets in "Boris Bikes" during the rush hour... Now that really would f'uck things over...... :lol:

http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/artic...nst-london-2012 In the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, Neil Faulkner comments on the modern games in the light of the wisdom (or lack of it) of the ancients. Unite leader Len McCluskey has called for demos and direct action that target the London 2012 Olympics this summer. Good. Here are ten reasons why it would be entirely justified. 1. The Games, along with the Diamond Jubilee, have been hijacked by the political elite as a ‘bread and circuses’ diversion from the grim realities of the Age of Austerity. They are cutting £20 billion from the NHS, £18 billion from welfare, but they can find £12 billion for the Olympics. 2. The Games are being used to showcase Britain ‘as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden’ (McCluskey). It isn’t. The gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since the 1920s, and the welfare state on which most of us depend is being destroyed by cuts and privatisation. Only millionaires have anything to celebrate. 3. The economic and social devastation is deliberate. The business elite who will be hogging a good proportion of the 2.2 million seats not on sale to the public are directly responsible for the crash, the crisis, and the cuts. They should not be allowed to bask in the limelight as if all were well. 4. Most ordinary people failed to get tickets. It is estimated that half those who staked £1,000 and two-thirds of those who staked £250 got nothing. Most poor people never had a hope. 5. Hardly anyone living near the main stadium has got tickets. But there will be no freebies for the deprived communities of Newham. All the freebies – 2.2 million of them – are reserved for VIPs, IOC guests, and corporate sponsors. 6. The whole event is dominated by corporate sponsorship, corporate contracts, and corporate logos. There is no democratic control, no popular participation, no engagement with the local communities and businesses. 7. The corporatisation of the Games means corruption and cover-up. LOCOG is refusing to reveal how many tickets at major events are freebies. One estimate is that six in ten of the 80,000 tickets for top events like the men’s 100m final fall into this category. Meantime, corporate sponsors are doling out tickets as bonuses to staff or hospitality to clients. Global accountancy firm Deloitte is using a ‘large proportion … to reward staff achievements’. City HQs are to become ‘Olympic reception centres’ for the duration. 8. The Westfield Shopping Centre is a moral obscenity. The whole first floor consists of designer shops with price tags beyond the reach of more than one in a hundred local people. 9. Massive transport disruption is planned throughout the Games. This is so that the rich do not have to use public transport like the rest of us. Instead, freeways will be reserved through the London streets for the LOCOG fleet of 5,000 cars. 10. The politicians, the corporations, and the rich own the London 2012 Games – not the British people. Yet only £1.4 billion has been contributed by sponsors compared with £12 billion by the taxpayer. So if the frustration and bitterness accumulating in the dark places of Austerity Britain kicks off this summer with the London 2012 Olympics as the target, Britain’s rulers will have only themselves to blame. And would the ancient Greeks have said? The classical city-states were suffused with the spirit of citizen democracy. That the Games could be appropriated wholesale as a ‘showcase’ for the rich and big business would have seemed outrageous. The ancient Greeks – like their modern counterparts – would have been on the streets. Dr Neil Faulkner (University of Bristol) is the author of A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics, to be published in April 2012 by Yale University Press. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I agree wholeheartedly with Dr Faulkner's article.. I live in London, and I am sick of this crap already and frankly, I dont know a single person who wants the games here.. It's blindingly obvious to anyone that lives here that the London transport system simply cannot cope with what is to come with the Olympics... Frankly, London Transport can barely cope with LONDON on a day-to-day basis, never mind the massive influx of millions of Olympic tourists that will descent upon the city like a biblical plague come August.. And it is indeed a "bread and circuses" diversion away from the real problems affecting the country, the Political elites want us all to forget these problems, and no one is going to tell me that the real reason why the Occupy protesters were cleared away wasn't because of fears of it "looking bad" to tourists..... All throughout this process, the people of London have been misled and lied to about the real consequences of all this, particularly in relation to the costs of the event, and local communities have never been properly consulted. In fact, many people around the area of the Stadium have been issued with eviction notices by landlords looking to cash-in, many local businesses have been destroyed by the monstrosity that is Westfields Stratford, and the ticket booking system was an absolute joke.. I have sympathies for the athletes concerned, they're victims in all this too, being forced to sign ridiculous contracts which prevent their human right to free speech. The Olympics has nothing to do with sport, it is a wholly Corporate event for these shills to make money, and all of it paid for by the tax-payer... The tax-payer benefits in no way whatsoever from these games, but these so-called "sponsors" are going to be making billions off of it.... And here was me thinking that being a "sponsor" actually meant YOU paid for the event and handed over the money and resources... Silly me, "Olympic Sponsor" clearly is defined as a Corporation or company who profits at the tax-payer's expense...... Frankly, I hope protesters do disrupt the games, I hope absolute and merry hell is unleashed, it would be some kind of pay-back for the disruption these "games" are going to cause millions of Londoners.....

Considering what just happened in Wisconsin the other night, this is a slightly more ethical and legitimate way of picking up votes than what amounted to basically buying the election with torrents of completely negative propaganda and lies masquerading as campaign ads and "info-mercials"...

Q - What's the difference between the Diamond Jubilee and the Parades in North Korea for Kim the Younger......? A - One is a sycophantic glorification of a ruler who has done nothing to earn their position of power and influence in their own right and has merely inherited that position from a dead ruler who themselves inherited it from someone else; denies the rights of people to be citizens in their own country and calls them "subjects", and is wrapped up in a completely uncritical and partial system of state propaganda which zombifies and stupefies the masses into exhibiting the appropriate response through a process of mass conditioning that would make Pavlov swell with pride......The other, is a military parade in Pyongyang for Kim the Younger...... GAWD bless yer ma'am, and remember, we're all in this together...... *now sits back and waits for Chris to have an aneurysm* :rolleyes:

...and after four days of sycophancy, brown-nosing and presenting lies as fact that would do North Korea or Stalinist Russia proud, the BBC finally manages to catch up with the real story... Unfortunately a lot later than everyone else..... Which is AMAZING really, considering the amount of reporters and cameras they've had around Central London since about Thursday... How on Earth did The Guardian, Independent, etc, manage to scoop them....? Oh, I know, must be that "willful blindness" thing that Rupert and James Murdoch suffer from...... :rolleyes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18329526 Chris, I'm not even gonna bother replying to your pathetic, irrelevant posts.... Decided not to feed the Troll...... -_-

Ahhh, yes 2012, the Olympics and Jubilee year... We should all be "proud to be British", proud to serfs, proud to be peasants, proud to be treated like slaves and shit on more like.... I'm ASHAMED of my country, I feel no pride at all, only a sense of rage that we've allowed this to come to pass and the fact that most of our so-called "media" has been a narcoleptic coma, the BBC and that arse-licking prick Nicholas Witchell has been spouting royalist propaganda for the past several days, no balance whatsoever, ignoring this scandal.... Question is now, what do we do about it....? Close Protection are ar really nasty bunch of b'astards, but they can only be blamed so far, the Corporatist system is ultimately to blame.. Government hand in glove with Corporations, big business and The City... This isn't "Free Enterprise", it's not Communism, it's not even Capitalism... It's "Crap-italism"...... Also, no one is gonna convince me that people in Clarence House didn't know that this was going on... I would find that a bit hard to believe, so the Monarchy itself is far from blameless.... "They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday" Good Lord, even convicted prisoners have more human rights and are treated with more dignity than this...... <_< <_<

I honestly never thought anyone could come up with something worse or more pointless and stupid than the ASBO... Theresa May proves me wrong, again...

That one just made me howl with mirth when I saw it last week.. When I read that, I was honestly looking around for a "Daily Onion" logo... Then I discovered it was actually for real, and she actually said it... Oh dear...... -_-

:lol: :lol: :lol: Yes, the "sanctity" of marriage...... PMSL.... I'm sorry, but if these "right wing conservatives" are so concerned with the "sanctity of marriage" or the supposed "mockery of marriage", then they should ban celebs and politicians from getting married, not gay couples....

oooo, the video's been taken down now "due to a legal complaint".... Even if the tenants had stayed their past their agreement, it's not the place for estate agents to kick doors in, there are legal processes. This is just another example of how many estate agents and private landlords are acting with tenants.. Look at what's going on in London with regards to tenants living near the Olympics site as well...

It may mobilise some of the fed-up Progressives who had no intentions of voting for either Romney or Obama.. This may get some people who had no intention of voting actually registering to vote...

Finally showing a bit of back-bone, or just trying to get votes in an election year...? The people who are opposed to gay marriage are the sorts of bigoted morons who wouldn't vote for him anyway, and he's been taking a real battering from the progressives over things like NDAA and CISPA, the fact that Guantanamo Bay is still open, and his lack of action over the banks and the big Corporations, so I cant help but think that this is a bit of a sop towards them...

Spot on.. And indeed, respect to Mr Skinner, good to see one MP who has the guts to cut through the mindless pomp and ceremony with a healthy dose of reality.... Those new rules regarding employment are appalling, and to add to that we also have the Internet "Snooper Charter" as well... And to think the Tories and Lib Dems were criticising New Labour for their laws which impinged on civil liberties and privacy...... Two faced b'astards, still, you can never trust a Tory anyway, and a Lie Dem even less..... <_<

Perish the thought.... :lol: :lol:

And, what would stop them from just shifting it to Gateshead....?

Yeah, for two weeks, then what...? The Olympic stadium gets sold to a f***ing football club.... Or, worse, yet sold to Lord Sugar, demolished, THEN built into a new stadium for bloody Spurs..... -_- I really think people outside London are actually pretty clueless as to what's going on here tbh....

To be perfectly frank, the Olympics wont "benefit" really anyone in London that much either... It'll certainly be a big benefit to McDonalds, Coca Cola, etc, etc.... -_-

Yup, I noticed that too... :lol: :lol:

Yeah, and what is your "marvellous" Mayor Boris doing about this...? Sitting on big, fat buffoon arse as usual..... <_<

I wonder sometimes if idiots like you should even be allowed to vote.... TBH, I doubt you even bothered. You seem more likely to be one of the 62% who couldn't care less....