GB Olympics 2012

Amusing video

I found this at the Miserable Old Git’s place, I trust they didn’t invite big British business partners such as Woolworths or MFI to sponser any events.

[YouTube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WqvhIa40n0U&fmt=]

You never know how it might end up if the recession turns into a depression.

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Why I haven’t watched the Olympics

I don’t wish to be involved in China’s “image makeover”

I was asked yesterday by a commenter why I wasn’t watching the Olympics from Beijing?

I had determined before the games started that I would not be watching and participating in China’s warped manipulation of the Olympic ideals, my moral compass is not yet fully broken and I have vivid images in my head reminding me of the atrocities that China has visited upon her own people even in recent years. Clicking on the thumbnail of the Press Association image, above left, will remind you of the reputed thousands of dead students left mangled with their bicycles in Tiananmen Square in 1989 after the brutal repression of a demonstration calling for more openness and democracy. China sent it’s own security goons around the world to protect the Olympic flame from anti-Chinese demonstrators raising the profile of the people of Tibet, it heralded embarrassing scenes in London as blue track suited “supporters” pushed British policemen around and left our Prime Minister red faced in Downing Street and deciding not to sully his hands by touching the Olympic flame. Gordon Brown dithered over whether or not to attend the opening ceremonies for the games in Beijing, and this incident in London must have helped make up his mind (although it was more difficult not to attend the closing ceremony for the hand over to London).

China has used the games and manipulated the Olympic ideals to suit it’s own needs, knowing that some western leaders have insufficient moral courage to spell out their own message on how nations should treat their own people, the pursuit of the dollar became the supreme challenge as China looks to build greater business confidence and inward investment that will help it’s nett exports. The games are being used as a deceitful makeover, image has taken the top step of the podium, even the opening ceremony was a fraud with a young girl miming the lyrics to another’s singing simply because she had a better face! In an effort to portray China’s inclusive harmony for it’s downtrodden ethnic minorities they went out of their way to show us fake minorities all from the one Han grouping, but dressed them up nicely. We were treated to fake fireworks in the opening ceremony, as well as a fake piano, and after sponsors complained of too many empty seats at some venues the Chinese authorities managed to find thousands of yellow T-shirted “volunteers” to fill the void;

Wang admitted that some empty seats were being filled by volunteers in yellow shirts serving as official cheerleaders.

“The responsibility lies with the local venue managers,” he said. “If they find that there are not enough people, or if they find too many empty seats, they will organize some cheerleaders who are volunteers.”

On Friday protesters unfurled a banner at China Central Television calling for a “Free Tibet”

Five of their members — three Americans, a Briton and a Canadian — were involved in the protest at CCTV’s HQ, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas‘ iconic building known locally as the Giant Pair of Pants because it resembles a pair of seated legs clad in pants.

“While the Chinese government has built a gleaming new building for its official mouthpiece and its public relations strategy has become more sophisticated, the propaganda it uses to maintain its iron-fisted control over Tibet remains the same,” Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet said in a statement.

“Tibet supporters took action at CCTV today to broadcast a message of truth about the intensifying military crackdown in Tibet and the Tibetan people’s undying resolve to regain their freedom.”

They have been ordered to leave the country and Wang (China’s official Olympics mouthpiece) added:

“Tibet is part of China, and the whole world recognizes it. The free Tibet movement is not welcome here. … A small number of people are trying to split the territory, and that is not going to work at all.”

No it isn’t Mr. Wang, and the whole world does not recognise it as such! According to this report Tibet has been turned into a prison for the duration of the games, and in another account China is revealed to be failing to keep it’s word on the showing of dissent in Beijing:

Individualism has been confined between lane markers. The pre-Olympics promises that attention would be paid to international norms of behaviour went unredeemed. The New York Times’s Andrew Jacobs followed one citizen who decided to take up the government’s Olympic offer of designated protest zones for aggrieved parties who had filed the proper paperwork. Zhang Wei applied for the requisite license and was promptly arrested for “disturbing social order.”

You will forgive me if I show a little dissent of my own, I refuse to be taken in by China’s makeover, I can manage to congratulate British sporting success at the games but I don’t actually need to watch the fake glitz, and glamour, amid the thousands of ordered in communist supporters, they don’t portray a true image to the world of China’s brutal tactics deployed against internal dissent, nor it’s control of information and it’s dissemination. I could cry for those behind the “Great Firewall of China”.

I will leave you with this video of BBC news footage in 1989.

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJBnHMpHGRY]

These are the real images of China, the ones they would prefer us to forget, yet behind the scenes they still trample people underfoot in Tibet!

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Should politicians claim credit?

Team GB exceeding expectations

It seems that our Olympians are exceeding the nation’s expectations in the medal table and are building a firm foundation for the London Games in 2012 after their “great haul of China”. This may play out well for the government, if it learns not to crow and take credit where it is not due. Harold Wilson was returned to power on a huge uplift in the “feel good factor” of the British Isles while England won the World Cup in 1966, but Gordon Brown, so far, has proved to be a “Jonah” when it comes to sporting events. The news from Beijing must be cheering for him as Labour languishes in it’s worst ever polling position.

However, he would do well to keep his ministers away from microphones and cameras whilst the Olympics continue, I cannot comment too much on the games themselves as I have been determined not to watch a single minute of them, but I concur with Mike Smithson at Political Betting, and remind readers that the British Olympic Committee receives vast amounts of funding from the National Lottery, in a scheme planned and set up by former Conservative Prime Minister John Major.

If they want the feel good factor to help them out, they had better learn to keep their big traps firmly shut!

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Beijing Olympics 2008

Opening ceremony

Whilst Iain Dale waxes lyrical about the spectacular start to the games and lavishes congratulations on the Chinese, I profess that I will be doing my best to distance myself from any TV coverage of the event. I have my own memories of Chinese spectaculars from 1989 still ingrained, and still hurting.

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGJoaHr2QdM]

Beau Bo D’or has an excellent image that you can use to print on your own T-shirt, go get one!

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Brown stays out of China

Hurrah!

Perhaps he does listen after all – who phoned him up, Angela Merkel? (Pity he has to go for the closing ceremony, can they not send the torch by Fedex?)

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Chinese “thugs” identified

Picture by Yuki Mop – Associated Press

Chinese Paramilitary Police allowed to operate in London.

At least we now know who they are, where they came from, and palpably what they do!

We still don’t know what was in those bumbags!

Neither do we know who exactly authorised the presence of these men. described by Olympian Lord Coe as “thugs”, onto our streets. Indeed the sight of them organising security measures around Gordon Brown when the flame arrived in Downing Street was rather disturbing to say the least. If I felt humiliated watching the pictures on television, I shudder to think what senior Metropolitan Police commanders felt, or indeed what thoughts were going through the mind of the Prime Minister.

Coe has advised other countries to;

“get rid of those guys”.

Konnie Huq, the Blue Peter girl said:

“They were very robotic, full-on . . . They were barking orders like ‘run’ and ‘stop’ and I was like, ‘Who are these people?’.”

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis is also asking who authorised their presence after it was revealed thattThe security men entered Britain on visitors’ visas but the Home Office would not reveal whether they had disclosed on the application form for whom they worked.

One interesting point to note after the nightmare of the event, is that London still has a sufficient number of athletic policemen of it’s own, able to keep going at a decent pace over a thirty-one mile route, these must be an elite group of specially trained athletes, perhaps members of the Met’s rugby and football teams. Let’s face it with 75% of police time spent behind desks completing ludicrous amounts of paperwork after nicking little Johnny for scrawling graffiti on a garage door, the average beat Bobby wouldn’t be up to it, unless he joined the rugger team!

Wonder what the Police Inspector thinks?

Update

The Telegraph reckon they came from the Peoples Armed Police in China, the paramilitary unit responsible for crushing dissent in Tibet. I’m not sure I can assimilate this, Gordon Brown’s government allowing the killers of fredom in Tibet, the freedom to organise events in London!

I feel nauseated.

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Black Tuesday for Brown

Any good news for the PM?

An interesting post in the Red Box blog all about polls and political authority (the indicators are all sliding away in the wrong direction) and an interesting link to Rachel Sylvester’s article in The Daily Telegraph.

Did Jack Straw really threaten to punch Ed Ball’s lights out? Have things really reached that stage in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet? If Balls is responsible for youth crime, would that make Straw responsible for a more grown up type of thuggery?

Rachel further points out that the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Tony Lloyd has expressed the view that the government needs to “clarify what it’s there for!” (How uncomfortable for the Prime Minister.)

I wonder how comfortable our Scottish Prime Minister has felt seeing images of Chinese goons manhandling protesters on the streets of London, and pushing and urging on their British police counterparts as the Olympic Flame stumbled on it’s way? Apparently, Kevin Rudd, the Australian PM has declared that they will not be able to do the same job in his country, the Aussies will look after security themselves, the big question must be ‘who gave the authority for this display of Chinese security tactics?’

Geoffrey Wheatcroft writing in the Daily Mail says:

“The Prime Minister hadn’t himself planned this dismal event, and it would be nice to think that he hated every moment of it.”

Yes, he had a horrified look upon his face as the Olympic Torch closed in on him in Downing Street, he was at pains to ensure that he did not touch it himself, why doesn’t he take a big brave Merkel type decision to stay away from the games’ opening ceremony in Beijing?

In another article Lord Coe condemned the army of Chinese “thugs” who accompanied the Olympic torch relay through London.

The head of London’s 2012 Games described as “horrible” the burly henchmen who barged their way through the capital, shoving the public and even police out of the way.

“One thing in Paris is to get rid of those guys. They tried to push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English. They were thugs.”

The blue track suited goons were seen on television using judo tactics to bring down protesters before pushing the ‘yellow jacket’ British Police towards them, and what were they all carrying in those bum bags on belts around their waists? I sincerely hope they were first aid kits!

So who authorised their presence? Was it the British Olympic Association or the Greater London Authority? Where did the Home Office fit into the jigsaw puzzle?

Either way, the Metropolitan Police do not seem impressed at all;

Privately, police were said to be furious as officers were made to look ridiculous, jogging along in cycle helmets and holding hands to form a chain around the bearers.

[YouTube =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K35wTSL97jg]

News video of the Olympic Flame protests in London

Oh, and the good news for Gordon – it has stopped snowing in London!

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