Flame on
As huge crowds of primitive villagers turn out to marvel at some fire this weekend, here’s some old-fashioned journalism to ponder. Click the image to read the article.
Enjoy the torch (possibly the last spectacle invented by Adolf Hitler to still be regularly performed and celebrated), and the two weeks of the Games while they last. Try not to get sick, in either sense of the term. Try not to be alarmed if anyone sticks a missile battery on your roof (and slaps an eviction order on you for making a fuss about it or for just not being lucrative enough), or a sonic cannon, or by the bored police with machine guns hanging around your train station waiting to shoot anyone who tries to protest or take an unlicenced beverage or snack into one of the state-of-the-art stadia.
Enjoy all the top events (on telly, unless you’re a corporate sponsor), and as Boris Johnson gallivants around turning them into a giant Tory showpiece, take a moment out to give thanks to Tony Blair and the rest of Labour for making it all possible (with our money, of course) for him. Who needs hospitals and schools anyway?
And never forget, each and every Scottish taxpayer, is paying for this London Tory jamboree and London refurbishment.
Three cheers for the union, Hip, Hip, hip…..
R Louis: Be fair, it was New Labour who bid for the Olympics, massively underestimated the budget (quelle surprise) and lumbered everybody with the bill. The Tories are simply freeloading on the stuff bought by billions of public money – which seems like the same old story to me.
The games should have been cancelled when the 2008 crash happened, although I wouldn’t have approved of them being run even before that as it is always a tremendous loss and waste of time. With the barmy extreme security and disturbing measures they are taking it’s costing everyone all the more.
All the politicians care about in the end though is their reputations and not losing face. It doesn’t matter to them if people have to go without medical care or if the pension pots have to be looted to pay for the circuses, so long as they look good on telly for two weeks.
We need a fresh start and break away from the festering money-sucking hole that is Westminster.
Does anyone know the cost of these games to taxpayers in Scotland? It represents a transfer of wealth from Scotland to London and the folks have a right to know how much of their money has been used to fund this pageant (including capital projects and other infrastructure costs).
That’s in one of the links. £351m directly in lost revenue, I think.
I’d bet the real cost ends up even higher once everything is taken into account.