Who are you to criticise? I don't see you with a Fungineering Degree...

Does this sound interesting to you?

While Copenhagen has its Harbour Baths, Paris has its Plages on the Seine, and Basel hosts the annual Rhine Swim, the thought of wild swimming along London's waterways might be somewhat less appealing.

Not to Alex Smith and David Lomax of young design practice Y/N Studio, who have conceived a project to transform a stretch of the Regent's Canal into a swimmable commuting route.

I'm actually in favour of this cockamamie blatant waste of money, so long as when the LidoLine opens we get to chuck Boris Johnson in first. There you go, Boris, get in there! Get in there with the zinger burgers! Get in there with the needles and the jonnies! Get in there with the dog turds and rotten wood...! From now on you're swimming to work!

From the mouth of Sauron...

"Hello, I'm Wenlock! Don't I look smart in my police officer’s uniform? I have the important job of protecting you on your journey to the London 2012 Games. Take this figurine on a journey to the London 2012 Olympic Games – we can have lots of fun together!"

Fun together...? Ye, gods it's frightening (I don't want the Olympic Police on my back, go to this link, I promise you it is... well you'll see), and brought to you by the same people who thought that 13,000 soldiers padding you down and pointing a gun in your face, surface-to-air missiles on your roof and a warship prowling the Thames would be 'reassuring'.

But we have the internet, and where there's the internet there are smart-arses. Please enjoy the product reviews before the site is shut down and everyone is arrested. A few samples:

Scared of Stratford said:

I bought one of these for my nephew but before I could give it to him, Wenlock's 'All Seeing Eye' had spotted the leaflet on my kitchen table for an anti-Olympics protest on the day after the opening ceremony. Before I knew it, the building where I live was surrounded by a special armed Olympics police unit and now I'm banned from central Stratford's "Dispersal Zone" until late September.

Olympiad Spectacle said:

I bought this toy to take on my Olympic Journey as suggested by the technical details. Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to find that it had left its case, called in reinforcements and kettled me in my bed. 

I'm just glad I didn't buy the water cannon or Long Range Acoustic Device accessories.

Extremely Worried:

... Bought this toy last week and although it arrived quickly and it seems to be well made, I have some concerns. Every fifteen minute since I've opened it out of the packaging, it will shout phrases such as 'I AM THE EYE OF PROVIDENCE', 'PAX ROMANA' and 'THE SECRET IS WITHIN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA'.

One more. The Red Menace:

Since buying this toy, my neighbours collection of Gollies have all been unduly harassed or locked away in a cupboard for no reason.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

One of the cruellest, most unbearable things about the modern ruling class, at least in Britain is how stupid they are. Sure, they know how to rule, or at least, how to get away with it. When it comes to listing their attributes, our bourgey overlords, like to list things like refinement and education; nothing could be further from the truth.

Take Bozo Johnson, yesterday launching a multi-million pound display of the Olympic rings (a small example, I know). What do the rings symbolise? According to Johnson they symbolise the Olympic virtues of, um, chastity, poverty and other things. This was all, apparently, a joke. Aren’t you glad he’s taking all in his stride? You would have thought he might be under some kind of pressure, as the Mayor of London.

Bozo might have just half-remembered Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius. But then he also might have remembered the rings are nothing to do with the motto, or any other virtues. They are symbolic of the peaceful union of humankind across the five continents... which is nice.

But these are piffling details for the mayor of the Olympic host city…

In other news, according to Murdoch’s man in government (aren’t they all?) Jeremy Hunt, the Olympics are under budget. Yup, that’s £476 million under the £9.3 billion budget. OK, that’s almost double the original budget but what're you going to do? It makes you wonder what goes on in these people’s heads. Do they think ‘budget’ means ‘guess’?

Either way, there’s now ample money to pay the London bus drivers their Olympic bonus. It’s only right and fair.

The antimonies of bourgeois thought

Monsta, Monsta!

David Cameron has pledged to fight the Health and Safety Monster (see here in the picture tidying up downtown Tokyo).

You can understand why Cameron would want to fight such a dangerous beast. Britain it seems is one of the safest places in the EU to work, at least in terms of fatalities (171 deaths last year)... curiously that’s more people dying in work each year than soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

But, look at it from another angle; let’s not forget the 1.2 million people a year who have to endure workplace related illnesses, or the 200,000 approx annual reported workplace injuries. Something's amiss. There are clearly too many people getting through the working day unscathed!