Bozo bites

Boris Johnson wants a potential new Londonairport to be named after Margaret Thatcher. Double whammy! More proof, I think, that Boris Johnson functions as a prophylactic for Tory craziness (remember when he positively associated himself with Rupert Murdoch during the Olympics, when no other politician wanted to be near him). This is ULTRA provocative, yet a twinkle and a smile from Boris Johnson makes such things seem less than harmless. He is hardening people to Tory ideas and hardening people with Tory ideas.

It's really very simple...

British Olympian Mo Farah was detained by US customs under suspicion of being a terrorist. All it took for the Sun to offer its solidarity was him winning two gold medals. There's a lesson in that for all of us. If only all Somali refugees could win gold medals we'd all be set and the Sun would be the pillar of civil liberties and anti-racism.

Olympics games bring everyone together... 55% of everyone.

Still a depressing figure :

The warm glow of Team GB's best performance in 104 years and pride in an Olympic Games well received at home and abroad have led a clear majority of the British public to conclude the £9bn they cost is good value for money. 

Clearly, very few of the respondants to the poll come from East London, where rents have more or less doubled in a year. But it's interesting given the relentless, noisy and often illogical promotion this event has been given. Not everyone loves Seb Coe. The Olympics is a brute festival of corporations and states. Despite the soft-left wishing really wishing hard, you just can't square that with any kind of progressive agenda, and it shows:

Despite the success of minority ethnic Britons such as the Somali-born 10,000m champion, Mo Farah, voters remain inclined to doubt that most newcomers do anything positive for Britain.

By a narrow 53%-47% margin, the survey finds agreement for the suggestion that "More often than not immigrants … do not bring anything positive, and the likes of the Olympic-winning athletes are an exception".

Faith in the contribution of immigrants is much stronger in London, where 62% disagree with this statement, and a majority of respondents aged under 45 likewise disagree, but among pensioners there are particularly marked doubts about newcomers – with 64% of the over-65s describing the Olympians as "exceptions".

Attitudes harden further when the question switches to immigration in general. Only 32% of respondents say the Olympic successes make them "more positive (or less worried)" about it, against just 68% who disagree.

This is just one example, albeit the most pointed. This is where nationalistic tubthumping gets you, regardless of your intentions. Everyone in the mainstream wants to graft their own political outlook onto the Olympics, but some philosophies will do better than others. For David Cameron the British team's success at the Olympics proves that there is scandalous lack of competitive sport in schools (as opposed to "Indian dancing or whatever"). By that logic Britain's schools need more inclusive activities, not fewer. This is also something which he has only just noticed as, clearly, his mind was on something else when he got rid of the two-hour a week target, set by the previous Labour government.

The entire political class thinks though whimsy and daydreams (Boris Johnson wants state school sports to be just like it was when he was inb Eton - oh how jolly). We have to live with the nightmare.

Endless Brainless

It's hard not to get sucked into the Olympic fervour. It's relentless and all pervasive. Londoners have been advised to get ahead of the games. It's difficult to see how, they're everywhere. The actual sport is great, well, mostly great; gymnastics, swimming, canoeing, road-racing etc, though I'm not sure of the spectator value of sailing or pistol shooting. The silly, silly nationalism is unbearable. It feels like the death of any radical alternative in Britain for goodness knows how long. Large swathes of people are being made to feel happy despite having no objective basis for feeling so.

I can just see the Tories using Team GB as an all purpose metaphor. Boris Johnson upfront going on about years of hard work and sacrifice etc. If Team GB can do it then public sector workers can work for half-wages/unemployed people beg for scraps/disabled people can die in a ditch. It's all about pulling together to make Boris and co very, very, very... rich.

We will have to see how things look in two weeks when we have literally nothing to talk about anymore.

About Friday's Critical Mass

The point about the Critical Mass arrested (drawn from an excellent article in the Bike section of the Guardian online). The Metropolitan Police tried to limit the ride under Section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986, which allows police to impose limits on such an event when "it may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community". The Critical Mass ride has been happening monthly in London for 18 years without even a hint of “public disorder”.

The Metropolitan Police tried to limit the ride to a certain ‘agreed’ route. The route was not agreed. It never is. The direction of Critical Mass is decided by consensus on the day. Critical Mass is intended to promote cycle use and cycle users rights on public highways. It operates within the law and is therefore entitled to the road, and in 2008 the High Courts agreed with this.

The significance is this:

1. The police are an unelected body.
2. The police assume the right to practically define the meaning of the law. In this case that a demonstration that has never resulted in “serious public disorder” suddenly might and that a procession that doesn’t have to define its route beforehand suddenly does.
3. If you want to live in any kind of democracy you have to challenge this assumption by the police.

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.

Olympics update

We have to remember these things because, sooner or later, they'll change the name of Tower Hamlets to Strategic Hamlets.

Britain is being flooded not just with water but 'brand police'. See here the lengths the organising committee and the British state is going to protect their sponsors. "Summer" is a branded word. That's right, not a season, a brand. Gold is an element, but it too is being protected by the brand police. Welcome to McBritain.

Olympic cleaners sleep ten to a room, live seventy five to a toilet. At least it's not London Bridge.

And finally: musicians play for free at the Olympics. How nice of them to do that at an event costing £24 billion! Wouldn't it be a shame for David Cameron and Danny Boyle if the opening ceremony turned out like this? I mean, I'd laugh my socks off, but that's just me...

More Olympic news...

Residents in East London have lost their legal battle to prevent missiles being stuck on top of their block. The military (who knew about this for many years and did not bother to tell the residents) reasoned thus: we want to put them there and we don't want to put them anywhere else, and not a hint as to WHY they want to put them anywhere. Does Al Qaeda have an air force? Sure, they might (in a million years) hijack a plane, but where's the sense in shooting a plane down over a city of seven million people? 


With this in mind - what rights do we have left? London is an occupied city.

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.

Geography lesson with the International Olympic Committee

Yes, you're reading it right. Israel is in Europe, Palestine is in Asia. The mind boggles and yet it makes an eerie kind of sense. Palestinians of count for less than Israelis in ruling class ideology. Even though they live in the same place, they may as well be from another continent.