Who cares about the Olympics? Not me
I bet you're thinking to yourself, this has all been done before. Complaining about the Olympics is nothing new. Well I don't care, I'm going to do it again.
The Olympics is a gloriously obscene, corrupt, grotesque, pointless, wasteful woolly white mammoth of an event.
I was at a meeting of the West Midlands Police Authority today, the body that oversees the actions of the local force. A group of top cops and politicians all talking about how the police force will pay for the extra effort of the London 2012 Olympics.
What a waste of Midlanders' money. And what a waste of police officers - officers previously in action in Birmingham will be taken down to London to help out the Met.
The Olympics - a collection of sports and games ranking somewhere between caber tossing and morris dancing in the national consciousness - is a pointless bore-fest, of interest only to the globe-trotting buffet-munching politicians that organise it, the tiny cadre of elite athletes that take part in it, and of course - of course - the array of tax money hoovering big businesses that flock to the event like lumbering vultures around a bloated buffalo.
Will anyone come to their defence? We've heard various weak noises about the money brought in - tourism, contracts for local businesses - but do they really expect us to believe that this will make up for the £9.3 billion - and rising - cost of this shameful farrago.
And I'd like to think the obscene spectacle of battalions Chinese thugs battering down pro-democracy campaigners as the torch wound its grotesque way around the world would have put off any of the nauseating talk of bringing nations together, and all that rot.
And finally it's just so damn boring. In the metaphorical race for TV ratings, the latest snooze-fest track or field events from London is nulikely to drag my attention away from Eastenders or the Apprentice. I'm sure there are people out there who are mad keen on athletics, just as there are people out there into stamp collecting, or fetish pornography. But as in those cases, this is something that should probably be left to the bedroom, rather than condoned and encouraged by a massive injection of taxpayers' cash.
Leave the Olympics to the Londoners, I say. Brummies are supposedly known for their level heads. So let's do what we can not to get caught up in this madness.
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I agree - but then we're speaking as non-sports obsessed types.
While I am inclined to agree with your assertions regarding the grotesque corporate circus that not just the Olympics but all major sporting occasions have become, I feel you dismiss the importance of sport too easily.
The fithy lucre has been slowly eating away at many sports long held sacred by countless millions but the greed, corruption and incompetence we now all associate with major sports has still not succeeded in killing that indefinable quality that makes it a religion for so many.
I cannot deny that the Olympics has become something of a laughing stock, whether its the spiralling costs of 2012 or the recent Olympic flame bodyguards dressed as David Ike's followers, but these are seperate issues to the sport itself.
While you are unliklely to find anybody jumping to the defence of how the Olympics are run, I'll bet a pound to a penny that if a British hopeful is going for gold, be it in Beijing or London, there will be millions of us cheering them on - and some of us might even get goosebumps.
If, however, as the previous correspondent alludes, this all boils down to the fact that you don't like sport then of course it is all going to be an enormous waste of taxpayers' money - but give me Redgrave's 5th gold over Minty and Heffer's first kiss any day of the week.
Arley, cheers for the input. Maybe you're right and I'm just being cynical. I'm not anti-sport - far from it - although I'll admit I'm much more keen on various team sports than the track and field.
I just feel that the "Olympic spirit" - if it ever did exist - has not only disappeared, but been replaced by something faintly nasty. Watching the world's top athletes take part in an event that needs to be protected and enforced by armies of thugs doesn't fill me with any sort of pride.
I'm sure if one of our boys or girls does well we'll se everyone in the country swing behind them and get excited. But does this say mroe about the fickleness of fans and the media, rather than the Olympic ideal?
I don't think the so-called 'Olympic Spirit' has ever been the attraction for athletes or viewers. Like the Champions League final or the Ashes or the Masters, atheletes and viewers alike are drawn to the Olympics because it is the pinnacle of these chosen sports and whenever you get atheletes striving for the pinnacle you invariably get the passion and drama that makes for compelling viewing. The Olympic flame is no different to the urn containing the fabled stumps or the green jacket, it is just a symbol to give the event an identity - we see it in every part of our society (think Chancellor's battered red briefcase on Budget day). That the supposed symbolism of the Olympic Flame has been diminished by the actions of countless corrupt delegates and more recently, the laughable Chinese, will be of no concern to any of the atheletes as there focus has always been and always will be on winning.
At least the FIFA World Cup is much better despite all its faults...
I bet that more people will rather watch the World Cup than the Olympics if they were held at the same time...