Ever wondered why you don’t see any ads against the Olympics?
So Seb Coe - sorry, Sir Sebastian Coe is out in Ghana lobbying IOC members, imploring them to give London the Olympics.
(And who paid for his flight there? Or did he run?)
OK, now I’ve been wondering about where there are all these pro-Olympic adverts all over the Tube in London. Good Lord, British Airways, some construction company, and so on are all in favour of the Olympics coming to London!
Well, duh. Of course they are. If London is cursed by winning the Olympics, those companies will get pots of money - travellers coming here, and of course all those stadia that will have to be built on the recently-levelled spaces where people used to live but have been rehoused. (Has anyone mentioned this? No?)
So you know why the companies are in favour of the Olympics: whoever loses, they win. Hence, they advertise, and urge people who haven’t heard any sides of the argument to “Back the Bid” and text their “backing” to some daft number. No number to text your opposition to, you’ll notice.
And about the losers: ah yes, that would be all the people who live in London. Because if Seb Coe succeeds, then they’ll all get higher council taxes to pay for the “regeneration” (more like, to line the construction companies’ pockets). And that’s about it. Given that they don’t really want the stadia, though they’d like better rail and public transport services, Londoners don’t really have any reason to like this bid, in my opinion.
You want regeneration? Why can’t central government pitch in to help make the capital better, then, along with money from the council tax. Plus you wouldn’t have to build redundant stadia for sports stars who aren’t going to use them.
So why don’t you see any adverts against the “London 2012 Olympic bid”? Because, durr, it’s a widespread dislike or apathy. Who’s going to club together to buy an advert on the Tube to express their disaffection with this daft idea? However the companies that stand to make pots of money from something that will leave London with lots of unwanted facilities, ah, they’re monolithic. They have marketing budgets.
But for the people who’ll actually be paying don’t get a referendum or any other way to express their opposition, or more exactly to determine their support. They’re being railroaded by politicians and companies.
(Lest I be thought of as some couch-potato churl, I should point out that I love sport, enjoy playing lots of them, think that playing and pursuing and enjoying sports is an essential component of childrens’ - and adults’ - characters. But as for building stadia? For example, we have the All-England Club, surely the finest tennis venue in the world - and I’ve seen them all, first-hand. [The AELTC is the only one whose courts I haven’t played on.] But that hasn’t produced tennis stars, because the quality of your stars is about the infrastructure and society in which that sport happens, not the quality of the stadia you have to play in. If you want Olympic winners, you need a society that puts sports at the core of its thinking. Case in point: Australia. Far smaller population than the UK; far better sporting reputation in most sports, and over-represented in pretty much all of them.)
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- London wins Olympics: and now interviewers start saying "Yes, but.." (6 July 2005; score: 42.09%)
- When readers bite (because reviewers don't) (6 November 2006; score: 39.27%)
- Save Hackney Marshes! London must not get the Olympics! (5 January 2005; score: 33.12%)
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June 17th, 2005 at 11:23 pm
You’re so right on this. I’ve never understood how the Olympics can benefit Londoners - it’s bad enough trying to work your way round the tourists in summer as it is, let alone with thousands more here all at once, and sure businesses will benefit, but that benefit doesn’t really come back to us. So we pay out substantially everything, and then we get back a tiny percentage of that through higher business tax receipts. Oh but we get all that prestige as well, of course. And “better” transport to east London - great.
If I do have to pay higher council tax, surely, it being a local tax, it should be used to regenerate my area - there’s plenty to be done. But then, there’ll be no athletes setting foot round here so that’s out of the question.
What I really don’t get are these polls saying we’re all in favour of the bid. I swear I don’t know one person who is. Maybe the pollsters are just calling back all the mobiles who’ve texted their support…
June 18th, 2005 at 9:35 am
“sports at the core of its thinking”, well apart from the nasty americanism, what an awful idea. This country is *obsessed* by sport to the exclusion of anything else and we still don’t produce great sportsmen (our women are often much better though). Less sport is what we need and some concentration on educating people better so that they can actually appreciate that paying people 100K a week to kick a ball around is a total ripoff. The obsession with “healthy competition” is just sick. There is nothing healthy about competition. Note that I am not advocating inactivity - people need to be active, and if you want to play football with your mates that’s great, just don’t make a big deal out of it or expect me to think that it’s important.
As for the Olympics the sooner that great festival of commercial opportunity gets scrapped the better.
I have hated team sport and the idea of team sport from the first day I was forced out onto a muddy rugby field in mid-winter. I’d much rather live in a country that was famous for its poets than its athletes. (I will admit to watching the Tour de France, and Sumo when I get the chance, but my life would not be remotely worse off without them)
June 20th, 2005 at 11:19 am
I think Charles was suggesting we’d produce better sportsmen if we concentrated on participating in sport more than we do. I agree sport fills up a lot of our media, and a lot of it is watched, but I don’t think playing sport is quite so ubiquitous in our culture as it could be. What do we have in city centres: sports clubs and facilities? Or shops, everywhere?
This isn’t to criticise the great work done by all the people who are involved in grass roots sport, of which there are loads. It’s just that we don’t have the built-in assumption that a sport (whichever one you choose) will be part of everyone’s life from an early age.
And competition is a pretty great motivator for improvement.
June 20th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Why on earth would we want to produce better sportsmen? Sure get people to do some physical activity, that’s fine, but beyond that who the hell cares. In the great scheme of things it is really rather unimportnat whether or not some one of a given nationality wins some arbitrary honour for being good at doing some physical activity governed by arbitrary rules.
You want better sportsmen, then let them take performance enhancing drugs. Make sure that they know all about the dangers and then let them decide.
Competition may be a great motivator for improvement but it has other much nastier side-effects.
June 20th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
Charles
Although I for one as a Londoner DO support the Olympic bid (optimist, dreamer, whatever), I couldn’t agree more about the real need for sports is at grass roots levels. And the issue isn’t only money here - its all sorts of things.
We need to encourage involvement in sports for everyone. Apart from an education, I feel I am a more confident person having had some exposure to music in my early years, and from doing sport (though in my case, my school didn’t do much to encourage me). Everyone should have the opportunity to play different sports and learn them to a level they can enjoy. Whether it produces champions isn’t the issue.
But the grass roots efforts are frustrated at so many levels. I have been involved in a small rural tennis club - built, maintained and funded by about 50-70 locals for many years. Given my own experiences when growing up (unaffordable snobbish tennis club, local park facilities shut, etc) I have been keen to promote access and affordability. We have managed to grow our junior numbers to over 40, with subsidised coaching and other initiatives. But trying to get floodlights or even a 3rd court to give greater access and year-round access has proved incredibly frustrating. It is not a funding issue but a local politics issue with short-sighted fools blabbing on about otters not returning to a local brook, extra electricity etc. Honestly the objections have been most astonishing, but the inability of local decision makers to take on these objections (from a small minority) make me absolutely sick and demoralised (in fact I have given up on pushing for it).
I use this example as I believe it is indicative of the problems facing many volunteers in trying to get greater involvement of society into sports (and other activities). We need to take these micro-issues head on (another one would be the ridiculous rules/prejudices that actively discourage many adults from even getting involved in children’s activities any longer).
Ian
June 20th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Um… db… calm down dear, it’s only a sport… Just because YOU personally don’t like something doesn’t mean it should be banned. I don’t like opera, but I still appreciate that lots of other people do, so I don’t believe we should stop showing operas. Why should everyone else suffer because you didn’t enjoy your rugby lessons?
June 20th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Competition is pretty much essential for life. (It’s part of how we got here, after all, pace Charles Darwin.) Children like competing, though often hate losing, though that’s all part of competition. Yes, the Olympics are pointless in the sense that it truly doesn’t matter who wins - viewed against geological eras, or the importance of having a habitable planet. But then, viewed through that prism, almost everything that everyone does is pointless, so we wouldn’t get out of bed. (This may explain teenagers.)
However, for personal growth, it’s important to compete in pointless things. Rock climbing, for example, is wonderfully pointless, and can be very dangerous. There’s little more character-building in a short space. Personally I reckon all inner-city kids ought to get the chance to experience it; that would put the “thrill” of nicking stuff from the corner shop into perspective. (And gives you some feel for the environment.) On that last point, the Andy Fanshawe Memorial Trust “aims to help organisations or schools and less usually individuals who are offering climbing or mountain experiences to disadvantaged young people.” It’s a darned good thing, and worth both support and taking advantage of.
And: rock climbing isn’t in the Olympics. Nor should it be.
June 21st, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Nonetheless. I look at the passion that surrounds the opposition to letting Heathrow build more terminals and runways and I’m amazed that no one has bought a single billboard or walked the streets wearing a single placard to oppose the Olympic bid.
I am wildly against the Olympics coming to London, myself.
And, hey, lots of people have character who *don’t* play sports. Even if you include physical pastimes like dance and playing music.
wg
June 21st, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Seriously, would you walk the streets wearing a placard against the Olympics? The problem is, what leverage would it have?
Also, I didn’t say sport was essential for character. My point is that competition encourages the development a particular sort of aspect of character. In some people, it’s good; in others, not.