Be Excellent To Each Other

Sounds great...

The thing is, if we think that it looks stereotyped, patronising, overly twee and non-representive of the country in 2012, then it will have filled exactly the brief. The opening ceremony isn't there to entertain us, or to make the people in the stadium think "Oh, I've come here for the olympics and recall seeing that on my travels". It is to make overseas tourists watching it on TV see it and decide to come to the UK on their next holiday.

The only way the opening ceremony would have been entertaining is if they got Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty to do it.

No, they would have a small chimenea and set fire to whatever cash was left over.

I think at the next BeexBQ we should organise the Beexlympics

Less than three weeks away!

Until Craster starts cooking for the 2013 BBQ?

I watched last night's news with utter incredulity at the 'unveiling' of details of the grand opening ceremony.

I just wouldn't even know where to begin with that, so I won't.

By doing that, you're letting them win.

Because you don't have the words to express your joy and excitement, I assume?

There was a bit of a hoopla about the Scottish flag the other week, because some of the football is being played at Hampden, which always has a Saltire flying above it. I think the IOC backed down in the end but I'm not actually sure.

EDIT-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18294786
Mentions the Welsh flag as well.

But seriously mate, what's the point...? The apparent shortcomings of it, if the present detail is to be believed, are surely self-evident to anyone, even the most enthusiastic Olympics supporter (themselves surely of quasi-mythical status; I've yet to meet such a person in my own quite extensive social circle).

It's going to be awesome. Or a train wreck. Either way, I'm a winner, you're a winner, we're all winners here today as the theme is VICTORY!

Seriosuly, it's so overblown now, like Riles, I'm going to have to like it.

I assume the motorbike is forbidden due to the footy match where they smuggled a Lambretta into the stands and threw it down onto the fans underneath. Or have we already covered that, i'm not reading one thread etc...

...Like it?

Nah, methinks not. To me, that's akin to 'liking' the Euro Debt Crisis, simply because no-one can get away from the constant, unremitting media-saturation, and the fact that everyone bar Robert Peston is sick of the whole sorry mess, to the point of projectile vomiting.

Personally, I'm simply going to try to ignore it. Wish me luck these next 50 days or so; I'm going to need it.

It looks like i'm going to be an a project in the city from Monday I was looking forward to working from home with it on in the background. Now it looks like I actually have go into London, the olympics(tm) can fuck right off again

The Olympics is going to be brilliant.

The Opening Ceremony could well be very cool. It's not as of it's being made by an idiot. He does know how to make successful stuff. It might also be a shambles, but I think it's worth a shout. Certainly more fun than not having a ceremony at all.

And surely the fact that tens of thousands of people are involved in it, and many more are attending (often at great personal cost) means that quite a lot of people are enthused about it?

Far easier to damn it before you see it. Then intentionally avoid it and therefore be unpersuadable, unless you accidentally experience in which case you should plan to have a blinkered view to ensure that your views can't be changed.

I prefer to think that it's a reference to How I Met Your Mother.

The Metro was squawking about it being cruel to animals this morning. I didn't read the actual story, though.

Yeah, whatever. Of course, I was 'damning' the publicly unveiled details of the opening ceremony (on the basis that they are self evidently twee, naff (fake clouds and rain anyone?), crass, romanticised, caricatured crap, wholly unrepresentative of Britain in 2012 or indeed at any time in its history, and above all, incredibly backward looking) - not the ceremony itself.

Still, let's not allow the facts of the situation get in the way of yet another entirely unprovoked, sardonic little dig in my general direction, on your part. Again. (I really must ask you by the way - do you think this kind of thing, trolling basically, puts you in a good light somehow? Personally, I think it just makes you look like a rather smug, petty, unpleasant arsehole with an axe to grind? - not a good look? But there we are, hey! )

All of that said, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that these details *are* representative of what's to come, unless this really is some incredibly elaborate decoy do you think APOD...? Shit, I do hope so, for the sake of the collective reputation of this country abroad. Oh, and contrary to what you imply, I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, actually, but yet again, let's not have the facts getting in the way here.

As for me ignoring the Olympics, as distinct from banging on negatively and incessantly about them for the next 40+ days, this seems to be quite reasonable; those who *are* looking forward to them, like Curio, can get on with the business of doing so without any detraction from me. But of course, whatever I did, or did not do, and whatever my opinions in this matter - even if you agreed with them (which IIRC you did?), I can be fairly certain that you'd be there pissing on my bonfire regardless, yet again, all as per. Hey, you're nothing if not reliable.

(It's just a shame that that reliability of yours tends to rather break down when you're confronted/called to account though, eh. Still, nice timing on your part, kick a man when he's down etc.).

And it's coming in half a billion pounds under budget! Huzzah!

Woohoo! Party at Dave's house with the leftover!

Really? They did it for £2 billion? That makes quite a change.

[edit]Oh, for fucks sake.

\o

o/

Under the initial 2007 budget.

Though far higher than the one in the bid, obv.

So 1/2bn underbudget after going 7bn overbudget. Forgive me for not being impressed.

Meh. The bid was never going to be even vaguely realistic. They never are. Shows that once they worked out what was actually required, they did what appears to be a decent job.

But wasn't this £2.4 billion cost figure (or whatever it was) sold to the British people by the then government? I'm pretty sure that no-one was claiming this 'wasn't even vaguely realistic' at the time, in fact quite the reverse if memory serves. I'm fairly sure that this figure persisted for quite some time as well.

Me? I just cannot see how anyone could get it so wrong in the first place - £9 billion actual costs vs. £2.4 billion initial budget (er, that'll be a trifling 275% error), less still how the fact that it could've cost £9.4 billion giving a "saving" of £400 million as being anything to cheer or be proud about. As far as I'm concerned it's just yet another public project that's cost an obscene amount above what was promised to the British people, except that this time, the actual costs (as well as proportion of exceedance) are truly epic and obscene. This £6.5 billion overspend is enough to build 1,000 new schools... kind of puts things into perspective, huh? Wouldn't we have rather had them instead?

Only a politician (of whatever stripe) would have the sheer, brass gall to trumpet such a thing as "a great advert for Britain".

That's pretty much my thinking. The flaw is one of making a decision that the pursuing the Olympics was a fiscally sensible decision, whilst clearly not having done even close to the required amount of due diligence on working out the actual cost.

Also note that the 1997 budget allowed for a 2.7bn 'contingency fund'. So it's not really even come in under that budget, it's spent 2.2bn of an amount put into the budget in case of overspend.

Quite so; gross negligence and incompetence at absolute best. Mind you, if only it was 'just' the Olympics, eh, and not pretty much successive, entire government spends from c.2001 onwards, Labour's (infamous) second term.



I guess we should've smelled a rat (or a whole army of them) at that time. I mean seriously, a total project cost of £2.4 billion, but an additional "buggeration factor" contingency of £2.7 billion, even greater than the entire supposed project value? Fuck me, that's some contingency, yet 'we' still overshot even this by a further £4 billion...

Yeah, a day to be proud alright.

Much as I like to kick Labour around, I think this one is a joint fuck-up by "the government". Sure, they started it, but, if I remember correctly, it was pretty much a unanimous thing, and I'm fairly sure things could have been scaled down by the coalition.

I was possibly vague there - it was the 2007 (WTF? Where did I get 1997 from?) 9.4bn figure that included the 2.7bn contingency fund. The original figure produced by consultants Arup (who have been since punished with lots more lucrative government contracts) was 1.7bn, to which the Gvt added half a billion to get their initial 2.3bn bid figure.

I hardly think that the coalition could've put the brakes on the project in 2010 - half of it was already built by then and our reputation as a country would've been utterly destroyed. It was a total fait accompli.

As for whether anyone should've objected to Labour bidding for the Olympics on 'our' behalf at the time, perhaps they thought it would 'only' cost £2.4 billion (not £9 billion) as that was what we were all being told. (I guess they wouldn't have reckoned on a destroyed UK economy by 2008 either).

Besides, as I always say, if you're the one in charge, you take the (sole) responsibility - bouquet if you're right and brickbat if you're wrong. The oft-claimed "but the other guys also thought that!" defence is lame in the extreme in my view, be it concerning the derugulation of banks, Iraq, holding the Olympics here or whatever, just as it would be in normal everyday life/business. Accountability, basically.

(OT, btw, did anyone see Brown on Leveson the other day? Good heavens).

Here's why the Opening Ceremony will be shit. Because they're always shit. Every major sporting event with an opening (or indeed closing) ceremonies, the ceremonies are a pile of toss.

A 7 billion pound overspend. Either everyone involved is corrupt, everyone involved us a drooling vegetable, or a mix of both.

Whut? The Chinese one was incredible.

I love the Olympic opening ceremonies. As Grum.,, said, the Chinese one was particularly speculatur, but they are always fantastic.

I have to respectfully disagree - I think 90% of those I've ever had the misfortune to catch, have been embarrassing nonsense.

They're usually good... if you like 3 hours of formation dancing, sparklers and 'traditional' music.

They could do a massive, thousands-strong Morris dance!

I do

I think I always most marvel at the organisation and coordination of thousands of performers. Anything where hundreds of people work together to perform a visual show always makes me smile. Probably because of the time I had to try to teach the entire 'Thriller' dance to 140 nine to eleven year olds...

I kind of like the tweeness and the tourist brochure display of 'this is who we are' that often plays up to the country's own stereotypes. Yes, it can be nonsense, but I like watching them, anyway.

Anyone seen the mockup of yon Lympic thingy yet?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3noT8vw3l7Q/T ... asant2.jpg

Holy shit! Its a wicker man! LOCOG are going to burn pepsi drinkers to death!

You guys know that is fake, right?