What Is Making You Feel "grrr" Today ?

The thing that made me feel GRRRR about that was, the security firm were 'hung out to dry' were only guilty of taking on a job that was too big for them, they were initially asked to hire 2000 security guards, not an easy task, the wages offered were little over minimum wage, the job would only last 1 month, most were being hired months in advance and had to still be available for the Olympic duty, and the security vetting was perhaps the highest it's been for any event in the world.

And then 2-3 months before the Olympics the security firm were told that the number wasn't 2000, they now needed 10,000 security guards, should the security firm have said no to perhaps their largest employer and to potentially their largest ever contract?

Most companies would have taken the job and tried their hardest to fulfill the new contract.

The thing that gets me is, who was the person who made the mistake of asking for 2000, then decided just months from the start that the figure needed to be 10,000?, we're not talking about a little error, this was massive.

That person is the man who should have been hauled before a parliamentary committee and hung out to dry, not a company that simply bit off more than it could chew when it was put in an impossible position.

I guess you didn't watch until the end as the urinals, or petals as they were referred to, were placed on the end of metal stems which were raised to form the Olympic cauldron.

The pictures in this article show it well: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti....html?ITO=1490

Oh, that looks nice.

No, I didn't even manage the end of the athletes' parade.

Neither did I: thank God for PVRs

Nick-H

I'm sort of in your camp over the present sportsfest 'spectacle'.

I'm amused that this thread had a few comments in the run up to the sportsfest, managing maybe 2 full pages over 3 or 4 months, and someone says Grrr about the British National Anthem applying to Wales & Scotland (2 regions I always thought were the attributes of Britain) and multiple pages are deployed in replies over what appears to be just a few moments.

For mine, it's not that the sportsfest occurs, sport in some way or another is assumed to be part of our lives. Most TV 'news' programs present a sports segment.

Rather, it's the hype associated with this particular sportsfest.

Given that the Opening Ceremony has been turned into more than a grand parade, I wonder sometimes how host nations have justified plundering taxpayers funds to support on the one hand (typically) an embarrassment to national pride, and on the other a globally televised equivalent of an all-day-sucker for TV addicts.

Here, I must admit to my view that TV is the equivalent of an electronic dummy (pacifier to some). Program content is controlled by the state in order to pacify the public.

I suppose (currently) living 14 hours away from London, I am in the fortunate position that delayed free2air broadcasts mean that the sportsfest hype doesn't dominate all. I had what you are enduring 4 years ago with the China charade.

Maybe the more important matter is the propensity to focus resources on an increasingly small range of issues. Here in Australia we are witnessing the gradual demise of print 'news' to behind an electronic paywall. The discussions associated with this have focused on two central issues.

First, that for the past few decades, with both an increase in the number of hours of electronic broadcasting (whether via payTV or free2air), and a dissolution of revenue per minute, there has been a concomitant reduction in funding for drama and associated product. Now, re-runs and spectacle events dominate.

Second is the Murdoch Mantra. That is, to sell 'news' and other 'events', the news or event MUST either be related to the advertiser, or if an advertiser relationship is not possible, then the news or event needs to be presented in a way that does not diminish the interests of current advertisers and/or promotes the possibility of growing new advertisers.

The point here is that print media is waning because of electronic media, which in turn is over-reaching itself and unable to churn out sufficient quality content, relying on re-runs, spectacle events, and 'news' with merely an inexpensive &/or narrow focus. And, so the Opening Ceremony is but a spectacle event for this medium and really has little to do with the sportsfest

I am constantly reminded by the similarity of event funding and the media with the GFC. As most will be aware, the GFC has evolved to governments bailing out the oligarchic banking sector, which in turn is fashioning national policy on how to handle the GFC (which is clearly in the interests of the banking industry). It seems to me that governments are using taxpayer funds for 'events' such as the Opening Parade, in order to maintain taxpayer focus on the event.

I see the Opening Ceremony as but another taxpayer funded 'event' to keep taxpayers from bitching about something else.

And, like you Nick-H, sport itself is not a great passion.



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Well, I'm ten hours away from London. It seems that 2-3 pages of my newspapers are going to be devoted to Olympics until it's over. I don't watch TV, but I'm sure it would take more than Olympic games to nudge the parade of Tamil serials and films, the chosen opiate of this part of the world, aside.

Studies have shown (usually the prelude to bullshit, but, in this case I read one of them at the time of the last Commonwealth Games, and it was convincing) that these huge events are nothing but a liability to the countries that host them, and that they can be ruinous to poorer countries. One wonders why any country in its right mind would queue up, would hotly compete, for the dubious privilege. I guess there is a contingent to whose egos it pampers and a contingent whose pockets it fills.

Am I trying to deny people their sport? No, of course not. Even if it were to be done in a field, without the economic-blood-sucking ego-pampering mammoth-show-time years-to-build city-paralysing stuff, I expect it would still fill the papers and the TV of those countries. Us non-sports people would still grumble, but each to their own. We grumble and move on. I don't like Thai restaurant food either: millions do.

What's more, even in the face of all our arguments as to why this sort of thing should not happen, or, rather, should not happen in the way that it does, I enjoy a good spectacle too. Even if I had been planning to unplug the TV for the subsequent ("frickin" ) 17 days, my personal peeve is that I was actually expecting to enjoy this, and I was very disappointed.

I enjoyed the opening ceremony, but maybe because I wasn't expecting it to be amazing, I knew it had to tick far too many PC boxes.

Yep, in this political love affair with neo-classical economics, while such adherents bemoan social welfare they are not averse to business welfare.

Businesses in London, and those servicing the sportsfest, will do very nicely. That the taxpayer will be footing the debt for eons ought not be the focus for anyone's attention.




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"while such adherents* bemoan social welfare they are not averse to business welfare."

welcome to the current American political scene.....

*Republicans/Tea Party knuckleheads

Sama

It is just not the US, Neo-Classical ideology has dominated the English speaking nations and many European ones as well.

Perhaps the US electoral system - where less than half the population typically votes and most voters are mostly wealthy WASP's - has facilitated the worst excess - the Tea Party knuckleheads.




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Not really. If wealthy WASPs were the majority voters, the US political landscape would have been like South Africa of the '70s & '80s.

Tea Party is unfortunately worse than knucklehead. The socio-economic demographics distribution of "Tea Party" is a separate topic of discussion.

I just love 'em ! As long as they provide me with better entertainment than what's on TV sure. It is very unlikely that a Tea Partier will mistakenly land in NYC, or even venture off the mainland

As long as tea party is a force, one can expect the Republicans slowly erode its National Ticket every four years. Long live BJs

Objectively speaking - Very few Olympics have made money. Only after 1984 (LA) did the hosts look at public-private partnership (at least in the US) Athens of course was a big loss. Most nations host Olympics to show that have big cojones !!

that my govt. throws all type of money into thugs like the TSA to try to protect the US from another 9/11, but when it comes to domestic terrorists*, it fails miserably.

I'm all for Chris Rock's suggestion: if we can't have gun control, make bullets $500 a piece.

*skinhead a%%holes

Sama

After a recent shooting in a picture theatre, outrage was similarly expressed.

Yet, those influential shooters claimed it wasn't the gun, it was the shooter. Somehow, gun responsibility is the answer. On that premise, why are there speeding laws, land-use laws, etc., etc.? One law for the rich, another....!!!

On the issue of the US picture theatre gun deaths, those here in Australia making comment noted that on the day after the theatre massacre, 12 people also died in a single pick-up truck accident - the latter didn't get a mention.

Similarly, over the past 11 years, some 1930 US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan (refer here ). In 2010 alone, there were more than 31,000 gun related deaths in the US. Funny how people moan about the deaths of US soldiers, but not handgun deaths!

THIS article has a diagram showing handgun deaths across 20 nations. I bet you can't guess which nation leads the table?


GO, Clint!

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Yes, but to think that prohibiting all firearms/ammunition might eliminate all spree killings is silly. I mean China has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world ..... and yet knife killings like this are all to common there in recent years. These blade attacks seem to go well under the radar though & that is quite perplexing really.

In 100 years, I'm sure they'll have MRI/PET scanners that are as fast and noninvasive as blood pressure monitors are today. They will be able to predict the madness well before 'they' go mad.

In the mean time, these kooks are going to use whatever means they can get their hands, legally or illegally, to do what they feel they need to do.

Shooter was Army vet....

"Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran who was a “psychological operations specialist,” has been identified as the gunman in the deadly Sikh temple shooting, officials said Monday morning."

weird.