OK, I know there was a discussion about the opening ceremony but I can't believe nobody has taken an interest in the sport at these Olympics so I thought I would start up a thread. That decision was made in no small part due to me being immensely proud to be British on the most successful day in British Olympic history.
My sport of choice is mountain biking and while I have little hope that team GB will medal in either of the cross country events I can really appreciate the effort that the track and road cycling teams must have put in to completely tie down the field. 4 out of 5 golds on the track and the fifth should have been ours were it not for an unfortunate error.
I know Russia will come back like a train now that the Athletics have started but what does everyone else think of GBs chances of holding onto 3rd spot on the medals table? Will the US beat China? And what's happened to Australia? Bellow the Kiwis now, really?
Yeah I had to admit I was kind of surprised there was no subject here!
Great games so far, and have really enjoyed spending far too much time watching it on TV. Great day for GB today who are now 3rd in the medal table, will be wonderful if we can stay there until the end of next week. Of course we can't get close to US/China, but realistically I think that place would be a real achievement.
Watching the boxing and there has been some really crappy rulings in some of the fights. The one the other night when the Indian chap beat the last American in the competition was disgusting, even the referee had already pre-empted the decision and was already lifting the other fighters glove.
Seeing the fattest guy ever in the Olympics ever was pretty amusing (i can't remember his exact weight, but apparently it was more than the entire Japanese women's gymnastics team combined )
mattyrm wrote:Why be proud when you didn't do anything?
I am looking forward to beating my own personal goals, but the Olympics mean nothing.
And that's good news I'f you aren't Chinese.
I'm not allowed to be proud of a fellow Britain? Misery loves company huh fella, wont find it here.
Pacific wrote:YSeeing the fattest guy ever in the Olympics ever was pretty amusing (i can't remember his exact weight, but apparently it was more than the entire Japanese women's gymnastics team combined )
Yeh I think it was above 30 stone. Props to the guy less than half his weight who threw him.
mattyrm wrote:Why be proud when you didn't do anything?
I am looking forward to beating my own personal goals, but the Olympics mean nothing.
And that's good news I'f you aren't Chinese.
I'm not allowed to be proud of a fellow Britain? Misery loves company huh fella, wont find it here.
Sorry, I'm with matty on this one. I have done absolutely nothing that in any way affects Team GB getting gold. They can be proud, their trainers and parents can be proud, whoever sets sports policy can be proud. But it would be insulting for me to try and bask in the glory when I've done absolutely nothing bar being born on the same bit of land. Well done to the athletes - nothing to do with us.
While I agree with a lot of the media that the success of Team GB may have an inspirational effect, and shows the results of working hard to achieve something, I kinda wish we were promoting USEFUL things. It's very impressive that Athlete A has spent his entire life training to throw a pointy stick the farthest, but wouldn't it be better if he'd spent his entire life training to do something useful? Every nurse in that opening ceremony is more worthy of praise than any of the athletes.
mattyrm wrote:Why be proud when you didn't do anything?
I am looking forward to beating my own personal goals, but the Olympics mean nothing.
And that's good news I'f you aren't Chinese.
I'm not allowed to be proud of a fellow Britain? Misery loves company huh fella, wont find it here.
Sure you are, you are allowed to do anything you want, I don't have to follow suit though.
I'm not miserable either, im just saying, I don't feel proud of other peoples achievements, it means nothing to me. Kinda like when someone you don't know dies.
I mean, some part of you empathizes because you think "sucks for him" or "I'm glad that wasn't me" but you aren't SAD about it are you? Not like if your Dad snuffs it or something, because I need a connection to feel pride. I might be proud if my brother or my best mate won a gold medal, but as It stands I don't much give a feth.
Swings and roundabouts obviously, I'm pleased that Jessica Ennis won because she seems really nice, alternatively I hate Victoria Pendleton because she seems like an uppity slut. But I feel no personal pride about Ennis, I just feel its the wrong word.
Here is an alternative, if you feel pride when a British stranger does something good, do you feel shame when a British stranger does something bad?
Here is an alternative, if you feel pride when a British stranger does something good, do you feel shame when a British stranger does something bad?
Yes actually...
More so in that case...
He isn't basking in their glory. They were the ones that did it but they represent the entire country in that particular sport and many of them have said so, so it's not just a win for them but the entire country...
Obviously people will have differing feelings about it...
OT: I really like watching some of the sports i have absolutely no knowledge about...
Oddly mesmerising
If you say you had nothing to do with the sucess and team GB you clearly don't know about the craptonne of money that every person in the UK has paid to get this far. Apparently £150 each just for the games. Yes, we'll see some, if not all, of that back, but we have all put up allot of cash upfront to get these people to where they are. I see no problem in takeing pride in what team GB have done, in the same way people can be upset when someone famous they never knew but had a big influence on them dies.
Anyway, we have done very very well. We have no hope of beating the US or China, but if we can keep going and stay 3rd in the golds and keep winning, then we have done better than we could ever have hoped for.
If this olympics inspires a generation of kids to take up sport and keep themselves fit and healthy instead of causing trouble in their neighbourhood or sitting on their arses playing videogames and eating oven chips, then it will have been a success. That is something to be justifiably proud of.
A lot of these miserable fethers complaining are just that - miserable fethers. You haven't been let into a secret that we're not aware of, you aren't more incisive, mature or astute, you just see a bunch of people enjoying something and can't stand it. Why is it so terrible for us to support our athletes? Have some national pride, for crying out loud.
Oh and don't get me started on nurses. They earn plenty, are over-politicised, and are, frankly, crap at their jobs for the most part. Anyone who thinks they're 'angels' obviously hasn't been on a hospital ward too often.
Albatross wrote:If this olympics inspires a generation of kids to take up sport and keep themselves fit and healthy instead of causing trouble in their neighbourhood or sitting on their arses playing videogames and eating oven chips, then it will have been a success. That is something to be justifiably proud of.
A lot of these miserable fethers complaining are just that - miserable fethers. You haven't been let into a secret that we're not aware of, you aren't more incisive, mature or astute, you just see a bunch of people enjoying something and can't stand it. Why is it so terrible for us to support our athletes? Have some national pride, for crying out loud.
Oh and don't get me started on nurses. They earn plenty, are over-politicised, and are, frankly, crap at their jobs for the most part. Anyone who thinks they're 'angels' obviously hasn't been on a hospital ward too often. It's a job like any other.
I just hope the fething thing makes people think more about football. Footballers are such fething cocks. I hope that people look at the athletes at the games and think "this lot are much better than the arseholes I usually spend all my time fawning over"
Jessica Ennis seems like a really nice down to earth lass, the fact that an orrible little chav like Wayne Rooney makes her look like a pauper will never sit well with me.
Regards national pride.. feth national pride! Patriotism is not a virtue in my book and it never will be. Its the virtue of the vicious said Oscar and I am with him.
I bet all the guys in the KKK describe themselves as Patriots. Or the EDL, or the BNP.
Patriotic people are almost always arseholes! Whenever I have met an American who has said of himself "I am a Patriot" he almost always follows it with jingoism and bigotry. Too often being Patriotic means taking the piss out of other peoples countries and trying to make yourself sound better than everyone else.
I am a miserable fether mind you, a self confessed one.
Regards national pride.. feth national pride! Patriotism is not a virtue in my book and it never will be. Its the virtue of the vicious said Oscar and I am with him.
Just so you know, that statement is pretty much a meaningless platitude. You could apply it to anything you don't like: 'Socialism is the virtue of the vicious', 'Democracy is the virtue of the vicious' etc.
Also, your interpretation of it as being exclusively negative is flawed. As there is no direct quotation of that phrase (it's an attribution to Wilde), it's impossible to properly contextualise it. If you look at the syntax of the sentence, patriotism is listed as a virtue, one held by vicious people. It doesn't imply exclusivity, i.e. 'patriotism can only be found in vicious people' or 'only vicious people are patriotic'. Neither does the phrase explicitly state that patriotism is regarded by the vicious as a virtue, though this is often the assumed meaning. Moreover, it is often quoted as 'patriotism is a virtue of the vicious', which could be read as 'one virtue posessed by vicious people is patriotism'. Likewise the other version of that quote can be read as 'the only virtue that vicious people possess is patriotism'. Wilde was active during the height of the British Empire - he was probably surrounded by extraordinarily patriotic people, who were probably equally vicious. Perhaps he regarded love of one's country as the only redeeming feature of such people?
I bet all the guys in the KKK describe themselves as Patriots. Or the EDL, or the BNP.
So, if a group of bad people describe themselves as a thing, that thing is bad? No, that's not how it works. Harold Shipman was a doctor who also happened to be one of the worst serial murderers in history. Are all doctors serial murderers?
Patriotic people are almost always arseholes! Whenever I have met an American who has said of himself "I am a Patriot" he almost always follows it with jingoism and bigotry. Too often being Patriotic means taking the piss out of other peoples countries and trying to make yourself sound better than everyone else.
No, that's not what patriotism is. That's something else.
I am a miserable fether mind you, a self confessed one.
Albatross wrote:
No, that's not what patriotism is. That's something else.
Yes of course it is, but that's what people think patriotism is, and thats what patriotism turns into, because whenever you meet someone who described themselves as Patriotic they almost always turn out to be jingoistic as feth. You know for a fact thats the case.. go drink in a bar in the States and wait until a bloke says he is a "true patriot" what follows is almost always the same tired excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others.
I am a miserable fether mind you, a self confessed one.
That's a bingo!
Damn straight. I was expecting Team GB to win gold considering England are so awful at football, but Murray picked up where they left off and won a gold despite the fact he always feths up when it really matters!
Regards national pride.. feth national pride! Patriotism is not a virtue in my book and it never will be. Its the virtue of the vicious said Oscar and I am with him.
Just so you know, that statement is pretty much a meaningless platitude. You could apply it to anything you don't like: 'Socialism is the virtue of the vicious', 'Democracy is the virtue of the vicious' etc.
Although you very rarely have Socialism or Democracy used as an excuse to inflict violence on people, whereas too much nationalism seems to be an invite to inflict some of the worst violence in history against the 'others', whoever they might be.
Anyway!
Some good stuff on today. Happy Murray got a gold at Wimbledon, although Federer may well have not turned up I have never seen him play so poorly.
I can't really get excited about the 100m, not really enough to get your teeth into (and it gets tiresome with them all behaving as though they are ghetto-gangsters all the time), and the only thing I was rooting for was for drugs-cheat Gatlin not to win the gold.
If this olympics inspires a generation of kids to take up sport and keep themselves fit and healthy instead of causing trouble in their neighbourhood or sitting on their arses playing videogames and eating oven chips, then it will have been a success. That is something to be justifiably proud of.
Completely agree.. Britain is fast becoming a fatter and more unhealthy country, and anything that can reverse that trend has to be supported I think.
I just hope the fething thing makes people think more about football. Footballers are such fething cocks. I hope that people look at the athletes at the games and think "this lot are much better than the arseholes I usually spend all my time fawning over"
Jessica Ennis seems like a really nice down to earth lass, the fact that an orrible little chav like Wayne Rooney makes her look like a pauper will never sit well with me.
Regards national pride.. feth national pride! Patriotism is not a virtue in my book and it never will be. Its the virtue of the vicious said Oscar and I am with him.
I bet all the guys in the KKK describe themselves as Patriots. Or the EDL, or the BNP.
Patriotic people are almost always arseholes! Whenever I have met an American who has said of himself "I am a Patriot" he almost always follows it with jingoism and bigotry. Too often being Patriotic means taking the piss out of other peoples countries and trying to make yourself sound better than everyone else.
I am a miserable fether mind you, a self confessed one.
Do you know how many professional footballers there are? It's bloody rediclious how people keep saying things like you have. There are a few dodgy footballers, there are dodgy drug taking cheating athletes. There are dogy actors, musicians, celebrities, firemen, police officers, bums, office workers. Why why why do people have to try and brandish a whole group wi the same tag. There isn't a single footballer in the Norwxh City squad that has done anything morally wrong, in the public eye at least, bar one dodgy rumour. Im not going to try and defend someone like Joey Barton, or John Terry, they are very dodgy to say the least. I wouldn't say Rooney is that bad, he's not an ideal role model.
Yes Jessica Ennis is fantastic, but what about the US athlete who just won bronze int eh 100 meters, been banned twice hasn't he? What a fantastic person he is.
As for national pride of course you don't have to join in, but being patriotic doesn't make you a dick. Proud ought not be the right word, but watching Murray win today, and all the other winners we've had I've felt something good. If you can't enjoy something like this then I think it's your loss, but no one fan force you too so fair enough.
All I did was partly fund Team GB through taxes. The Olympics should focus on individual athletes' success, not some nationalistic farce. It is, at the end of the day, a contest between INDIVIDUALS.
The point of Wilde's quote was much as matty used it, and certainly it has meaning beyond a platitude.
Democracy and Socialism aren't virtues. Virtues are things like charity, industry, generosity, courage, insightfulness and honesty. Positive and admirable qualities of a person. Many people consider patriotism a virtue, but Wilde's point is that it's often the only one possessed by people who are otherwise vile and brutish.
Wilde was saying that just because someone's patriotic is no real statement about their character; unlike other virtues, it's less correlated with being a good person, and sadly common among complete jerks, in the forms of jingoism and nationalism.
I hope the people going on about how they can't get behind something you have a commonality with (nationality in this case), extend the sentiment to your local footie team, your pals and your own kids too. Since misery is unflattering enough without hypocrisy.
notprop wrote:And yet is currently winning mor gold medals per capita than any other nation or so I hear on the news.
I know we have to go back to work tomorrow but try cheer up you bunch of grumpy sods.
So, us Swedes got our first gold medal of the Games today (sailing, Star class). No one in Sweden seems to have noticed. When we lost the women's triathlon by 2 thousands of a second the other day the tabloids were crying bloody murder. Guess I'll have to wait and see what they say tomorrow, although I doubt it'll be anything nice...
Mannahnin wrote:The point of Wilde's quote was much as matty used it, and certainly it has meaning beyond a platitude.
I mean using the quote in that manner, to disparage patriots. People toss it around as if it means 'patriotism is bad, guys' when it doesn't. Or at least, we don't know if that's what he meant, because we don't know that he definitely said it iirc. Also, I hate Wilde, precisely because all he seemed to do was quip for quipping's sake. He was a louche, dissoulute smart-arse.
Many people consider patriotism a virtue, but Wilde's point is that it's often the only one possessed by people who are otherwise vile and brutish.
I said almost that exact thing in my post, Manny.
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Pacific wrote:
Although you very rarely have Socialism or Democracy used as an excuse to inflict violence on people...
Pacific, you seem like a nice chap. I have nothing against you, but... Well...
Wow. Mind=Blown.
Let's just leave it at that. I don't want to be rude.
Here is an alternative, if you feel pride when a British stranger does something good, do you feel shame when a British stranger does something bad?
People often feel national pride and/or shame don't they? Arent you always getting on about your queen?
And the issue/Problem is compounded beause the world is quick to generalize about people based upon things like origin and other associations.
We see it here on Dakka on a daily basis when a thread stats about something: it then becomes You Americans blah, blah, blah..., you christians..., you hippies..., etc., etc.
Mannahnin wrote:The point of Wilde's quote was much as matty used it, and certainly it has meaning beyond a platitude.
I mean using the quote in that manner, to disparage patriots. People toss it around as if it means 'patriotism is bad, guys' when it doesn't.
That's not what matty expressed as his opinion, though. He said patriotism isn't good, not that it is bad. He doesn't consider patriotism anything particularly positive or admirable, which is in keeping with his general lack of empathy with strangers. He didn't say patriots are necessarily bad people. It's like that exchange from Trainspotting:
Renton:The Sick Boy method?
Swanney: Well, it nearly worked for him, hey.
Renton: Well, he's always been lacking in moral fiber.
Swanney: He knows a lot about Sean Connery.
Renton: That's hardly a substitute.
I think we can all agree that while Sick Boy's devotion to Sean Connery may be impressive, it's not a quality which demonstrates any particular strength of character.
Okay, maybe matty went a BIT further, saying he finds a high correlation between patriotism and jingoistic jerks like in the BNP. Which I would guess was Wilde's experience too. I'm happily patriotic, but I don't boast about it.
Albatross wrote:Or at least, we don't know if that's what he meant, because we don't know that he definitely said it iirc. Also, I hate Wilde, precisely because all he seemed to do was quip for quipping's sake. He was a louche, dissoulute smart-arse.
He also did some writing, you might have noticed. Quipping is a fun activity and a way to show off. Giving toy soldiers fancy paint jobs and playing with them in competitive events with your fellow hobbyists are two more fun activities and ways to show off. As is singing in a band.
I can't believe no Brits have mentioned that Zoe Smith broke the UK's women's 58kg clean and jerk record. She CJed 121KGs, about 270lbs...and she's only 5'3" 120 or so. She hasn't been lifting for long, she might be a medal contender by 2016.
Henners91 wrote:If I hear 'our boys' again I'm going to vomit.
All I did was partly fund Team GB through taxes. The Olympics should focus on individual athletes' success, not some nationalistic farce. It is, at the end of the day, a contest between INDIVIDUALS.
But it's not just about individuals, take Andy Murray for example, he said he watched the athletics the night before his final, he said the center court support was fantastic. He then put in his best performance ever against one of the top 3. Could just be a coincidence, but I'd say it's quite likely he was so pumped up because of how well Team GB were doing, and the more vocal crowd at the Olympics. Of course it's not just about individuals. And anyway it is about individual succes, otherwise we'd just move on as soon as an individual won and not think of them again.
Amaya wrote:I can't believe no Brits have mentioned that Zoe Smith broke the UK's women's 58kg clean and jerk record. She CJed 121KGs, about 270lbs...and she's only 5'3" 120 or so. She hasn't been lifting for long, she might be a medal contender by 2016.
I knew about that but mainly as a source for dirty jokes...
I'm completely shocked at the reactions of some of you.
The Olympics are completely amazing, and are a great way for countries to come together and compete in a way where no one dies.
I believe the UN Security Council should just be made up of the top 5 countries from the previous Olympics. And, countries that don't win a single gold medal don't count as real countries (I'm looking at you Belgium and Norway!)
Yeah but they don't "come together" competative sports ENCOURAGE hatred! Its the exact opposite of what the press tell everyone! Look at football or Rugby or Cricket. England V Scotland don't compete in friendship and love and happiness, it basically turns into rampant jingoism and flag waving. The crowd get whipped into a frenzy about how much better their country is and then they beat each other up after the game!
As I said, I'm a miserable fether, but when you take off the rose tinted glasses its hard not to be cynical. It doesn't upset me though, I fething loved it in Afghanistan, I revel in hatred and war, I just think we should be realistic. Human beings are tribal and confrontational, so we get our kicks with sports these days becayse nobody dies. Saying they encourage friendship is utterly delusional. It is 100% total nonsense. Look at Russia V US during the cold war.. it was like war via proxy whenever they competed at anything.
I also think sports fans like to cheer so much because it makes weak people feel better about themselves when their countrymen win things, because they suck at life.
I mean look at all the chicken hawks, especially in the US/UK. How many people go "Oh WE won in Iraq" and boast about their military, but they never served. They just like to brag about their country or their grand parents. I respect doers not sayers. I admire a serving soldier in a rear echelon more than I admre the kids of a medal of honour winner. Or a Norwegian Olympian who comes 7th more than a British civilian who supports the British team and works in a call centre, I don't care how feverently they cheer. What the feth did they do to earn any plaudits?!
I also note that for the first three days nobody in the UK gave a feth about the Olympics. All these Johnny come latelys must think Matty doesn't have a Facebook account!
The first three days it was all "TEAM GB SUCK" and "Who cares about the Olympics" then they hit double figures and its Olympic fever... what a pile of gak!
I at least will remain aloof and disinterested, I don't give a feth if they over take China and the USA and a London tramp wins the 100 meters in 2016.
Amaya wrote:I can't believe no Brits have mentioned that Zoe Smith broke the UK's women's 58kg clean and jerk record. She CJed 121KGs, about 270lbs...and she's only 5'3" 120 or so. She hasn't been lifting for long, she might be a medal contender by 2016.
I knew about that but mainly as a source for dirty jokes...
My friend got a picture with her while she (Zoe) was mooching around outside the olympic venues. Quite funny as he is well over 6ft and a well built (well, he is pretty chunky but with plenty of muscle underneath ) waterpolo player and she could probably pick him up and snap him like a twig
mattyrm wrote:
I also think sports fans like to cheer so much because it makes weak people feel better about themselves when their countrymen win things, because they suck at life.
Yes, everyone else is weak and you are strong because you don't enjoy anything. Good for you. That must be immensely fulfilling, whinging about everything. It's a sign of strength, after all.
Did a batch of radioactive Daily Mails get loose and start biting people. Doubt theres enough cheese in the world to compliment this whine fest.
People moan when Britains bad at sport, people moan when Britains good at sport. Whats the obsession some people have in this Country with wallowing in self-inflicted misery
Matty's got the right of it for the most part. Nationalistic sports pride is really pointless. The medal count even more so.
If someone has interesting story, is an exceptional athlete, or is in a sport I give a feth about I might pay attention, but such feelings cross national boundaries.
I don't give a damn that America didn't get the gold in the 100m, I'm more impressed that Bolt beat the competition by about two strides. Fething amazing finishing photo.
cpt_fishcakes wrote:Did a batch of radioactive Daily Mails get loose and start biting people. Doubt theres enough cheese in the world to compliment this whine fest.
People moan when Britains bad at sport, people moan when Britains good at sport. Whats the obsession some people have in this Country with wallowing in self-inflicted misery
To be fair mate, I don't think its people, I think its just me.
I mean, I don't see any other fether complaining do you? So you should direct your comments at me, everyone else is on the "pro olympic" team.
And im not wallowing in self pityl, that's probably the point. I feel great, I never get depressed or lonely.. I've got the night off, I've been to the gym, im fething about on the internet, I might do some painting, Ive got too much gak I want to do for myself so I cant be fethed with the Olympics.. maybe the miserable people are the ones that have feth all better to do but watch TV and pat themselves on the back for the accomplishments of others?
Albatross wrote:
mattyrm wrote:
I also think sports fans like to cheer so much because it makes weak people feel better about themselves when their countrymen win things, because they suck at life.
Yes, everyone else is weak and you are strong because you don't enjoy anything. Good for you. That must be immensely fulfilling, whinging about everything. It's a sign of strength, after all.
Well enlighten me, why do you feel better when a stranger from Liverpool wins a medal but feel nothing when a stranger from Hamburg does?
If you are on the fething dole and your son has got hepatitis, what the feth do you care about the Olympics? Ive always just thought there is more important gak to worry about and over enthusiasm for being a fan is just a distraction.
I guess you are either massively into sports or you aren't. As you are well aware, I don't really support England in the football either. I couldnt give a gak what those clowns get up to, because I feel no better or no worse depending on their fortunes, it has nothing whatsoever to do with me.
I haven't watched an Olympic event and I wont see one because I get nothing from it. If you do then good luck to you, but I really dont understand the whole thing. Why did you seem to take it personally what I said about fans cheering so much? Clearly some people do feel better about themselves when team GB wins a medal, but really, what has it got to do with them?
And as I said, the general public and the press going from utter disinterest to sudden joy after Team GB started winning is as blatantly obvious as it is amusing.
mattyrm wrote:Yeah but they don't "come together" competative sports ENCOURAGE hatred! Its the exact opposite of what the press tell everyone! Look at football or Rugby or Cricket. England V Scotland don't compete in friendship and love and happiness, it basically turns into rampant jingoism and flag waving. The crowd get whipped into a frenzy about how much better their country is and then they beat each other up after the game!
You can tell you haven't watched any of the olympics. I would hardly call it encouraging hatred when the cheers for other countrys are almost as loud as the cheers for the UK. When Murry and his partner lost the doubles they cheerd and clapped for the winners. There has been no sign of hatred at all.
mattyrm wrote:Yeah but they don't "come together" competative sports ENCOURAGE hatred! Its the exact opposite of what the press tell everyone! Look at football or Rugby or Cricket. England V Scotland don't compete in friendship and love and happiness, it basically turns into rampant jingoism and flag waving. The crowd get whipped into a frenzy about how much better their country is and then they beat each other up after the game!
You can tell you haven't watched any of the olympics. I would hardly call it encouraging hatred when the cheers for other countrys are almost as loud as the cheers for the UK. When Murry and his partner lost the doubles they cheerd and clapped for the winners. There has been no sign of hatred at all.
Its because the Olympics is dear as feth and as a result pleasant middle/upper class people attend.
If the whole world was full of pleasent middle class people everything would be alright, but it isn't.
Go watch some chavy sports like football and see what happens. feth me, how many people got stabbed at the Euros!?
I usually start a thread for the football tournaments, but I was away when the Olympics started, so I'm glad somebody took up the slack!
If you are British and pay your taxes, or have bought a lottery ticket in the last 7 years, then you have contributed to the London Olympics. That gives you the right to moan, moan, and moan again. It is the right of every Englishman (and woman) to be a miserable git
Doubly so for me - I've paid my taxes and served my country. When it comes to the London Olympics - my word is gospel
On a final note, I feel sorry for the North Korean guy who lost out on a medal - ten years in the salt mines for him (if he's lucky)
I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness.
As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the 'dazzling royals', laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.
With reports of the French Team kicking into full scale moaning mode over GBs cycling success, I was browsing through some French news sites to see what they were saying.
There full of complaining about last years riots, Boris Johnson being a clown, athletes not being born in Britain etc. This line from Le Monde stood out
“Mo Farah, the god of 10,000 meters who was born in Somalia and Andy Murray, a native of a country even more remote and wild, Scotland, are excluded from the real British Virgin club.”
They just compares Scotland to Somalia the swines
Not quite sure what the British Virgin Club is though, but I can imagine Andy Murrays quite happy not being a member
Well, me and Alby had a little spat about that earlier in the thread.. Mo Farrah isn't British is he!?
A practising Muslim who was BORN in Mogadishu, and couldn't speak a word of English when he arrived aged 8..the clue is in the title surely? If I went to China aged 8 and couldn't speak a word of Mandarin I wouldn't be Chinese now would I!? Id be a hairy white bloke who happened to live In China for a bit.
If he was currently up for armed robbery everyone would be after deporting him, but no no, gold medal, he's as British as jellied eels me old China.
I despise hypocrisy, and I know for a fact almost everyone (and me obviously) I would be slagging him off and saying we should deport him if he had done something awful... so I must stick by my guns and say that the good must go as well.
I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness.
As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the 'dazzling royals', laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.
This is the same guy who released a song five years ago about how America would never have a black president. Utter moron.
mattyrm wrote:Sadly, I think Mozza is a tit. :(
Can't imagine it would spoil your friendship.
EDIT: Wow, check out how much better this thread looks with Mattyrm on ignore. It's like I just dunked a baneblade with a slowed chimp's paintjob into a tub of simple green.
mattyrm wrote:Well enlighten me, why do you feel better when a stranger from Liverpool wins a medal but feel nothing when a stranger from Hamburg does?
Because that stranger from Liverpool is representing my country. I would have thought that was obvious. You support Middlesbrough. Why, if where the team is from is of no consequence to you? It's not like they're a good team.
Ah, I think I've solved the mystery. Supporting a team that wins would mean that you'd have to join in and celebrate with everyone else, participating in the shared enjoyment of something for it's own sake.
If you are on the fething dole and your son has got hepatitis, what the feth do you care about the Olympics? Ive always just thought there is more important gak to worry about and over enthusiasm for being a fan is just a distraction.
I don't think it's a zero-sum situation. You can enjoy a national sporting spectacle and also do other things that are more important. In fact, have you considered that the olympics may even be a welcome momentary distraction for people in that situation?
I guess you are either massively into sports or you aren't. As you are well aware, I don't really support England in the football either. I couldnt give a gak what those clowns get up to, because I feel no better or no worse depending on their fortunes, it has nothing whatsoever to do with me.
Well, I have my theories on that, but I'll keep them to myself.
I haven't watched an Olympic event and I wont see one because I get nothing from it. If you do then good luck to you, but I really dont understand the whole thing. Why did you seem to take it personally what I said about fans cheering so much?
Well, this:
mattyrm wrote:I also think sports fans like to cheer so much because it makes weak people feel better about themselves when their countrymen win things, because they suck at life.
..is actually pretty offensive to anyone who enjoys cheering on their national team. I don't consider myself a weak person who sucks at life because I enjoy cheering our sportspeople on. That's a ridiculously ignorant statement to make, Matt. You don't get it, fine.
That doesn't make the literally millions of people who do losers.
And as I said, the general public and the press going from utter disinterest to sudden joy after Team GB started winning is as blatantly obvious as it is amusing.
Yes, it must be really amusing to not expect to enjoy something and then be proven right. The rest of us who were initially fairly indifferent, but are now quite enjoying the olympics, are a right bunch of mugs. Looks like you win. Enjoy your 'victory'.
I just think it is good that for 2 weeks out of the year we can put aside the hand-wringing introspection and feel proud to be British for a change. We are constantly being told that jingoism and being patriotic is a bad thing so it makes a pleasant change to able to wave a flag and feel a bit of pride for one's country. Not only that, but anything that inspires kids to take up sport can only be a good thing. I have great hopes that the Olympics can really leave a lasting legacy in this country; not just in the facilities and arenas left behind but in the hopes, dreams and inspiration that it generates.
It bloody well ought to. We spent enough on it so we should see some return!
Do you think it's good when president Kirchner has got the bit between her teeth?
Well, I'm sure the Argies love it - and after all, jingoism is just a matter of perspective. But if you are asking me if I think it is wrong or shameful to take pride in my country, want it to be successful and a world beater, then I would have to say no. And anyway, what's wrong with wanting to live vicariously through others? I'm pump at running but I can appreciate someone else being good at it.
mattyrm wrote:My point stands, if you're going to criticise others for doing it, then you have to say the same about us if you want to have any integrity.
Not that I want to agree with Morissey or anything!
Who's criticising who for anything? If anything, most people in this thread are just fed up of others wanting to piss on their chips. If you don't like it fine but at least have the grace to allow others to bask in the glow of what is a small cog in the grand scheme of things really. After the 2 weeks are over we can go back to being dour, depressed, self-analytical neurotics.
filbert wrote:I just think it is good that for 2 weeks out of the year we can put aside the hand-wringing introspection and feel proud to be British for a change. We are constantly being told that jingoism and being patriotic is a bad thing so it makes a pleasant change to able to wave a flag and feel a bit of pride for one's country. Not only that, but anything that inspires kids to take up sport can only be a good thing. I have great hopes that the Olympics can really leave a lasting legacy in this country; not just in the facilities and arenas left behind but in the hopes, dreams and inspiration that it generates.
It bloody well ought to. We spent enough on it so we should see some return!
Hear, hear. I was there at the fencing last Wednesday and the sheer mass of British fans was astounding. For a nation which was so negative about the games, saying how it costs too much, it'll be a tragic failure, or someone will blow the gak out of it, the patriotism and pride I saw was really inspiring. After seeing Venezuela win the men's individual epee event at the ExCel, it's really inspired me to take up my own epee again and to start getting back into the sport (in fact, I'm wearing my mask as I'm typing this trying to break it in a bit). Even though we were eliminated in the first round, the uproar that followed whenever we scored was unbelieveable.
Possibly.. I feel I have more of an interest the less wide ranging it is as i support boro obviously.. But I'm in bed now and on my phone so you will have to wait for epic multi quote retorts. ;-)
Anyway, I have obviously made my point. I find overt patriotic displays to be grating, especially when British people gob off so much when Americans and Argies do it. That's the crux of the matter.
I just hope the fething thing makes people think more about football. Footballers are such fething cocks. I hope that people look at the athletes at the games and think "this lot are much better than the arseholes I usually spend all my time fawning over"
Jessica Ennis seems like a really nice down to earth lass, the fact that an horrible little chav like Wayne Rooney makes her look like a pauper will never sit well with me.
This I completely agree with. Football is overrated, overindulged and overpaid.
mattyrm wrote:
Regards national pride.. feth national pride! Patriotism is not a virtue in my book and it never will be. Its the virtue of the vicious said Oscar and I am with him.
I bet all the guys in the KKK describe themselves as Patriots. Or the EDL, or the BNP.
I cannot disagree more. Patriotism is a bonding principle, its as old as tribalism and valuable in any cohesive society. Sadly we no longer have much of a cohesive society but a national attitude of 'I'm alright jack'. Nothing pisses me off more. I am surprised that Matty is caught up with the New Britain mentality, as a servicemen you should know that he can call on your mates.
mattyrm wrote:
Patriotic people are almost always arseholes! Whenever I have met an American who has said of himself "I am a Patriot" he almost always follows it with jingoism and bigotry. Too often being Patriotic means taking the piss out of other peoples countries and trying to make yourself sound better than everyone else.
Perhaps you have been abroad too long or hanging around in chavtowns. The UK is heading the same way as the Americans with trying to push our 'greatness' in peoples faces, when its not being told to be angst ridden over the past instead. I prefer the older more gentil English culture: if you know you don't need to show. We have a strong culture and heritage and don't need to shove it in peoples faces, we know who we are. Some of us still do.
There is something to be said for quiet English understated resolve.
I really like the Olympics and have enjoyed this year, but it's been really hard because the TV coverage we're getting over here has been absolutely terrible. Tonight here's some swimming, then a final in some rowing because an Australian is in it, then more swimming, then a repeat of some earlier swimming, then some other event and Australian is in, then a two minute package of Australia's win in the hockey, then an interview with a swimmer.
I love getting to see the sports you never normally see, like fencing and table tennis, and this time I haven't seen any of them one. Apparently there's heavy coverage of that stuff on pay TV...
Glorioski wrote:I know Russia will come back like a train now that the Athletics have started but what does everyone else think of GBs chances of holding onto 3rd spot on the medals table? Will the US beat China? And what's happened to Australia? Bellow the Kiwis now, really?
The medal count is just so silly. I mean, what in the hell does it actually mean, because it sure doesn't measure a nation's sporting achievements. Think about how many medals are up for grabs in, say, rowing, compared to hockey. There's 14 in rowing, and two in hockey. Which would mean according to the medal count rowing is about 7 times more significant a sport than hockey, which is nonsense. Hockey has participation rates somewhere around 1,000 times as great as rowing, which means a win in hockey should carry far more weight than rowing... and yet according to the medal count the weighting is 7 times the other way.
I mean, just think about a country that manages to win the men's and women's basketball. That's one hell of a thing, and a real signal of a powerful sporting nation, but one single swimmer can win that, and a strong swim team will win double that. Is that because of swimming is a massive sport worldwide. Nah, there'd be what, 10,000 competitive swimmers across the planet? Compare that with the I don't know how many millions who play in a basketball league?
Now, I'm not saying anything to diminish any individual's win in any sport. All the individual did was choose their sport, compete and be the best in their field. They deserve their gold medal. But to add up all the medals each country has won and conclude that's means, well anything at all is just nonsense.
And before anyone thinks this is just sour grapes over Australia's performance, I've been arguing this point since Australia got fixated on the medal count at the Sydney Olympics. I've gotten stronger in this belief since then, as one of the reasons Australia managed to punch above its weight and rank so highly in the medal count was the strategy of picking out weaker events and getting athletes to switch to them - so instead of getting athletes to compete in major sports and maybe help them achieve a place in a final, instead we tried shifting them into obscure sports to try and sneak gold medal.
The result of that was that sports with genuine interest around the country, but in which it was expensive to develop a medal winning team, like hockey, had reduced funding, while we spent more money on weirdo sports.
It also meant we somehow produced a generation of swimmers who somehow became celebrities, despite the fact that outside of the Olympics no-one cared one bit for watching swimming.
I've been enjoying it. Seen lots of stuff I wouldn't normally watch.
Whats nice is as a Sky customer, they have put all the BBC 'online' options onto their own HD channels in the Sports section, so there are 24 HD and 24 non HD bonus Olympic channels on my Sky box at the mo.
Its been great, and good to see GB gain so many medals.
sebster wrote:I really like the Olympics and have enjoyed this year, but it's been really hard because the TV coverage we're getting over here has been absolutely terrible. Tonight here's some swimming, then a final in some rowing because an Australian is in it, then more swimming, then a repeat of some earlier swimming, then some other event and Australian is in, then a two minute package of Australia's win in the hockey, then an interview with a swimmer.
I love getting to see the sports you never normally see, like fencing and table tennis, and this time I haven't seen any of them one. Apparently there's heavy coverage of that stuff on pay TV...
This is something that has caught my attention here in the Uk, although here it has been fantastic. The BBC has a live stream every single sport which is currently being played on their website and also over several chanels if you have cable or satellite, all with commentary and free for licence payers (which is mandatory if you have a TV in the UK). You can rewind the streams on the net service too and watch everything which has already happened if you missed it. I actually feel my TV licence was well worth the money this year.
sebster wrote:
Glorioski wrote:I know Russia will come back like a train now that the Athletics have started but what does everyone else think of GBs chances of holding onto 3rd spot on the medals table? Will the US beat China? And what's happened to Australia? Bellow the Kiwis now, really?
The medal count is just so silly. I mean, what in the hell does it actually mean, because it sure doesn't measure a nation's sporting achievements. Think about how many medals are up for grabs in, say, rowing, compared to hockey. There's 14 in rowing, and two in hockey. Which would mean according to the medal count rowing is about 7 times more significant a sport than hockey, which is nonsense. Hockey has participation rates somewhere around 1,000 times as great as rowing, which means a win in hockey should carry far more weight than rowing... and yet according to the medal count the weighting is 7 times the other way.
I mean, just think about a country that manages to win the men's and women's basketball. That's one hell of a thing, and a real signal of a powerful sporting nation, but one single swimmer can win that, and a strong swim team will win double that. Is that because of swimming is a massive sport worldwide. Nah, there'd be what, 10,000 competitive swimmers across the planet? Compare that with the I don't know how many millions who play in a basketball league?
Now, I'm not saying anything to diminish any individual's win in any sport. All the individual did was choose their sport, compete and be the best in their field. They deserve their gold medal. But to add up all the medals each country has won and conclude that's means, well anything at all is just nonsense.
And before anyone thinks this is just sour grapes over Australia's performance, I've been arguing this point since Australia got fixated on the medal count at the Sydney Olympics. I've gotten stronger in this belief since then, as one of the reasons Australia managed to punch above its weight and rank so highly in the medal count was the strategy of picking out weaker events and getting athletes to switch to them - so instead of getting athletes to compete in major sports and maybe help them achieve a place in a final, instead we tried shifting them into obscure sports to try and sneak gold medal.
The result of that was that sports with genuine interest around the country, but in which it was expensive to develop a medal winning team, like hockey, had reduced funding, while we spent more money on weirdo sports.
It also meant we somehow produced a generation of swimmers who somehow became celebrities, despite the fact that outside of the Olympics no-one cared one bit for watching swimming.
I think your right, the medal table isn't a good way to assess a nations sporting prowess and I'm certainly not arguing that. But each discipline has their own medal table and that is a perfectly reasonable way to asses how healthy that particular sport is in your country. For example I don't think you could argue that British cycling or Rowing isn't in very good form right now. Compared to Australia, who (long before Sydney) always had very successful swimmers and it has to be asked what's gone wrong there.
Also for what it's worth I don't think there are any "wierdo" sports at the Olympics and I think it is a great way for those sports who don't get much time in the spotlight to showcase themselves to young people who think sport starts and ends at football (or Aussie rules in Australia's case). I think sports which have huge popularity generally take care of themselves as far as funding is concerned. I'm not going to back any initiative to give government funding to Manchester United's talent scouts.
To be honest I think Australia need to reassess how they value success at the Olympics. Even the British media rate the Bronze medal athletes for their achievement. For example, this is ridiculous...
sebster wrote:I really like the Olympics and have enjoyed this year, but it's been really hard because the TV coverage we're getting over here has been absolutely terrible. Tonight here's some swimming, then a final in some rowing because an Australian is in it, then more swimming, then a repeat of some earlier swimming, then some other event and Australian is in, then a two minute package of Australia's win in the hockey, then an interview with a swimmer.
I love getting to see the sports you never normally see, like fencing and table tennis, and this time I haven't seen any of them one. Apparently there's heavy coverage of that stuff on pay TV...
Indeed thats why I hate the Olympics with a passion, ok one of many reasons to be accurate. This year we have the DVR or whatever its called. I set up to record the taekwondo and shooting as they all seemed to be on at 3.00AM in the morning, vs. the constant swimming Phelps nonsense (seriusly if you're gong to show swimming quit talking ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE WHILE THE COMPETITION IS GOING ON). Of course the DVR recorded competititve tiddlywinks or some crap.
I heard yesterday on the radio that the Tennis coverage in the US was put out two hours after it had finished and they got Serena Williams to commentate on her own final
Orlanth wrote:
I cannot disagree more. Patriotism is a bonding principle, its as old as tribalism and valuable in any cohesive society. Sadly we no longer have much of a cohesive society but a national attitude of 'I'm alright jack'. Nothing pisses me off more. I am surprised that Matty is caught up with the New Britain mentality, as a servicemen you should know that he can call on your mates.
I dont have a "new Britain" mentality, its just my opinion, you went on to pretty much defend my position AND agree with me in your next paragraph!
Orlanth wrote:Perhaps you have been abroad too long or hanging around in chavtowns. The UK is heading the same way as the Americans with trying to push our 'greatness' in peoples faces, when its not being told to be angst ridden over the past instead. I prefer the older more gentil English culture: if you know you don't need to show. We have a strong culture and heritage and don't need to shove it in peoples faces, we know who we are. Some of us still do. There is something to be said for quiet English understated resolve.
Yes, there is something to be said for quiet understated resolve, and how the feth is incessantly gobbing off, waving a flag and chanting with a painted face "quiet understated resolve"?!
I agree with most of what you said, and that's the bloody point! We probably agree almost entirely, you have just decided I wear a tie dye shirt and suscribe to New Labours ridiculous ideology, and you couldn't be more wrong.
I am a human, as such I have the same whims as everyone else, clearly some stupid part of me prefers to see Team GB win a medal over the French team, what I am saying is that such feelings are not good and virtuous, its divisive, and the number one reason I hate it is because I loathe hypocrisy, and I spend alot of time slagging off the Argies for acting in the exact same manner that the British public seem to be now! I also have an American partner, who pretty regularly has to deal with anti American sentiment. You might not think it, but a sizeable portion of Europe in anti American, and the British are the same.The British fething love to mouth off about the Americans being all "USA USA NUMBER 1!" and here we have everyone doing the exact same thing.
That pretty much answers Not Prop as well. Sure I support Boro, It might be pretty dumb, but I went to watch them as a child and ergo they are my team, but that rules out Patriotism and Jingoism because they compete primarily against other English teams!
I have no problem with wanting a team to do well, I have a problem with incessant "fandom" and people slapping themselves on the backs for the efforts of others. Alby took issue with what I said (maybe losers was a tad harsh!) but the point is spot on. Why do you think people love to say "My granddad fought the Japs" or "Oh Bono is from my home town!" Its not because they think you are a student of music or military history, its because they think somehow a little bit of that cool rubs off on them!
The fact is, I don't hate my country even remotely, Its probably the opposite, I admire British traits like humility and stoicism and magnanimity in victory, and when I discuss these things with my American missus and I say how much more quietly we get on with things, gak like this is embarrassing!
I don't hate people that like to quietly support their nation in sports and I'm not a pinko socialist, I just think all this excessive overt flag waving is a little bit fething embarrassing. When the vast majority of the nation seems to be acting like Cristina Kirchner and her idiot followers, how is that a good thing?
More gold for Team GB today - they've now surpassed the total they won at Beijing and are looking pretty unassailable in 3rd with a little under a week left to go.
Albatross wrote:More gold for Team GB today - they've now surpassed the total they won at Beijing and are looking pretty unassailable in 3rd with a little under a week left to go.
The best thing about the Olympics is perusing the foreign press.. I actually think the French have been very magnanimous regards the cycling. Its sad when I think more of our French chums than our Australian cousins.
Albatross wrote:More gold for Team GB today - they've now surpassed the total they won at Beijing and are looking pretty unassailable in 3rd with a little under a week left to go.
Yeah, you guys have gone nuts on the Cycling thing. Taking 8 out of 14 golds so far is crazy.
Although, now you've got to get off those silly road bikes and get on some real bikes.
They've pretty much been accusing Team GB of cheating all last week because they've been getting their arses handed to them! And then of course their was their President with this:
'The British have rolled out the red carpet for French athletes to win medals and I thank them very much.
'But the competition is not over. I talked to David Cameron and he has great hopes in swimming and athletics. We will see the totals at the end.'
Mr Hollande, who joined Mr Cameron to watch France take on Spain in the handball, jokingly said the British could console themselves with a strong cumulative total for all European nations.
'In the end, it's the European total which counts,' he said. 'We will put the French medals in the European bag, and that way the Britons can be happy to be Europeans.'
I bet he feels like a bit of a prat now, doesn't he? I hope Cameron absolutely canes him next time they meet. I think the French should stick to cooking and let us do the jokes.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grakmar wrote:
Albatross wrote:More gold for Team GB today - they've now surpassed the total they won at Beijing and are looking pretty unassailable in 3rd with a little under a week left to go.
Yeah, you guys have gone nuts on the Cycling thing. Taking 8 out of 14 golds so far is crazy.
Although, now you've got to get off those silly road bikes and get on some real bikes.
Bradley Wiggins, of course, riding a unicycle when he won the Tour de France.
Anyway, you cheeky sod - you buggers have 30 medals in swimming! Now that is taking the piss!
Albatross wrote:The French have been magnanimous!??
They've pretty much been accusing Team GB of cheating all last week because they've been getting their arses handed to them! And then of course their was their President with this:
'The British have rolled out the red carpet for French athletes to win medals and I thank them very much.
'But the competition is not over. I talked to David Cameron and he has great hopes in swimming and athletics. We will see the totals at the end.'
Mr Hollande, who joined Mr Cameron to watch France take on Spain in the handball, jokingly said the British could console themselves with a strong cumulative total for all European nations.
'In the end, it's the European total which counts,' he said. 'We will put the French medals in the European bag, and that way the Britons can be happy to be Europeans.'
I bet he feels like a bit of a prat now, doesn't he? I hope Cameron absolutely canes him next time they meet. I think the French should stick to cooking and let us do the jokes.
I've been reading their papers, as always, loud public figures and politicians make everyone else look like feth heads, the overwhelming amount of comments from the French has been saluting the British cyclists for their professionalism, and Bradley Wiggins is being called "Le Gentleman" for his conduct during the tour.
Obviously lets not even discuss the current French PM because he is a pinko commie socialist.
How the feth have you been reading French newspapers, like? You don't speak French do you? I'm sorry, I can't picture you sat in Costa skimming Le Monde....
Yeah well, 7 athletes from Cameroon have done a bunk, and ten athletes from North Korea have been sentenced to twenty years hard labour in the salt mines, so for every success story, there is an olympic tragedy
On a final note, since when did the French have anything good to say about Britain? They're still bitter because we refuse to sell garlic eclairs!
Derek Drouin nabed the bronze in men's high jump today!
Too bad our women's soccer team got so badly screwed over by BS officiating yesterday, and our equestrian team got nailed on a ing are ed rule that makes absolutely 0 sense.
And now FIFA is debating wether or not to 'discipline' the Canadian soccer team because they had the balls to tell it like it is...
Albatross wrote:More gold for Team GB today - they've now surpassed the total they won at Beijing and are looking pretty unassailable in 3rd with a little under a week left to go.
Yeah, you guys have gone nuts on the Cycling thing. Taking 8 out of 14 golds so far is crazy.
It should have been ten. Were it not for several nations deciding to lose rather than do anything to help a sprint finish where they knew Mark Cavandish would just own them. And if the track cycling actually had an appeal system in place so Anna Mear's elbowing Pendleton tonight would have been seen properly.
Although, now you've got to get off those silly road bikes and get on some real bikes.
GB only has one rider in the MTB because of restrictions they put on cycling teams after Beijing, naturally they focused their efforts on the track where they were strongest.
mattyrm wrote: I mean, I don't see any other fether complaining do you? So you should direct your comments at me, everyone else is on the "pro olympic" team.
Officially supporting the anti-olympic team.
At least the massive economic failure means that I can finally drive around east london without traffic. London currently has 8% LESS tourists than is normal in August. I'm losing about half my income from theatre shows that suddenly have no audience. And don't bring it up with a cab driver.
Albatross wrote:
mattyrm wrote:Well enlighten me, why do you feel better when a stranger from Liverpool wins a medal but feel nothing when a stranger from Hamburg does?
Because that stranger from Liverpool is representing my country.
Ah, the country that you worked long and hard to be part of? The country that your drive and ambition enabled you to be part of? Oh no, the bit of land that you completely randomly happened to be born in, through absolutely no work on your part.
That stranger from Liverpool is a stranger form Liverpool. Like a stranger from Paris, who you would presumably support whole heartedly had you happened to be born in Avignon.
Groups of people have shared customs, which makes them familiar. But their success is has no echo towards anyone else who shares their customs. Their success is their own. To claim it as your own would be very very wrong in my book....
ArbitorIan wrote:At least the massive economic failure means that I can finally drive around east london without traffic. London currently has 8% LESS tourists than is normal in August. I'm losing about half my income from theatre shows that suddenly have no audience. And don't bring it up with a cab driver.
I will bring it up with a cab driver, because theatre shows have reported increased box office takings, not decreased takings.
Source is here, by the way
BBC wrote:West End figures published on Monday showed box office takings for the first seven days of the London 2012 Games were up £250,000 on the previous week.
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, Lord Lloyd-Webber added that Monday night's takings for Shrek and Phantom of the Opera, both playing at his theatres, were "hugely up".
mattyrm wrote:Well enlighten me, why do you feel better when a stranger from Liverpool wins a medal but feel nothing when a stranger from Hamburg does?
Because that stranger from Liverpool is representing my country.
Ah, the country that you worked long and hard to be part of? The country that your drive and ambition enabled you to be part of? Oh no, the bit of land that you completely randomly happened to be born in, through absolutely no work on your part.
No, that piece of land I contribute to, and strive to make better by making a positive contribution to my community and the area in which I live. The random piece of land whose cultures and customs helped shape the person I am and my outlook on life. That piece of land you seem so keen to spit on gave me and my family a safe place to live, put food in my belly and allows me to live in a level of luxury that millions of people across the world can only dream of. Yes, I am proud that I'm not Somalian, Kyrgyz or Cambodian - I'm British, and that means I live in a country that is safe, prosperous, stable and free. Being British mean that yes, we have the luxury of having heated discussions on whether or not patriotism is appropriate and what it means to support one's national team, because our lives are so comfortable that we're paralysed by ennui. We don't have to sit around speculating about what happened to the journalist who lived down the street before he went missing, having written an article critical of the government. We don't have to argue about how best to source clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, like the unfortunate citizens of so many countries.
It's wonderful to be British, and I'm unashamed to admit it.
That stranger from Liverpool is a stranger form Liverpool. Like a stranger from Paris, who you would presumably support whole heartedly had you happened to be born in Avignon.
You are so intelligent and incisive to point that out. That thought had never crossed my mind. I now see the error of my ways. In fact, I fear you've made me look quite the ass.
Groups of people have shared customs, which makes them familiar. But their success is has no echo towards anyone else who shares their customs. Their success is their own. To claim it as your own would be very very wrong in my book....
It's a damn good job I'm not doing that then, isn't it? However, you are free to keep whacking that strawman, though I will warn you: Should you succeed in destroying it, I will of course claim your success as my own. Go Team GB!
Albatross wrote:No, that piece of land I contribute to, and strive to make better by making a positive contribution to my community and the area in which I live. The random piece of land whose cultures and customs helped shape the person I am and my outlook on life. That piece of land you seem so keen to spit on gave me and my family a safe place to live, put food in my belly and allows me to live in a level of luxury that millions of people across the world can only dream of. Yes, I am proud that I'm not Somalian, Kyrgyz or Cambodian - I'm British, and that means I live in a country that is safe, prosperous, stable and free. Being British mean that yes, we have the luxury of having heated discussions on whether or not patriotism is appropriate and what it means to support one's national team, because our lives are so comfortable that we're paralysed by ennui. We don't have to sit around speculating about what happened to the journalist who lived down the street before he went missing, having written an article critical of the government. We don't have to argue about how best to source clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, like the unfortunate citizens of so many countries.
It's wonderful to be British, and I'm unashamed to admit it.
Albatross put this far more eloquently than I would be able to, due to my severe lack of stirring speech-writing ability, but I agree with this message wholeheartedly.
Amusingly, I felt a small amount of pride stirring whilst reading that, but I'm not sure whether that would help or hinder the argument for feeling proud about British athletes' achievements.
On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Amaya wrote:On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Amaya wrote:On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Oh Amaya, why so bitter about weightlifting?
I don't understand what you're attempting to ask.
I'm annoyed that swimming gets something like 1/4 of the medals given out. It's silly. Backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle do not all deserve medal categories. Freestyle is the fastest stroke all the matters is speed. Everything else is just 'art'.
Glorioski wrote:This is something that has caught my attention here in the Uk, although here it has been fantastic. The BBC has a live stream every single sport which is currently being played on their website and also over several chanels if you have cable or satellite, all with commentary and free for licence payers (which is mandatory if you have a TV in the UK). You can rewind the streams on the net service too and watch everything which has already happened if you missed it. I actually feel my TV licence was well worth the money this year.
That stuff is only accessible to us if you've got pay TV, and I'm not paying about $100 a month and committing for a year to watch Olympics (and domestic cricket in the summer )
sebster wrote:I think your right, the medal table isn't a good way to assess a nations sporting prowess and I'm certainly not arguing that. But each discipline has their own medal table and that is a perfectly reasonable way to asses how healthy that particular sport is in your country. For example I don't think you could argue that British cycling or Rowing isn't in very good form right now. Compared to Australia, who (long before Sydney) always had very successful swimmers and it has to be asked what's gone wrong there.
Absolutely, the British cycling has come up and produced so many elite athletes in such a short time is a credit to everyone working in British cycling. Same for British rowing (though that's always been pretty strong, hasn't it?)
And yeah, I'd agree that you can look at the medal count in an individual sport and conclude a country is best in that particular field. My problem is when you add up all the medals across all the sports and think that total means something.
Also for what it's worth I don't think there are any "wierdo" sports at the Olympics and I think it is a great way for those sports who don't get much time in the spotlight to showcase themselves to young people who think sport starts and ends at football (or Aussie rules in Australia's case). I think sports which have huge popularity generally take care of themselves as far as funding is concerned. I'm not going to back any initiative to give government funding to Manchester United's talent scouts.
Don't get me wrong, I like the weirdo sports. I wish I'd actually get to see more of the weirdo sports, and less of the bloody swimming. That is, exactly like you say, what the Olympics is all about.
But that doesn't mean they're not obscure, weird sports.
To be honest I think Australia need to reassess how they value success at the Olympics. Even the British media rate the Bronze medal athletes for their achievement. For example, this is ridiculous...
There's actually going to be a review into Australian swimming. Seriously. It is, as you say, ridiculous.
That's the other problem with that medal count - it clouds achievement that doesn't produce a medal. I'd argue that Australia getting a finalist into a top tier event like the 400m is a bigger deal than picking up a gold medal in one of the dozens of sailing events... but the medal count ignores the former and gives the latter as much importance as Bolt's run in the 100m.
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Frazzled wrote:Indeed thats why I hate the Olympics with a passion, ok one of many reasons to be accurate. This year we have the DVR or whatever its called. I set up to record the taekwondo and shooting as they all seemed to be on at 3.00AM in the morning, vs. the constant swimming Phelps nonsense (seriusly if you're gong to show swimming quit talking ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE WHILE THE COMPETITION IS GOING ON). Of course the DVR recorded competititve tiddlywinks or some crap.
Yeah, I get excited for the Olympics and then you start watching the coverage and it's just swimming and all this other nonsense and medal counts and for feth's sake just show me elite athletes in sports I don't normally get to watch.
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Amaya wrote:On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Ummm... they do give out medals for the best lift in the snatch, another for the clean and jerk, and again for the total. At least swimming doesn't brake it down by weight classes, so there isn't a 100m event for skinny people, another one for slightly less skinny people and so on
I mean, I don't think there should ever be a complaint about individual medals getting handed out. Butterfly is a different discipline to other swimming strokes, and shows strength in different muscle groups. It's just that people should be aware that some sports have loads more medals up for grabs even when they're really not very important sports, and so trying to assess how well a nation is doing by the overall medal count is silly.
To back up ArbitorIan's complaint, I commute to work in the west end every day, and it's a lot quieter than usual. The stations, the tube and the streets are relatively quiet at commuting and lunchtimes.
Some of that is because it is school holiday time, but some of it must be due to lack of tourists.
ArbitorIan wrote:Ah, the country that you worked long and hard to be part of? The country that your drive and ambition enabled you to be part of? Oh no, the bit of land that you completely randomly happened to be born in, through absolutely no work on your part.
No, that piece of land I contribute to, and strive to make better by making a positive contribution to my community and the area in which I live. The random piece of land whose cultures and customs helped shape the person I am and my outlook on life. That piece of land you seem so keen to spit on gave me and my family a safe place to live, put food in my belly and allows me to live in a level of luxury that millions of people across the world can only dream of. Yes, I am proud that I'm not Somalian, Kyrgyz or Cambodian - I'm British, and that means I live in a country that is safe, prosperous, stable and free. Being British mean that yes, we have the luxury of having heated discussions on whether or not patriotism is appropriate and what it means to support one's national team, because our lives are so comfortable that we're paralysed by ennui. We don't have to sit around speculating about what happened to the journalist who lived down the street before he went missing, having written an article critical of the government. We don't have to argue about how best to source clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, like the unfortunate citizens of so many countries.
It's wonderful to be British, and I'm unashamed to admit it.
This was a good post and you should be proud of it.
Albatross wrote:
No, that piece of land I contribute to, and strive to make better by making a positive contribution to my community and the area in which I live. The random piece of land whose cultures and customs helped shape the person I am and my outlook on life. That piece of land you seem so keen to spit on gave me and my family a safe place to live, put food in my belly and allows me to live in a level of luxury that millions of people across the world can only dream of. Yes, I am proud that I'm not Somalian, Kyrgyz or Cambodian - I'm British, and that means I live in a country that is safe, prosperous, stable and free. Being British mean that yes, we have the luxury of having heated discussions on whether or not patriotism is appropriate and what it means to support one's national team, because our lives are so comfortable that we're paralysed by ennui. We don't have to sit around speculating about what happened to the journalist who lived down the street before he went missing, having written an article critical of the government. We don't have to argue about how best to source clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, like the unfortunate citizens of so many countries.
It's wonderful to be British, and I'm unashamed to admit it.
See, clearly I agree with all of that, I don't see why anything I said excludes it! I think I should reiterate my actual feelings on this matter because I have been posting pissed occasionally! But if you think I don't wake up every day thinking "feth me its great living in Yorkshire" after spending all that time In Africa and the middle east and Asia you are off your tits mate! Aren't I always saying how minuscule all of our so called problems are over here? People get pissed about cell phone coverage and flights being delayed when years ago they had no phones and they had to travel for three days on a horse!
ALL of what you posted could have been posted by me, I entirely agree with it. I dont even care about the economic aspect either because I reckon It will even out, and regards Ian's comment, I actually read a story about that yesterday when Lloyd Webber conceded defeat.. here it is.
Andrew Lloyd Webber has admitted he was wrong to predict a West End “bloodbath” during the Olympics after figures showed takings for his theatres have risen by 25 per cent since the Games began.
Lord Lloyd-Webber’s theatres are currently hosting Matilda the Musical, The Phantom of the Opera, The Wizard of Oz, War Horse and Shrek. Box office takings for the first seven days of the Games were up £250,000 on the previous week, according to figures published yesterday. While the number of foreign tourists in the West End is down, domestic visitors are flocking to the theatre, Lord Lloyd-Webber said. His positive message came as the Prime Minister’s spokesman refuted claims that central London has become a “ghost town” during the Games. Separate figures showed an increase in sales on Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street last week, and footfall up 11.6 per cent on the previous seven days.
“I’m the one who said it would all be doom and gloom in the West End, but I have been proved wrong and I couldn’t be more delighted about that,” Lord Lloyd-Webber said.
“I thought nobody would come to London and I said at Christmas it would be a very difficult time for the West End. I was on the Olympic committee and I knew how few people were booking.
“I thought it was going to be terrible because there would be no foreign visitors whatsoever, and it is true that we’re not seeing the foreigners we normally get at this time of year.
“But what is happening is that a lot of families from all over the country are coming to see things like the equestrian events or the volleyball or this, that and the other, and saying, ‘What else can we go and see?’
The entirety of my distaste for the Olympics isn't about not supporting your local team (I support mine) or deflating athletes achievements (It is a great achievement to be able to complete a triathlon for example) it simply boils down to two things which I really do loathe.
1. Rampant aggressive Patriotism/Jingosim.
2. A desire to ride on the coat tails of your betters.
The first is a constant source of shame to me. I genuinely think it makes us look like total dicks. We Brits are obviously quite a proud people, rightly so you might think, I wouldn't disagree. But as a result we are also haughty and somewhat boastful, despite the fact we love to claim the opposite. The amount of time British people spend off slagging the Americans and the French and the Argies when they wave their flags and chant "NUMBER 1!" is substantial. The British love to say (see Orlanths post for example, and I have definitely heard you say it before as well) "We Brits are more quiet and down to earth.. the Americans like to flag wave and be loud, we are more reserved about these things" and yet after some success, we seem to have copied all of the people we like to claim we are more mature than! Endless bragging, hooting and hollering, painted faces and flag waving and gloating on websites when an obese non competitor tells a foreign non competitor "haha! WE beat YOU"
Is that not an entirely valid point?
I don't care about economics, I don't care about supporting a team or an athlete, I just am well aware of the obvious fact that endlessly harping on about how awesome you are and waving your flags makes you look like a dick. I don't hate Britain and I obviously want a bloke from Leeds to beat a bloke from Nigeria in a race.. but seriously.. some of the gak I have seen in the press is genuinely embarrassing and I cringe when I read it.
There is a huge difference between humble pride (I always shake a losers hand before I celebrate, none of this whooping from me!) and looking like a tit because you think you are hoofing at everything and you are boasting because someone you never even met won a medal in a competition!
If you or Orlanth think I "hate" my country (the very idea is absurd surely?) you have me all wrong.
This may well be down to my habit of posting pissed and making broad sweeping statements.. but still.
mattyrm wrote: I mean, I don't see any other fether complaining do you? So you should direct your comments at me, everyone else is on the "pro olympic" team.
Officially supporting the anti-olympic team.
At least the massive economic failure means that I can finally drive around east london without traffic. London currently has 8% LESS tourists than is normal in August. I'm losing about half my income from theatre shows that suddenly have no audience. And don't bring it up with a cab driver.
.....
Ya Boo sucks to the Stick-in-the-Mud team then, though surely having a team for these flies in the face of team captain Mattyrms desire not to crow abouts things.
And to the point that cabbies are not busy - fan-fething-tastic! Those bolshy buggers raised their prices to rape the wallets of tourists, Olympics fans and Londoners alike and now they are loosing out, this is great news. I only wish there was some way for the Tube/bus/train drivers to also lose their Olympic "bonus" that they wrangled on the basis of being over worked during the Olympic period. If somebody can punch Bob Crowe immediately it would be greatly appreciated.
Kilkrazy wrote:To back up ArbitorIan's complaint, I commute to work in the west end every day, and it's a lot quieter than usual. The stations, the tube and the streets are relatively quiet at commuting and lunchtimes.
Some of that is because it is school holiday time, but some of it must be due to lack of tourists.
There are also plenty of people staying out of town while its on, though I suspect summer holidays will be most of these along with the many of us that can work from home.
I go through Stratford (the Olympic Park) to commute into London and the trains, that are usually not that different to those Japanese trains where the conductor levers everyone onboard, are noticeably emptier.
On the day of the opening ceremony I had planed to leave work early and get through Liverpool Street Station and Straford before 2PM on account that gates opened at 3PM for the 7PM start. I ended up geting a train at 6.30PM and travelled on a virtually empty train - lovely.
Didn't the government essentially give the civil service leave to work from home while the Olympics/Paralympics is on? There was a big fuss about it kicked up in the Mail or some such. If true, then that would presumably make a difference to commuter traffic.
Amaya wrote:On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Ummm... they do give out medals for the best lift in the snatch, another for the clean and jerk, and again for the total. At least swimming doesn't brake it down by weight classes, so there isn't a 100m event for skinny people, another one for slightly less skinny people and so on
I mean, I don't think there should ever be a complaint about individual medals getting handed out. Butterfly is a different discipline to other swimming strokes, and shows strength in different muscle groups. It's just that people should be aware that some sports have loads more medals up for grabs even when they're really not very important sports, and so trying to assess how well a nation is doing by the overall medal count is silly.
I think people look at the likes of Michael Phelps and see how he can excel at so many different disciplines of swimming and conclude that they aren't different enough to warrant so many medals, when in fact they it is amazing that Phelps manages to do that. And anyone who claims it's not so amazing as Mark Spitz did it before him should note that the world records Mark Spitz set at the 72 Olympics wouldn't even get him on the US team in London.
Amaya wrote:On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Ummm... they do give out medals for the best lift in the snatch, another for the clean and jerk, and again for the total. At least swimming doesn't brake it down by weight classes, so there isn't a 100m event for skinny people, another one for slightly less skinny people and so on
I mean, I don't think there should ever be a complaint about individual medals getting handed out. Butterfly is a different discipline to other swimming strokes, and shows strength in different muscle groups. It's just that people should be aware that some sports have loads more medals up for grabs even when they're really not very important sports, and so trying to assess how well a nation is doing by the overall medal count is silly.
I think people look at the likes of Michael Phelps and see how he can excel at so many different disciplines of swimming and conclude that they aren't different enough to warrant so many medals, when in fact they it is amazing that Phelps manages to do that. And anyone who claims it's not so amazing as Mark Spitz did it before him should note that the world records Mark Spitz set at the 72 Olympics wouldn't even get him on the US team in London.
I think they should give medals out for backward sprinting and bear crawl races since they utilize different muscles.
Seems like the UK's gotten the customary home country boost, and I think that's nice to see. Obviously I'm rooting for mostly US athletes, but it's nice to see the UK athletes give the home fans some nice moments.
Regarding swimming, 96 medals seems like kind of a lot. But then to me any medals for team handball seem like too many.
Regarding all the other stuff, I think sports are diversions that most people put in their proper place. There are obviously people that take it too seriously and get egos too wrapped up in it. But that goes for anything.
Case in point...this conversation is taking place on DakkaDakka, fer chrissakes.
Amaya wrote:On a lighter note, they give out way to many fething medals for swimming. Giving out three medals for every different stroke is idiotic. By that logic each weightlifting category should get 3 medals, one for total, one for snatch, one for clean and jerk.
Ummm... they do give out medals for the best lift in the snatch, another for the clean and jerk, and again for the total. At least swimming doesn't brake it down by weight classes, so there isn't a 100m event for skinny people, another one for slightly less skinny people and so on
I mean, I don't think there should ever be a complaint about individual medals getting handed out. Butterfly is a different discipline to other swimming strokes, and shows strength in different muscle groups. It's just that people should be aware that some sports have loads more medals up for grabs even when they're really not very important sports, and so trying to assess how well a nation is doing by the overall medal count is silly.
I think people look at the likes of Michael Phelps and see how he can excel at so many different disciplines of swimming and conclude that they aren't different enough to warrant so many medals, when in fact they it is amazing that Phelps manages to do that. And anyone who claims it's not so amazing as Mark Spitz did it before him should note that the world records Mark Spitz set at the 72 Olympics wouldn't even get him on the US team in London.
I think they should give medals out for backward sprinting and bear crawl races since they utilize different muscles.
I assume the facepalm was directed towards Sebster as that was what he said, and to be honest I think his point went over your head.
In any case the complaints against Swimming having too many medals are redundant unless you are bothered about it's effect on the overall medal table. Sebster has already explained why that is of no significance and I agree with him, although it is fun to follow (unless you're Mattyrm of course, in which case you'll be crying constantly until you've made sure nobody is having any fun).
Kilkrazy wrote:I'm going to watch the Women's Football final.
I'm rooting for Japan in this one!
And 3 more medals for Canadian athletes today!
Here's hoping our women's football team can put their hurt & disapointment behind them and focus on winning our country's first ever soccer medal tomorrow!
There are 45 medals for weightlifting and there are 102 for swimming. Weightlifting medals are only given out for total, not for total, C&J, and Snatch.
Compare it to sprinting. There are the 100m, 200m, 400m individual sprints, 4x100 and 4x400 relay, and 110m and 400m hurdles. For men and women that is only 42 medals.
(800m and 1500m are considered middle distance)
The different swimming strokes are not complex enough to warrant additional medals for each one in both the 100m and 200m distance.
Individual sports (including relays) should have roughly similar medal counts.
Amaya wrote:There are 45 medals for weightlifting and there are 102 for swimming. Weightlifting medals are only given out for total, not for total, C&J, and Snatch.
Compare it to sprinting. There are the 100m, 200m, 400m individual sprints, 4x100 and 4x400 relay, and 110m and 400m hurdles. For men and women that is only 42 medals.
(800m and 1500m are considered middle distance)
The different swimming strokes are not complex enough to warrant additional medals for each one in both the 100m and 200m distance.
Individual sports (including relays) should have roughly similar medal counts.
Mate, I didn't want to say anything because I know you are passionate about weightlifting and it might annoy you, but seriously, its fething obvious.
More people give a feth about swimming. Swimming is even (slightly) more interesting to watch because its in that nice popular "race" format.
If you were handing out free tickets to either swimming or weight-lighting, more people would go for swimming, so obviously they get a few less medals, its not that big a deal surely?
You might as well ask why Soccer gets more hours on TV than Curling!
Well more people care about swimming in America and probably as well in Australia, the UK, and Canada, but I doubt that is true for everyone, certainly not Eastern European nations, Arab nations, and China.
Our girls brought home the bronze and have given our country it's first ever Olympic soccer medal!!!
After that disgusting display of poor officiating, our girls really, really deserved this. Good on them for holding it together and achiving their goal of getting on the podium!
filbert wrote:Didn't the government essentially give the civil service leave to work from home while the Olympics/Paralympics is on? There was a big fuss about it kicked up in the Mail or some such. If true, then that would presumably make a difference to commuter traffic.
That sounds like the sort of thing the Daily Mail would 'claim'.
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Amaya wrote:I think they should give medals out for backward sprinting and bear crawl races since they utilize different muscles.
Does backwards sprinting and the bear crawl race have a professional discipline in which a significant number of people train professionally every day of their lives? No? Well the various swimming disciplines do, so your point kind of doesn't make any sense.
I mean, yeah, I get it that there's loads of medals up for grabs in swimming. There's loads of medals up for grabs in a lot of sports without that much of a difference between them, including track and field. And I get that people have made a stupid amount of noise about Phelps, and it's been annoying.
But that doesn't mean being good at freestyle and being good at butterfly don't mean significantly different things.
Amaya wrote:There are 45 medals for weightlifting and there are 102 for swimming. Weightlifting medals are only given out for total, not for total, C&J, and Snatch.
Fair enough, my mistake.
But having different events for different weights is no more arbitrary than having different events for different swimming strokes.
Compare it to sprinting. There are the 100m, 200m, 400m individual sprints, 4x100 and 4x400 relay, and 110m and 400m hurdles. For men and women that is only 42 medals.
(800m and 1500m are considered middle distance)
Uh huh. So you lump the 50m and 1500m swimming all in one category, but split running into sprinting and middle distance. Why not split swimming into sprint and middle distance events as well?
Individual sports (including relays) should have roughly similar medal counts.
No, they shouldn't. The only things that matter are whether an event has a decent base of professional athletes and is of interest to the general public (if those are true then concerns over practicality fit in - do we want another stadium for this, and can it fit into existing event schedules).
Trying to have parity in medals is putting the medal count ahead of people competing in and watching sport, and that's completely wrongheaded.
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Amaya wrote:Well more people care about swimming in America and probably as well in Australia, the UK, and Canada, but I doubt that is true for everyone, certainly not Eastern European nations, Arab nations, and China.
And being interested in weightlifting, would you enjoy it more if they started adding more weightclasses, or variant events to bump up the gold medal count to equal the 'parity' number of gold medals someone invented in their head? Or do you want the number of events to be determined by the historic weight classes of the sport?
Personally I don't see why skate boarding isn't in the Olympics.
Right there you have three 5 different types of disciplines (vert, street, flatland, down hill and slalom).
Same with the rest of the BMX stuff that should be in it (Vert, Street and flatland).
Then add mountain biking (down hill, cross country, North shore, MX-C).
And In line skates (see the skate boarding stuff for the fruit booters).
There are more people that could relate to these sports than my little pony sports and say the dancing in water.
Ribon Fox wrote:Personally I don't see why skate boarding isn't in the Olympics.
Right there you have three 5 different types of disciplines (vert, street, flatland, down hill and slalom).
Same with the rest of the BMX stuff that should be in it (Vert, Street and flatland).
Then add mountain biking (down hill, cross country, North shore, MX-C).
And In line skates (see the skate boarding stuff for the fruit booters).
There are more people that could relate to these sports than my little pony sports and say the dancing in water.
The thing is that the Olympics don't want to deal with more governing bodies than they have to. So, they like having things under a single umbrella. For example, the International Swimming Federation governs not only swimming, but also synchronized swimming, diving, and water polo. Skiing handles Alpine, Cross-Country, Nordic Combined, Snowboarding, etc.
The Olympics is open to including skateboarding, but wants to fold it in with the cycling. The head of the International Skateboarding Federation (Gary Ream) is an <expletive> that doesn't want to give up control, so he is fighting any attempts to combine the two. This means that adding skateboarding to the Olympics is going to be a much longer, more difficult process. If it weren't for him, we'd probably have skateboarding in 4 years.
I saw some synchronised swimming yesterday, strangely hypnotic and more entertaining than you might imagine. Russia and Spain I think it was.
Then after about 10 minutes I went and did some DIY, drank some beer, wrestled a Lion and got in a fight with a scotsman; you know to rebalance the manlyness deficit I was clearly experiencing.
Ribon Fox wrote:Personally I don't see why skate boarding isn't in the Olympics.
Right there you have three 5 different types of disciplines (vert, street, flatland, down hill and slalom).
Same with the rest of the BMX stuff that should be in it (Vert, Street and flatland).
Then add mountain biking (down hill, cross country, North shore, MX-C).
And In line skates (see the skate boarding stuff for the fruit booters).
There are more people that could relate to these sports than my little pony sports and say the dancing in water.
The thing is that the Olympics don't want to deal with more governing bodies than they have to. So, they like having things under a single umbrella. For example, the International Swimming Federation governs not only swimming, but also synchronized swimming, diving, and water polo. Skiing handles Alpine, Cross-Country, Nordic Combined, Snowboarding, etc.
The Olympics is open to including skateboarding, but wants to fold it in with the cycling. The head of the International Skateboarding Federation (Gary Ream) is an <expletive> that doesn't want to give up control, so he is fighting any attempts to combine the two. This means that adding skateboarding to the Olympics is going to be a much longer, more difficult process. If it weren't for him, we'd probably have skateboarding in 4 years.
Not only that, but the IOC won't allow new events if they feel the competition level is severely lacking.
For example, there's serious thought of dropping women's ice hockey from the games because so far, 3 out of 4 gold medal finals have involved the same two teams, and one country has won the gold three times out of four Olympics.
Because the IOC feels there's been so little growth in the competition and only a handfull of countries even compete, they're threatening to drop the event and the most relegate it to a non-medal event.
So the IOC won't allow things like skateboarding if they believe that only a fraction of countries would compete and if it would be utterly dominated by just a bare handfull of nations.
That's the reason they wouldn't allow women's ski jumping in 2010; lack of serious competition and too few nations competing.
Of corse, it's an absolutely moronic stance and proves just how out of touch the old farts running things are, because you're never going to grow a sport if you ban it from the highest levels of international competition!
Women's Basketball is dominated by America. Men's Basketball is dominated by America. Women's soccer is dominated by America and Japan. 100m and 200m events are dominated by those of west African descent typically living in the US, Canada, or the Caribbean. America dominated swimming this year.
You could make an argument for dropping any sport from the Olympics. Certain countries dominate certain sports. Certain body types are better for certain sports.
For example, I dont even know what handball is, I had never heard of it up until a week ago, if one country is full of handballers, and several have never even heard of it, how fair is it to have it in the Olympics?
How is it fair to have Basketball when its huge in the USA and pretty much nowhere else?! Its not like the American men are going to lose to anyone is it?!
As I said, as far as I'm concerned they could drop about 20 sports! I think they should just stick to proper sports that everyone plays and are actually difficult, gak like Triathalon and marathon and such.. feth all this horse tap dancing and such off as well!
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Amaya wrote:
You could make an argument for dropping any sport from the Olympics. Certain countries dominate certain sports. Certain body types are better for certain sports.
There's nothing wrong with dominating, its all about whether or not other nations even know what it fething is!
Yeah it's a bit daft. The American team doesn't even have all the best players available on it and they're still beating top 5 teams by 20+ points. The women's team hasn't lost an international game in something like 6 years.
It's almost as bad as if they had American Football in the Olympics.
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mattyrm wrote:I dunno, I think it makes sense personally.
For example, I dont even know what handball is, I had never heard of it up until a week ago, if one country is full of handballers, and several have never even heard of it, how fair is it to have it in the Olympics?
How is it fair to have Basketball when its huge in the USA and pretty much nowhere else?! Its not like the American men are going to lose to anyone is it?!
As I said, as far as I'm concerned they could drop about 20 sports! I think they should just stick to proper sports that everyone plays and are actually difficult, gak like Triathalon and marathon and such.. feth all this horse tap dancing and such off as well!
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Amaya wrote:
You could make an argument for dropping any sport from the Olympics. Certain countries dominate certain sports. Certain body types are better for certain sports.
There's nothing wrong with dominating, its all about whether or not other nations even know what it fething is!
I've known what handball is for a long minute, but I understand that not everyone has a passing familiarity with most sports. I believe Dirk Nowitzki's parents were handballers.
Women's Basketball is dominated by America. Men's Basketball is dominated by America. Women's soccer is dominated by America and Japan. 100m and 200m events are dominated by those of west African descent typically living in the US, Canada, or the Caribbean. America dominated swimming this year.
You could make an argument for dropping any sport from the Olympics. Certain countries dominate certain sports. Certain body types are better for certain sports.
Baseball iirc got dropped from the games because it was overly dominated by only a few countries, women's softball even more so.
Men's basketball isn't quite as bad, as other nations are catching up. (China will be scary good in a few more years) Women's basketball though is a joke, but again, while the US is dominant so far in Olympic women's soccer, other nations have much more skilled players - they're just badly out muscled by a much physically bigger US squad. (Both Japan and Canada also got royally screwed over by the officiating in their games vs the US to boot which helped to drastically alter the outcome of both games! )
And while the US dominated in the racing events in the pool, they're winning most of those races by quite litteraly tenth's or hundreths of a second! That's not anywhere near the same as say what's happening with the women's basketball team outscoring opponents by 20-30+ per game! (or the Canadian women's hockey team who win most games by 4-6+ goals!)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not for dropping any sports just because a very small number of nations compete and/or dominate! I think it's 'ing stupid because all it does is completely discourage the sport outside of those small number of 'hot spots'.
Having sports that right now are clearly dominated by three or four countries might seem silly, but it's more importantly promoting that sport and giving kids the idea of taking it up so that they can perhaps one day compete on the world stage!
And for the record, Canada doesn't really have 'dominant' sprinters because it's hard to train properly when your entire country is frozen for upto half the year! (we've had Donovan Baily, and the idiot who had no clue how to hide his doping, but we like to point out he's not actually Canadian born...)
I think they should drop plenty of gymnastics as well me, I'm not saying drop all of them, but some of them look kinda impressive despite being ultimately pointless.
I wonder what the Greeks would make of that Russian bird fething about with a pink soccer ball!
After they got past it being a woman competing in the Olympics, the ancient Greeks would have been amazed and impressed. Her coordination, balance and flexibility were stunning.
Mannahnin wrote:After they got past it being a woman competing in the Olympics, the ancient Greeks would have been amazed and impressed. Her coordination, balance and flexibility were stunning.
They are, I'm not saying it doesn't look impressive, but its more like a graceful and fluid dance than a contest or something.
I was just watching Wrestling, and last night caught some Tae Kwan Do. Have you? It's kind of stunning sometimes how much subjectivity there is in awarding points, even in events where folks are competing directly to physically beat one another.
Nah I haven't watched much to be honest, I can see it being tough to call because nobody gets knocked the feth out, so obviously it has to just be a case of "who do you think fought the best?"
As I said, Im not massively into the Olympics, I just watched the gymnastics because I like watching the limber chicks dance.
Well, they do have rules. TKD it's a point if you strike the red padded torso with your foot; two if you get the head, three if you land a spinning kick to the torso or four if you land a spinning kick to the head. They go three rounds, whoever gets more points two out of three wins.
Wrestling uses the same best two of three system; 1pt for taking someone down, 2pts if you get their shoulders turned 90 degrees from the ground, 3pts if you take them off their feet and get their back to touch the ground.
It's still scary how subjective it gets with the judges awarding points.
Yeah, the limber chicks dancing are pretty awesome. My wife's from Eastern Europe, so of course she's way into it, and was disappointed that the Bulgarian chick didn't get any airtime. And was annoyed about the winner being overscored. Still, I thought those top three were all pretty darn impressive.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/21-reasons-olympic-rhythmic-gymnastics-is-cooler-t
Most of the scoring in the Taekwondo events was made by pressure pads in the protective gear, not the judges. They really only come into play on headshots and fighters can appeal if they think they got one which didn't score. From what I watched the judges got it right 99% of the time and most appeals were turned down.
mattyrm wrote:I dunno, I think it makes sense personally.
For example, I dont even know what handball is, I had never heard of it up until a week ago, if one country is full of handballers, and several have never even heard of it, how fair is it to have it in the Olympics?
It's not so much that handball is a minority sport but more that it is a minority sport within the UK - outside of the UK, it is absolutely massive (barring USA - I'm not sure they are big handballers) but it is a big sport in Europe for example.
The thing is there's no way a nation can play every sport and most nations have their traditional sports at which naturally they are going to be strong.
Any sport requiring a larger team or special equipment is going to be harder to get off the ground as a new introduction. The UK already has netball for girls at school, so it might be fairly easy to convert to basketball or handball. The three sports are very simiar. But how would the USA convert from baseball to cricket? Despite the availability of playing space, cricket isn't part of the culture.
We could convert to Baseball, its basically rounders.. you know, that game we all played when we were little kids before we realised it was ridiculous and surely nobody over the age of 10 would actually take it seriously.
LONDON—Women's individual all-around gold medalist and media darling Gabby Douglas admitted Thursday that as much as she loves all the attention she has received at the Olympics, she’s looking forward to returning to her completely abnormal, fethed-up life back in the United States.
"This trip has been incredible, but really I'm already starting to miss home and being a weird kid who doesn’t have any friends," said the 16-year-old gymnast, who told reporters her teammates have been wonderful, but conceded she’s more accustomed to the incredibly bizarre existence of never talking to anybody aside from her coach. "I didn't think I would miss it so much, but I guess I'm just like anybody else my age who practices gymnastics more than eight hours a day, every single day of the year."
It has been increasingly common, in interviews, for Douglas to yearn aloud for everything to be as fethed up and strange as it was before the Olympics. Considering herself an irregular American teenager with a deranged obsession with gymnastics, she confirmed she has been pining to go back to her completely freakish life of being isolated from her family in Virginia by living hundreds of miles away from them in Des Moines, IA, where she compulsively trains.
"When I go back home I'll finally be able to talk to all the other girls who act as if they’re friends because they have no other choice," said Douglas, who expressed enthusiasm about seeing her crazy-ass, atypical kid’s stuff in her bedroom, which includes gymnastics trophies and pictures of herself participating in international competitions. "It's just been kind of crazy having people telling me where to go, who to talk to, and when to smile at cameras instead of telling me when to practice, how to get better, and when to smile in my routine."
Her first order of business upon returning home, Douglas said, will be to flop down on her host family’s couch all by herself and watch one of the many movies she wasn’t able to go see over the past three years. After that, the thing she is most excited to do is get back to practicing gymnastics.
"Is it weird that I even kind of miss doing homework?" said Douglas, referring to the only concept of school she knows—a series of worksheets she completes on nights and weekends in order to fulfill a base-level of education without interfering with her training schedule. "Oh, and pizza. I can't wait to go back and eat some pizza."
"Well, it's not like normal pizza," Douglas added. "That's not really part of my diet regimen. It's kind of a low-calorie, healthy pizza thing without any cheese. But it's still pretty good.”
The teenager with a smile that has lit up the nation goes by the nickname "Flying Squirrel," a moniker she didn't get by acting silly in class with friends or because of some inside joke with her family, but rather from the fact that she flies around on uneven bars for a living.
“As excited as I am to return to my abnormal life back home, I’ll never forget how magical London has been,” Douglas said. “Because having a goal pounded into my head over and over again until it becomes more recognizable than basic human emotions is probably my favorite thing in the world to do.”
Amaya wrote:Yeah it's a bit daft. The American team doesn't even have all the best players available on it and they're still beating top 5 teams by 20+ points. The women's team hasn't lost an international game in something like 6 years.
It's almost as bad as if they had American Football in the Olympics.
It isn't so much about one country dominating, but about the quality of the field in other nations. So in basketball, for instance, the US utterly dominates, but that's because they happen to be a remarkably powerful team. The nations they are going up have their own professional leagues, and are pretty strong sports. One extremely good side beating good sides isn't bad sport, it's actually pretty good sport.
So that'd be a very different prospect to a sport where one country is very strong and no-one else gives two gaks about the sport, like American Football.
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Kilkrazy wrote:Cricket is much more widely played than baseball.
There's been a few issues keeping cricket out of the Olympics. There's the difficulty in producing decent facilities - its unlikely a non-cricketing nation could produce the international standard pitches needed for a decent game. Another issue was the length of games producing a really impractical playing schedule - though that's not a problem any more with T20.
The big issue, though, has always been that the Olympics wants every event it hosts to be the pinnacle of national competition in that sport. The IOC being the IOC they haven't been very good at sticking to their own rules, producing nonsense like Olympic soccer being miles less important than the World Cup, and not even a fully fledged top level sport. But it's still a fairly solid rule, and cricket already has World Cups in ODI and T20 which matter more than Olympics.
Also, with the densely packed international schedule in cricket now, the ICC isn't looking to add another tournament. Rather, it's looking to scale back the amount of cricket played.
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Testify wrote:Anyone know if there's a medals-per-capita breakdown?
Amaya wrote:North America and Carribean - 161 medals
Transcontinental Countries (Eurasian) - 120 medals
Asia - 173 Medals
Europe - over 300 Medals
Damn Europe you scary.
Well Europe is fairly big, and also lots of countries. So countries like Germany will specialise in a few things GB don't and France in something else etc etc. Where as a big country like China or USA, while they will have good athletes in a huge variety of events, they aren't quite as specialised. Maybe.
Anyway, opening ceremony was great, the sport was great, the closing ceremony was great. Overall London 2012 wins.
I have to say I think Sebastian Coe has to be the worst representative for London 2012. He comes across like a bad politician, probably because he is. "When our time came we did it right" <- terrible line, not something to base an entire speech around.
rodgers37 wrote:
Amaya wrote:North America and Carribean - 161 medals
Transcontinental Countries (Eurasian) - 120 medals
Asia - 173 Medals
Europe - over 300 Medals
Damn Europe you scary.
Well Europe is fairly big, and also lots of countries. So countries like Germany will specialise in a few things GB don't and France in something else etc etc. Where as a big country like China or USA, while they will have good athletes in a huge variety of events, they aren't quite as specialised. Maybe.
Anyway, opening ceremony was great, the sport was great, the closing ceremony was great. Overall London 2012 wins.
I think it probably has more to do with the fact that sports funding is mainly a privilege of the developed world and the majority of developed nations are in Europe.
I tried to record TaeKwon Do and shooting on three different occasions because those events were on at 4.38Am in the morning to make time for important events like syncronized women's water dressage diving interspersed with deep personal stories. My dvr picked up badminton, men's volleyball, and field hockey. EPIC FAIL.
If you're going to add anything, I suggest the following.
Women's 3x3 beach volleyball. Women's 4x4 beach volleyball. Women's 5x5 beach volleyball. Women's Rhythmic Pole Dancing. Women's Team Rhythmic Pole Dancing. Baseball. Darts. <--- How are there 5 different shooting events and no darts? Poker. Hide and Go Seek. Paintball. Who wouldn't want to shoot some Ruskies with a paintball?
kronk wrote:If you're going to add anything, I suggest the following.
Women's 3x3 beach volleyball.
Women's 4x4 beach volleyball.
Women's 5x5 beach volleyball.
Women's Rhythmic Pole Dancing.
Women's Team Rhythmic Pole Dancing.
Baseball.
Darts. <--- How are there 5 different shooting events and no darts?
Poker.
Hide and Go Seek.
Paintball. Who wouldn't want to shoot some Ruskies with a paintball?
rodgers37 wrote:
Well Europe is fairly big, and also lots of countries. So countries like Germany will specialise in a few things GB don't and France in something else etc etc. Where as a big country like China or USA, while they will have good athletes in a huge variety of events, they aren't quite as specialised. Maybe.
Anyway, opening ceremony was great, the sport was great, the closing ceremony was great. Overall London 2012 wins.
Meh, maybe I'm biased, but I enjoyed the opening and especially the closing serimonies of Vancouver alot more...
I mean, you just can't one-up things like light-up moose antlers and a giant vegas style song-and-dance routine that includes giant inflatible beavers!
mattyrm wrote:No wonder there were no incidents on the Thames, look who joined the Royal Marines...
Am I the only one who sees the bloke (thats how you Brits say it right?) right in the middle and thinks "wow thats some huge earings that guy has on. I'd be afraid of them too."
Experiment 626 wrote: Meh, maybe I'm biased, but I enjoyed the opening and especially the closing serimonies of Vancouver alot more...
I mean, you just can't one-up things like light-up moose antlers and a giant vegas style song-and-dance routine that includes giant inflatible beavers!
Yeah, you're biased. I thought the opening and closing ceremonies were among the best ever.
The closing ceremonies got me thinking about just how much musical talent comes out of that little island. Line up the top 10 British bands ever vs the top 10 American bands ever, and it's not even close. The Brits have heavier hitters at the top and better depth over decades. It's amazing.
Regarding team handball, a columnist here (Bill Simmons) recently wrote that it's an event the U.S. should completely dominate. After watching a couple matches...I have to agree. Take a bunch of men's and women's college basketball players who didn't get to play pro ball, and you'd have a team on another level athletically. Clearly they'd have to learn the game, but the general skill set translates pretty well overall. Get an experienced coach from overseas to prep the team. My bet is that they'd be a medal contender in 4 years and would easily win the thing in 8.
Personally, I found the closing ceremonies to be a complete bore. It seemed to be a compilation of all of Britain's worst bands. Seriously, instead of having "Madness" could they not have gotten Jimmy Page/Robert Plant up there? Those two are among Britain's best known musicians thanks their involvement with Led Zeppelin, the greatest band in the world! Also, where was Sting, Elton John, Adele, or any representatives of Britain's contributions to the Punk movement, like the Sex Pistols or the Clash? Nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, please enjoy One Direction, Stomp, some random bald guy in an octopus, and the Pet Shop Boys wearing ridiculous costumes.
The only highlight of the bloody thing was Eric Idle singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, though the song was only a *little* out of place at what was supposed to be a happy event.
And I'm sure NBC's coverage didn't help me enjoy it at all. Could the commentators not shut up for just two minutes? Plus, it was filmed so choppily that the whole event just felt chaotic and cluttered-I really didn't know where to look.
Thankfully, Austin Powers was on the next station, so I just watched that. I'd rather see a Scottish sumo wrestler making fart jokes than be forced to suffer through those closing ceremonies. Which is a big shame, because the actual Olympic games were just great, definitely the best I've ever seen.
Credit to Brian May who can still swing an Axe and Madness who are still ace (but play a different songs ffs!) but the rest of it was poor.
One direction - who?
fatboy slim - don't have someone whos act is just standing there and pressing play and you won't need a stupid fething octopus.
Jessie J - someone please put some clothes on the tart.
Russell Brand - seriously what was that fething creep doing there?
And then there was the awful Spice Girls, my god they are showing their age. They were already in taxis at the start, there was no need to drive them about the place just drop them off at the train station or feed them to the squaddies.
I had to watch all this guff just to hear the Who. They could have suspended wih all the crap had them play a 2 hour set then say nice one to the athletes and helpers, over to you Jaques to blow out the flame then finish with Pinball Wizard as the Spice Girls were mounted on Fireworks to assplode over the London skyline.
Eric Iddle was alright, but they should have had John Cleese goose stepping accross too.
All in all a real damp squib after a great opening and really entertaining games.
Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote: Personally, I found the closing ceremonies to be a complete bore. It seemed to be a compilation of all of Britain's worst bands. Seriously, instead of having "Madness" could they not have gotten Jimmy Page/Robert Plant up there? Those two are among Britain's best known musicians thanks their involvement with Led Zeppelin, the greatest band in the world! Also, where was Sting, Elton John, Adele, or any representatives of Britain's contributions to the Punk movement, like the Sex Pistols or the Clash? Nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, please enjoy One Direction, Stomp, some random bald guy in an octopus, and the Pet Shop Boys wearing ridiculous costumes.
The only highlight of the bloody thing was Eric Idle singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, though the song was only a *little* out of place at what was supposed to be a happy event.
And I'm sure NBC's coverage didn't help me enjoy it at all. Could the commentators not shut up for just two minutes? Plus, it was filmed so choppily that the whole event just felt chaotic and cluttered-I really didn't know where to look.
Thankfully, Austin Powers was on the next station, so I just watched that. I'd rather see a Scottish sumo wrestler making fart jokes than be forced to suffer through those closing ceremonies. Which is a big shame, because the actual Olympic games were just great, definitely the best I've ever seen.
Just my thoughts.
_Tim?
We had The Who, Madness, Brian May, and Muse, which was good.
The rest of them could feck off.
And really, they should have had Tom Chaplin on with Briam May, not Jesse J. He's the only one I've heard sing with Queen who even comes close to Mercury. Take a look at see what I mean. :-
Either him, or Freddie on the truck telly's, like they did Lennon.
I would argue that some of the choices (one please don't try and bypass the swear filter, it's there for a reason. Thanks.reds8n direction) were poor, but Norman Cook was/is a major figure in the dance and rave culture of the 80's and 90's and continues to influence music today. The UK have given the world more in music than Punk and that poisonous witch Adele (Sorry, I relay dislike her. Shes a manufactured artist who produces bland mass market pap and a horrible horrible person). They covers so much at the opening they had to find something new.
What I didn't like was the bizarre "Churchill reading Shakespeare" bit, and the Only Fools and Horses bit. That would have made no sense at all to anyone not from the UK. Apparently NBC described Del Boy and Rodney as been "Folk hero's, somewhat like robin hood"
One Direction, whilst not to my taste whatsoever, are pretty much the biggest boyband/group in the world right now , possibly even the biggest band.
they've sold out massive music venues is incredibly short times, less than 1 minute for Madison square IIRC. The hysteria when they went to America was almost on Beatles level of WTFedness.
Showing your true colours there mate? No need to be a drama queen!
Fine we apologies about the one direction jibes.
Oh and Ray Davies should have been left at whatever care home he was residing in. I love the Kinks but he looked a bit dazed and confused by the whole event poor feller. I had to turn he Tv up to hear him.
And while I'm ranting again, fething Liam fething Gallagher useless fething feth. What was he doing there? I was beginning to think it was a continuing list of people that needed to boost their profiles and then he turned up to confirm it! He was so nasal he didn't even sound like himself. What was the point?
Wonderwall? Wonderwhyhefethingbovvered more like! Did he bother? You can never tell wih that fethwit. Still the best bend in the world is it Liam - what an arse.
Liam Gallagher way way too nasal, West End Girls was a really odd choice, and Jessie J did kind of a poor job with Queen (she was fine on her own song). Other than those bits, I thought the closing ceremonies were pretty darn great.
And shame on all of you ( ) for going all negative after that awesome pic d-usa posted. Let's look at that one again:
I thought that the closing ceremony suffered from a serious lack of Dexy's Midnight Runners. Bloody criminal. Other than that, I thought it was alright.
)
What. 
ing are 
