Reading recently that the manifesto for the modern revived games emphasises that they were intended to encourage individual effort, without reference to nationality, it occurred to me how far the intentions have been subverted.
It all went wrong when Hitler got his hands on the 1936 games, and turned them into a spectacle extolling militant nationalism.
Since then we have done him proud. Roudy flamboyant triumphant nationalism is what it is all about now, with each succeeding host trying to outdo the previous one in ostentatious display of claimed national virtues.
Marching, uniforms, singing, parades, banners, uniforms, and ruthless suppression of all but authorised use of the party emblem.
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Are today's athletes paid to compete?
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>> Are today's athletes paid to compete?
>>
Do you mean appearance money?
Many are "funded", and don't have to have a job so I suppose they are being paid to be athletes.
Watching the rowing, when the French double scull I think was doing well, the comment was made that they have to keep their jobs as they "don't have the funding [like ours]..." and they take a year off every four years to prepare instead.
Not sure about Eric the Eel, or the sculler from Niger who gamely came in to cheers about a minute behind everybody else.
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Well no idea what games you are watching, but the ones I have seen and involved in are lighthearted, humorous, inspiring, fun and promoting good feeling and a sense of national unity and pride
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The medal count thing is not especially lighthearted.
Another fine example of a non-story from our favourite paper, but if there is any truth behind it then it's definitely not in the Olympic spirit -
goo.gl/LJkdB
"Forging of the Mandarin mermaid: How Chinese children are taken away from their families and brutalised into future Olympians"
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>> The medal count thing is not especially lighthearted.
>>
>> Another fine example of a non-story from our favourite paper, but if there is any
>> truth behind it then it's definitely not in the Olympic spirit -
>>
>> goo.gl/LJkdB
>>
>> "Forging of the Mandarin mermaid: How Chinese children are taken away from their families and
>> brutalised into future Olympians"
>>
Seen it, it only reinforces my utter contempt for Mail journos
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 31 Jul 12 at 10:28
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>> It all went wrong when Hitler got his hands on the 1936 games, and turned
>> them into a spectacle extolling militant nationalism.
>> Since then we have done him proud.
Whatever Hitler did wrong at any time in his life, he compensated for on 30th April 1945.
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So that's all right then.
I don't do red gongs, l'Es, but that's a bizarre assertion. Hitler compensated for nothing; he merely ducked out of facing the consequences.
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>>Whatever Hitler did wrong at any time in his life, he compensated for on 30th April 1945.
You mean by escaping justice?
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Yuck, never mind Hitler.
There was a photo in today's comic of the seventh of my eight old schools, the second-best academically too. I'm pretty sure it didn't have swimming scholarships when I was there (the Queen acceded to the throne during my three-year stint which covered O Level) and there certainly weren't any girls there in those days. I bet it's the same 25-yard swimming pool though (no metres in those days either). Big guys used to play savage water polo in it.
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Ah, Godwin's law asserts itself once more.
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Not really, CGN. The chance of this thread mentioning the Nazis was always quite high once Cliff had put them in his opening post. That was fair comment, I thought: it's easy to get caught up in the Team GB hysteria and lose sight of the Alle Menschen werden Brüder ethos that ought to be what Games are about.
My favourite moment so far has been seeing an unfancied Finnish badminton player excel himself in pushing the Malaysian top seed into a deciding game, which he even led until fatigue got the better of him - and the sporting words and evident mutual respect between the two at the end. Proper sport, that.
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Hey Rastaman: if Polly Toynbee is really so intellectually despicable, why does it take 23 paragraphs of unreadable blather by a total unknown in an organ no one has ever heard of to explain why?
I only axin man to raaas.
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Maybe it's an antidote to the many, many, column inches of blather spewed out by that "right-on" P.C. champagne socialist, as she sits in her Tuscan villa, looking down on the hoi-polloi?
Her reward is writing for a paper which not only haemorrhages money from its print edition, but also chooses an offshore tax haven to avoid tax on its group profits, whilst condemning others for similar schemes.
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...champagne socialist...
Loathsome phrase, used by those incapable of understanding that living a comfortable life is compatible with simultaneously wishing that others' lives were better.
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>> wishing that others' lives were better.
... and actually trying to do something about it, albeit only by writing for the Grauniad. La Toynbee often annoys me but has never seemed immoral or hypocritical.
Without 'champagne socialists' to supply money, help advise beleaguered militants on the law and so on, and sometimes run interference with their establishment contacts to protect those in danger of being railroaded into prison or disgrace, the labour movement in this country might never have got off the ground. Or it might have taken a different, revolutionary course and we might all be having to eat excrement under one of the myriad forms of fascism.
Of course that is mere speculation. But Rastaman and others here need to look at the big picture more instead of focusing narrowly on their misinterpretations of detail and griping stupidly about the left-wing media like some moron on Fox news. .
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>> ...champagne socialist...
>>
>> Loathsome phrase, used by those incapable of understanding that living a comfortable life is compatible
>> with simultaneously wishing that others' lives were better.
>>
If only that was the case .... except that the phrase is used to describe socialists living a very comfortable champagne guzzling life who wish to deny capitalists (or possibly even anyone else - apart from themselves) squaffing it.
Blair, Abbot, Toynbee, are just a few examples.
Guess what, even the Guardian's education journalist has confessed to "do what I say, not what I do":
www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/23/why-send-child-to-private-school
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>> Blair, Abbot, Toynbee, are just a few examples.
Three very different individuals all of whom are dedicated essentially to denying capitalists their ill-gotten champagne, according to acclaimed political philosopher John H, citing sources in (gulp!) the Grauniad.
Who would have thought it?
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Nice to see the GB team doing well, but for at least some sports that has required large amounts of funding (eg. cycling?).
What are the benefits to the country of Olympic success? How do we know whether the funding represents 'good value'?
Don't really begrudge it (assuming I am at least in part paying for it), mainly curious.
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Also the under funded sports that produce the goods, have not been over hyped for the last 4 years, and the resulting gold carries so much more enjoyment to the watching public.
Its called suprise and delight. Car makers use the theory sometimes with features of the car.
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Without 'the superfluous' - art, sport, space exploration, stuff like that - life would be relentlessly grim and we might as well all just top ourselves. I don't mean bread and circuses either, although that scam has always been present to some extent.
Waste and national preening aren't all bad. And doing away with them certainly won't feed all the world's hungry or stop tyrannies in their tracks. The idea that expenditure on the superfluous could be diverted to feeding the starving or improving the NHS is just childish, because it wouldn't be.
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>> Waste and national preening aren't all bad. And doing away with them certainly won't feed
>> all the world's hungry or stop tyrannies in their tracks. The idea that expenditure on
>> the superfluous could be diverted to feeding the starving or improving the NHS is just
>> childish, because it wouldn't be.
But I would have thought that the government would want fairly good evidence to show that the sport fund money wouldn't be better spent on things more likely to be perceived as giving a direct benfit to the voters eg. reducing taxes etc.
I'm not very good at this politics thing so it's probably a daft question.
Last edited by: Focus on Thu 2 Aug 12 at 17:25
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>> Nice to see the GB team doing well, but for at least some sports that
>> has required large amounts of funding (eg. cycling?).
>>
>> What are the benefits to the country of Olympic success? How do we know whether
>> the funding represents 'good value'?
>>
>> Don't really begrudge it (assuming I am at least in part paying for it), mainly
>> curious.
>>
Moynihan thinks not enough being spent - a lot more public funding is required to prevent the rich dominating TeamGB:
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9446407/Team-GB-chief-dominance-of-public-schools-is-unacceptable.html
Last edited by: John H on Thu 2 Aug 12 at 17:19
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>>Moynihan thinks not enough being spent - a lot more public funding is required to prevent
>>the rich dominating TeamGB:
If the rich want to spend their time and money building up their muscles in order to become the fastest in the world then good luck to them.
It is unclear to me why the taxpayer should subsidise the poor to waste their time in like fashion.
His Lordship may think what he likes, but I don't see why I should have to pay for Kevin-from-the-slums to become a celebrity. David Beckham seemed to manage it on money he earned himself.
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>> His Lordship may think what he likes, but I don't see why I should have
>> to pay
>>
I may agree with you, but Moynihan has support where it matters:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9378405/David-Cameron-says-too-many-top-British-athletes-went-to-public-school.html
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SFAIK not many, if any, public schools have flogged off their playing fields to opportunistic builders.
How many state schools even have gymnasia or swimming pools?
Last edited by: Meldrew on Thu 2 Aug 12 at 19:12
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>> SFAIK not many, if any, public schools have flogged off their playing fields to opportunistic
>> builders.
>> How many state schools even have gymnasia or swimming pools?
Pretty much all locally have gymnasia and a few have pools. Village school has finally abandoned aspirations to pool but for planning reasons (a couple of streets find view of grass becomes view of wall) rather than pressure for sale of land.
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Public schools, by and large, have not subscribed to the pernicious doctrine that competition is bad for children's development and egos.
Might that have something to do with it?
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David Beckham seemed to manage it on
>> money he earned himself.
>>
Beckham wasn't a child of the slums, although he didn't exactly have a priveleged upbnringing either. His celebrity would not have been possible without the prodiguous talent for football, and appetite for working hard at it, which even his biggest detractors would not deny that he possesses.
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>> His celebrity would not have been possible without the prodiguous talent for football, and
>> appetite for working hard at it, which even his biggest detractors would not deny that
>> he possesses.
Marrying a famous stick insect and giving his kids silly names helped
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To be fair (who me?) whenever I see pictures of the Beckhams en-famille, they seem have good looking and tidily turned out children.
Granted VB nearly always has a face like a bulldog who has just chewed on a wasp and DB is covered in unsightly tattoos, but hey - you can't have everything!
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>> To be fair (who me?) whenever I see pictures of the Beckhams en-famille, they seem
>> have good looking and tidily turned out children.
True.... and for all his perceived faults Beckham seems to be a decent chap; even given his life as a global superstar he seems to have very little ego, more than can be said of his missus. Certainly a damn sight better role model than some of his fellow players.
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>> To be fair (who me?) whenever I see pictures of the Beckhams en-famille, they seem
>> have good looking and tidily turned out children.
That'll be the George at Asda clothes they wear, they do a good range.
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Why are clay pigeon shooting and archery classified as sports?
They're skilled pastimes & recreations only, surely?
*Edit for typo.*
Last edited by: Roger on Fri 3 Aug 12 at 13:48
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>> Why are clay pigeon shooting and archery classified as sports?
>> They're skilled pastimes & recreations only, surely?
Nah, shooting the french with a longbow is good sport in anyones book.
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Remember Agincourt and Crécy (Oh, and Trafalgar, too!) - Les Grenouilles do and that's why they are less than enthusiastic about "Perfide Albion" !
Who gives a rat's ass what they think, though?
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>> >> To be fair (who me?) whenever I see pictures of the Beckhams en-famille, they
>> seem
>> >> have good looking and tidily turned out children.
>>
>> That'll be the George at Asda clothes they wear, they do a good range.
Aha, the style guru has spoken! :-)
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Olympics - subversive thoughts - Roger.
