I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the Olympics is a poisoned chalice for which ever nation is foolish enough to drink from it. The sheer unbridled thuggish greed with which it operates makes mafia-run casinos look like paragons of virtue.
Shame really.

“we need free expression at London 2012″

Except for racists, obviously. And homophobes.

You say they’re trying to stop it getting onto social media sites – how can they do this? Have any of these companies agreed to help Locog stop people sharing footage?

O2 have just tested their tool to make sure noone shares any games content too quickly.

@2 – Is this irony?

The closer it gets, the more the London Olympics seems like the Berlin Olympics – quasi mystical celebration of thuggish state power.

It will be ‘spun’ as a huge success, even if it’s an unmitigated disaster and then over the next ten years we will slowly come to realise at just what cost that disaster was.
It’s just a corporate capitalist circus in which we pretend to watch the world’s finest athletes chase one another for money.
Who cares, who wins? We’ll be still paying for it in 2030.

@6

State power my foot. This is about corporate power with the state providing cheap manpower and footing the bill.

State power my foot. This is about corporate power with the state providing cheap manpower and footing the bill.

Same difference.

@9

Not quite. If big business were prevented from influencing state matters then they’d behave in much the same predatory fashion. If the state had big business funds cut away then they’d be solely answerable to the electorate, which is the way it should be.

Take heed all those who bellieve that contracting out NHS services to the private sector is a good idea. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

@11 You’re right – the NHS should carry on building it’s own MRI scanners, ambulances etc instead of these private bastards at Phillips & Ford et al.

12

I said services, perhaps you need an optician.

They are now more or less openly just using ‘sponorship’ as a euphmism for bribery, aren’t they?

If I am charged with organising some public event in the public interest, and I accept a million pounds from company X to arrange it in a way favourtable to company X, that is bribery, not sponsorship. All discussion of Olympic bribery seems to be about hospitality and yet no one seems to have noticed this slight problem with the arrangement.

Is the games fiasco G4 the same company, or part of the same group that regularly loses prisoners?

@OP, Robert Sharp: “It is likely that many people will turn their camera-phones onto the spectacle of British soldiers guarding Olympic venues.”

This highlights government misunderstanding of how use of the military in civilian scenarios works. They fail to comprehend that soldiers make people feel uncomfortable (at best), or what it means to be a soldier.

Excepting ceremonial guards at explicitly public venues, it is unusual to encounter soldiers in civilian life in the UK. Those guards, buried beneath exceptional disguise, expect to be photographed and are trained to maintain a poker face. Another place where we encounter soldiers — and this time they are seriously armed — is at the airport where it would be extraordinarily unwise to take a photograph. Of course, I am unable to comprehend why airports are safer when defended by soldiers in non-camouflage than by soldiers dressed as everyday people (with normal haircuts).

And for the Olympic Games, I find it unbelievable that anyone would perceive that civil protection can or should be maintained by UK soldiers. I admire the resolve and perseverance of UK troops acting as peace protectors, and I admire their capacity to act as ticket inspectors or guides at the Olympics. But they shouldn’t be there.

Returning to the OP, the presence of soldiers photographed by citizens at the Olympics will cause problems. The G4S fiasco contributes to this, owing to more soldiers in uniform, but the fundamental problem is that LOCOG thought that uniformed solders should be part of security.

An aside about how security works in the real world.

Two years ago I experienced a delayed take off and landed in Paris after the airport was normally closed.

Three or four of us walked past the “can we help you desks” because we did not know that they existed, through the one way doors into passport control. We had never been asked “do you need assistance”, or perhaps we misunderstood.

We got a lot further, without the ultimate requirement to flash our passports. We met a lot of cleaners. We sought English, French and Spanish speaking workers who might give us a clue about what to do next. As a result we found the end inspection point of another terminal. Shucks. And you know what: the workers there did not have a clue about how to treat or address unusual situations. Were we bombers?

So we went back to the original exit point, back to the one way gates, and one of us, a muscular bloke opened them forcefully. An alarm was triggered — you could hear it. We went to the “can we help you desks” and the staff were helpful. I was given my bedtime nightshirt and breakfast tokens.

After receiving my night kit, I re-entered civilian immigration control. I walked though a broken control gate towards passport control. That was really well organised; the passport inspectors were closed and I had to knock them up. I seriously had to knock on the passport shack.