Olympics - always strikes me as a vanity trip for sporting no marks to strut their stuff on stages created to fill the pockets of big corporates. If it's so great why aren't there atheltic/swimming/shooting/rowing/walking/gynastic/... clubs pulling in 40,000 every week all over the world? Why don't the IAAF or IOC foot the bill for their largesse? Just what is so exciting about running fast(100m) or running very slowly for hours(marathon)? Put a ball at his feet and have thuggish brutes trying to hack the runner down - that's exciting, more often frustrating, and sometimes sheer exhilerating when it goes right. Same with chucking stuff about - big wow if you can lob a spear 50 meters, lob a ball out to set up a quick conter attack instead and you have my interest. I haven't wacthed any Olympics since about 1976 - the best that happened was when ITV decided to let the BBC have it all. I had hoped to avoid witnessing a UK hosted Olypimc in my lifetime, whilst I hope to live long enough to see us host a World Cup ( THE World Cup ). Part of me hopes the Olympics is a comical distaster - I'd rather these be remebered as the Eddy Eagle limpix so our lives are never disruputed by this shameful waste of public funds again. Vital health/public services are scrapped but we have a massive white elephant. Everywhere the Olympics have been where huge investment in infratstruture has been required has left the country in debt. Olympics should only go to smaller nations that have an inferiority complex and want to show the world they exist and are prepared to bankrupt themselves for their day in the limelight. We don't need to do this - too many thingsa re broken in our country that need spending on. We should invest in things we care about for their intrinsic value to us. My TV/radio will be off during the mayhem and hyperhype of 2012 - unless we have comical organisational failures.
Quite. What is more, the football clubs, i.e. the sport itself, have spent money on the biggest cost items - the stadia. WOuld have been nice to see the sporting clubs/bodies for each Olympic sport foot the bill for their respective arenas. If they are unable to, then that clearly means they have not got enough people interested in those sports to fund it, so tough luck. A sellout every 4 years just doesn't justify the expense of the building these places.
thats like saying why doesnt a discus thrower do javelin. they are different disciplines. walking is infinitely harder than running.
Well, in any case back to the OP; I still think the Olympics are a waste of money as the potential revenue gained will not come any where near close enough to recoup what has been spent on them.
I speed walked from Waterloo station to Parliament Square(ish) once. 'Twas bloody tiring. TenG, fair enough if you don't like certain individual events but there are plenty of team events which you may consider more exciting, like hockey (great sport btw). And I think it's good that less popular sports get a bit of coverage occasional. Football, rugby, cricket and F1 can't have it all their own way and the more people see other sports, the more they'll see that they are quite enjoyable, sports like fencing, table tennis, hockey, archery, etc. As for the economic argument, firstly the cuts would have been made regardless of the Olympics. Also the world economy was in a much better shape when we won the bid for the Olympics. Plus, at least the Olympics is making a positive contribution to society. Not like the amount of money wasted to maintain the UK's nuclear capabilities, that is an utter waste of money.
Firstly, mutually assured destruction is a ridiculous concept and a ridiculous way to do geopolitics. Secondly, the most likely group to use nuclear weapons against us would probably be Al Qaeda or something but even if they did get some nukes, we wouldn't be able to retaliate anyway as we couldn't just nuke the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan. I'm pretty confident China, who are often seen as the most likely nation to use nuclear arms (e.g. exemplified in the Fallout series) won't nuke us, nor Iran. North Korea's a possibility but I don't think they would ultimately. Plus the Americans would retaliate too, so there's no point us having weapons as well. Not to mention deliberately targeting civilians is against the UN Charter of Human Rights.
Well I believe spending money to maintain nuclear weapons should be stopped but the research to make it a viable energy source should go on. Fossil fuels are not going to last forever so we should be researching alternatives like nuclear, wind, wave etc so that we can go on living our lives the way we are used to doing so.
I agree that nuclear weapons should be banished. What i meant with my post was using nuclear power. It's a clean energy source, that is far more sustainable than things such as wind power.
Oh yes, I'm all for nuclear power. It's the cleanest, relatively energy efficient source we have at the moment. Although to develop something renewable and efficient would be nice.... Particularly as we're predicted to reach peak oil any time from within the next few months to next few years, though more optimistic predictions predict some time around 2030.
Nuclear weapons = waste of money, but in a world where a few countries have them, it's better to have them and carry the threat than not. So, whilst regretable, it is pointless holding this up as straw man in an argument about the use of public funds. You will find very few people, a tiny minority, who are non-Olympic enthusiasts that support the economic argument for the money spoent being a good use. The only people who seem to trumpet this idea that, even without the sport, it has been a good thing are those who would gladly bankrupt this country just to see 2 weeks of showpiece "action" (ZzzZzzzZzzz). It is first and foremost, an all expense paid jamboree/ritual for the IOC gang and politicians, and for "sports" people who couldn't attract a decent crowd elsewhere/when to bathe in media hyped glory. By the way, the English Tourist Board are to launch a campaign to counter the effect that has been experienced in other Olympic cities of tourist numbers being reduced because of the Olympics, and it's an effect that lasts for some years after. The best thing about having the Olympics here is that we won't have another for at least 60 years, and hopefully I'll be long gone by then. I also think to be fair that a lot of people like me who hate it do so because it's another little bit of raging against the government machine, being off message from what those loonies in politics want us to believe. So if politicians, journalists, law makers, corporates all band together and heap praise on something, with much mutual back slapping, it is a given that lots of people will get their backs up over this.
How the **** did this go from hosting the olympics to nuclear war? Even for here, that's a pretty ****in massive shift off topic!
