Olympics - what do you think

[Dave Freeman]

Well you may have watched the news this morning, I did and I was furious, Londoners and others in the UK are funding the Games, in a downturn and when lots of people have no job. So its tough. I now understand that 20% of the tickets go to the sponsors and athletes, well thats bad enough but the remainder 80% will be part of a lottery open to ........would you beleive, not to those who have paid for it BUT.........ALL OF EUROPEAN COMMUNITY.

I think the EU should have paid something towards it if they wanted to attend, evidently it is law in the EU that tickets should be offered to all.

What do you think, I am very annoyed, I may well be assisting in the games, on behalf of Transport for London so I may be going but what of everyone else.

Your comments please.................

[arbell9]

so on top of all the euros they swap to pounds that they then spend in London hotels and restaurants and in our airports and also money they spend sampling uk life and also happen to have a free ticket to see some men and ladies in lycra run and jump really narks you off.

i think you need a bit of perspective Dave, its not that big a deal

[rogerch]

What part of "The Olympics is a massive drain on the local economy" are you having difficulty with?

Sydney staged the olympics in 2000, NSW as a state is technically bankrupt.

You in addition have the EU, the biggest bureaucratic money pit yet invented.

I hear the Chinese have put in a bid to buy Vancover 2 dollars fifty US. and for 2 Dollars they'll take the rest of Canada, and that was only the winter olympics.

And you were worried about the Millenium Dome.

I'm comming over in 2011, and staying well clear in 2012

Serously, can't be long now before the EU disapears up it's own @#$&,,, can it ?

[esprit350]

I am pretty sure that Addidas can sell the tickets to the Addidas (olympic) Games to who they want,

you may detect a large dose of cynasisim in that reply, which should give you aclue to what i feel about the Olympic movement

[Advantage]

I wasn't intending to go to any of the events so I'm not sure how the ticket allocation will affect me.

[Kimbers]

Sorry to say, but I agree with Dave and Howard.

My daughter lives 200 yards up the road from the main Olympic village/new tracks/arena's and she assures me that 75% of the workers are Foriegn nationals. She couldn't get a flat this year to attend Uni because so many are living there. So it's not even UK workforce benefitting!

Not that I want to go anyway, but I suppose, seeing as how I have supposedly put in my £2500 I would really like the option of seeing something!

Then theres the "It's regenerating the area" arguement. Really? Like it was guaranteed that the Athletics track would stay a track so schools and local athletic clubs could use it? West Ham have secretly done a deal to buy it and turn it into a footy stadium.

It's all spin and politics.

[Advantage]

I think there's a few good reasons why the contractors don't employ workshy, shoddy, slow British builders.

[Kimbers]

Hehe, you could be right there.

[Paul C]

...there's a few good reasons why the contractors don't employ workshy, shoddy, slow British builders.

The masses of hard working eastern europeans that do a better job faster?

For every decent European/indian/pakistani guy i have worked with on site, i could show you twenty fat, pasty munching, sun reading, racist, thick as a pig british guys. All of course the first to moan the someone has come over here and 'taken their jobs'!

We are breeding stupid lazy british people, giving them houses, and letting them breed more stupid lazy british people, giving them estates, letting them breed whole areas full of stupid lazy british people. We build the odd industrial estate nearby so they can spend their poorly paid days doing mind numbing work like snapping combs off moulds and putting them in packets, putting muffins in boxes, sorting the post etc. We have MADE these people, and there are not enough 'put the cheese in the burger' type jobs for all of them so they are quite rightly unemployed.

I'm glad we import proper working labour for stuff like the olympics rather that hand out the job to the homegrown shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool-divs as a token gesture.

[Bibs]

We are breeding stupid lazy british people, giving them houses, and letting them breed more stupid lazy british people, giving them estates, letting them breed whole areas full of stupid lazy british people.

Swindon per chance?

[Paul C]

Swindon per chance?

Ha!

Well swindon is 100% like that as you know, but i think most towns and cities have swindon type 'bits' to store these folk.

Never written the word 'div' before, had to ask Vicki how to spell it, oh the irony!!!!

[PierreLP]

They could be "employed" to fill in big holes by jumping into them....

On the Olympic issue I have two interests. Firstly I am working with a prospective Olympian towards winning a medal. Secondly I am sceptical regarding any of the long term benefits to the UK that are banded about in the press. The Olympics is purely commercial regardless of which country hosts it.

[esprit350]

try reading this book, a few years old now , but still worth the read

lords of the rings it has nothing to do with frodo and co.......

Edited March 4, 2010 by Howard

[esprit s2]

Regeneration - Stratford has always been crap. They "regenerated" it about 10 years ago and to quote a old lady I spoke with at the bus stop "Its a s**thole no matter how much they paint it".

The problem is you can make it look fantastic but you can't change the people who live there who will no doubt smash all the windows they can, grafitti every wall you can see, drop litter, spit everywhere etc etc........

Just my 2p worth.

[Paul C]

The problem is you can make it look fantastic but you can't change the people who live there who will no doubt smash all the windows they can, grafitti every wall you can see, drop litter, spit everywhere etc etc........

We must drink together sometime.

Maybe they SHOULD have staged the Olympics here:

There would be no legacy of failure to worry about, as you quite rightly suggest: How do you polish a turd?

[Loose Cannon]

According to BBC news Swindon is twinned with Disney World.

I look forward to Pauls analysis of that . Where's the popcorn smiley?

[Paul C]

Already knew mate:

The walls are cold and souls cry out in pain

As i said on that thread, pairing swindon with a theme park was IMO very fair.

[red vtec]

The masses of hard working eastern europeans that do a better job faster?

For every decent European/indian/pakistani guy i have worked with on site, i could show you twenty fat, pasty munching, sun reading, racist, thick as a pig british guys. All of course the first to moan the someone has come over here and 'taken their jobs'!

We are breeding stupid lazy british people, giving them houses, and letting them breed more stupid lazy british people, giving them estates, letting them breed whole areas full of stupid lazy british people. We build the odd industrial estate nearby so they can spend their poorly paid days doing mind numbing work like snapping combs off moulds and putting them in packets, putting muffins in boxes, sorting the post etc. We have MADE these people, and there are not enough 'put the cheese in the burger' type jobs for all of them so they are quite rightly unemployed.

I'm glad we import proper working labour for stuff like the olympics rather that hand out the job to the homegrown shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool-divs as a token gesture.

1) There are plenty of hard working British People

1) There are also plenty of on the fiddle, hands out for freebie east europeans. So don't kid yourself that they are all here on the straight and narrow.

3) Agree up to a point, so maybe we should be creating jobs and apprenticeships in construction, civil engineering etc for our own population? But I do agree we are breeding a nation of benefit families (or non families)

4) Yes why would we want to pay our own population? when we can pay twice once with benefits to our own unemployed and then again to foreign workers so the money can go out of the country.

The Olympics is a well known waste of money with no economic benefit to the host nation, this is widley documented. It is a purley commercial enterprise, I have little interest in it, due to the fact that a few years down the line you find out so and so who won Gold was up to their eyeballs on some banned drug.

And with the wars we have going on at the moment I think it would be wise to give 2012 a wide bearth for obvious reasons.

[Paul C]

Maybe we should be creating jobs and apprenticeships in construction, civil engineering etc for our own population?

There ARE those jobs. Over the past 20 years the number apprentices coming into my trade and finishing has dwindled, don't get me wrong there are PLENTY of unemployed 16-20 year olds but the romantic notion you give them apprenticeships is fatally flawed, they need to be able to do them. The electrical apprenticeships have never been more maths/tech heavy, the courses i have to do to stay qualified are harder than anything i ever did in school. Trying to find a school leaver with the brains to complete the course is nigh on impossible as any kid with brains is channeled the University route to get a degree in breeding badgers or something. Trying to find someone from the collection of hundreds or thousands of mindless div's would be like walking into a farmers field with your chess set and expecting a game.

Yes why would we want to pay our own population? when we can pay twice once with benefits to our own unemployed and then again to foreign workers so the money can go out of the country.

We pay masses of our population benifits because they are simply not good enough for the job and have no desire to be so. As i said, there are only so many 'put the cheese on the burger' jobs, the rest require skill and intelligence, true we could give these jobs to the terminally and intentionally stupid to keep the money in the country.

We would have the luxury of living in a very blinkered vision of utopia for a while, then it would of course, all turn into shit.

[Bibs]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11546228

£2012 for a ticket for the opening ceremony!

Anything more than 'Free' and I'll not bother ta!

[rocket63]

Ah,but a bit of prespective is that you can get tickets from £20 and the more expensive tickets subsidise the lower prices

[Bibs]

Perspective my ass, they want 2 grand for a ticket!!!

Anyway, £12bn to spend and they can't even get a clock that works...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12749912

I'm the olympic grinch

[rogerch]

If it's a clock you want,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

This is the famous Hornsby water clock.

[Kimbers]

I'm on Bibs' side. I just don't see us tax payers getting the money back.

And now they've started spending more on trying to get people in to see things they aren't really interested in. I heard Lord Coe being interviewed yesterday trying to get people to pay for tickets to see handball, water polo and Goalball (whatever the hell that is?).

Frankly I wouldn't travel down to London, even if the tickets were free, to see something I'm not interested in.

[red vtec]

An absolute waste of money, some of the so called committe are from where I worked once, Gravy train...... & parasites springs to mind.