Olympics Acid Trip.

Olympics Acid Trip.

Over the past 4 weeks (27.7.12 - 12.8.12) the UK has gone through the biggest house party trip it has ever willingly cosseted itself with since the quaint queen’s jubilee and the vast majority of the populace went mad. On every form of media there has been seen an over supply of what some may call a stupendous display of the scope and power of orchestrated information technology projected onto a world stage ever eager for an injection of news. Since the ‘winning’ of the Olympics Judas award, there has been no attempt to rationalise the real cost or worth of laying on an event of such magnitude, especially at time of enforced austerity. The fabrication of the initial budget set aside for the event was widely underestimated and required the budget to be lifted at each stage of the development for the government to claim that it came in on time and in cost! In the whole history of the re-establishment of the Olympics no country has gained any long term benefit from the expenditure laid out on such a selected form of entertainment for the benefit of a few partaking people. And with supposedly one exception – Atlanta 1996, none has made any money from the outlay.

The 36 events covered by the games represent activities that have no intrinsic value other than being seen as a form of one up-man-ship prestige jamboree in the geopolitical conflicts to be on the top table. The events laid out such are in the main open to people with disposable income of some measure and some like; tennis, sailing, shooting, equestrian, fencing etc require sizable investment to participate in and all of them demand a great deal of time and suitable resources to achieve any  success. This investment is not easily obtainable by the vast majority of a working population to take them beyond a simple short term or weekend pastime.

For all their verbosity attached to the Olympic, about it being a major boost for  the UK; a platform to stage the presence of  the UK, a vehicle to deliver economic benefits, a step to develop a legacy of investment for the future, it was a major confidence trick of stupendous proportion to offer at a time when it is most useful to provide a diversion from the mess the UK is in and there is no doubt that the London Olympics (for in essence that is what it was for – London) offered little value to benefit the rest of the UK despite the huge hype driven up by authorities and the media.  At no stage did the media challenge the accepted view that the event was good for the whole of UK nor seriously examine the disbursement cost and secretive nature of locog or the olympics delivery authority.

To spend £9.3bn on a few hundred thousand people for a few hundred to display their undoubted skill and dedication over a range of sports that generally do not otherwise have much media coverage and which during the four weeks wholly inundated the TV and media coverage to agitate gullible people and which is unlikely to have any real “legacy” benefits at the end, must be seen as an exercise in mass hysteria. The one extracted concurrence that transpired with the whole presentation before and after the event demonstrates the influence that can be brought to bear and be controlled on the ability to manipulate a population if enough hype is expressed. Near every selected opinion sought on the event created an overriding impression that the whole population of the UK were eagerly awaiting and in thrall for the Olympics, there were opinions that indicated the opposite. There was never any attempt to create a balance opposite view and any that were vocalised were quickly dismissed as being too cranky to countenance as serious objections to sway a rethink.

The hype attached to this event brings to mind sayings such as “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” or

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong”.  Voltaire.

One cannot help but think that this is an appropriate warning of how the many people of a nation can be indoctrinated to any given end.

Now that it is over the counter views are being cranked up as the duplicity of the funding streams to individual activities become known to be able to continue any success and the actuality of funding new facilities or even to maintain what is already in existence meets the self imposed austerity and colludes with the continuing sale of public sports assets.

The Olympics has become little more that a honey pot for nationalistic branding, private enterprise and some element of affluent social sport segregation. There might be an case to hold such event on just the entertainment value that highlight the quality of human achievement that can be reached for activities that do not usually take up the media coverage because they are too expensive to cover that generally with certain exception get little attention; much easer to go for crowed pleasers that are amply exposed but why football, tennis, table tennis, trampoline to name a few should be within the scope of Olympics and not cricket the hosts national game seems obscure.

What is shortly to start is the Paralympics which will not get the same level of attention, hype or funding largess as the ‘real’ Olympics yet it might be argued that this event and those participating have a substantially greater challenge to tackle for their achievements than the fortunate whole bodied humans.

At a time when austerity fear is propagated, it would be considerable cheaper to give every successful leading sports wo/man a gold medal every year and free beer or a cannabis hit for others on a chosen date of ‘cerebration’ for their achievement, rather than have the huge waste that is now increasingly thrown at this unnecessary spectacle. Fortunately for London it was an investment ‘one off life time event’ but what is needed now is similar regular life time investments that moves the rest of the UK economy.        

© Renot 2012

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