a disgraceful exhibition

If you want to see a man shamefully do down his country in the lickspittle media of a dictatorship, here's me at Global Times.

The article seems tro have got knocked about a bit during the editing process, so I've put the original below the fold.

On the Monday before the opening of the London Olympic Games, a specially invited audience of VIPs heard London mayor Boris Johnson recite a poem in praise of the event and his role within it. The poem had been written especially for the Mayor in classical Greek: Mayor Johnson speaks and reads both Greek and Latin and likes people to know about it.  After hearing the Mayor recite, the VIPs were driven back to their five star central London hotels along the city’s specially designated Olympic traffic lanes, created to ensure that games-related traffic can get about quickly. Anyone else driving on them gets a £130 fine. Let the Olympic leaders go first!

The Mayor has also been speaking to ordinary Londoners. He has not been talking to them in person but at least he has been speaking in English. A tape of his voice has been playing on buses and at London Underground stations telling people who have to get to and from work that their journeys will become much more difficult during the games. London’s transport system cannot cope with both the city’s population and the thousands of games visitors. So the little people are being encouraged to get out of the way.

Londoners have responded on twitter with a simple three word hashtag. The third word is ‘Boris’, the second word is ‘off’ and the first word cannot be reprinted. Yet the mayor is simply a focus for more general cynicism. A reporter for the New York Times recently asked Londoners their opinion about the Games: “a complete nightmare” “a fiasco” “a disaster” “a shambles” and a “police state” were among the responses she got.

The reporter put this down to the fact that the British are not known for positive thinking. Yet it is not the Olympic Games that Londoners object to, but the Olympic Occupation. There will be 20,000 soldiers on the streets of London providing security during the games, all in uniform and many armed. That’s around a fifth of the entire British army. Anti-aircraft missiles have been placed on the rooftops of residential tower blocks to prevent a 9/11 style terrorist atrocity. The implication of this is that if a plane is shot down and crashes on the rest of London, then the operation will have been successful.

Private sponsors are joining in. Indeed, they have their own police force which will be patrolling the zone around the main Olympic park making sure that people are not eating the wrong kind of burgers, drinking the wrong cola or wearing the wrong running shoes. And any small business that wants to boost trade by using Olympic imagery will be in serious trouble with the ‘brand chengguan’.

 So there are missiles on the rooftops and soldiers on the streets. Important people are whisked to and fro in special traffic lanes while ordinary folk struggle out of tube stations hours late for their journey and are harassed by for their choice of snacks. Spare a thought for Londoners this summer. They would like to enjoy the Olympics as much as anyone else. They just want their city back.

Comments

[nick s]

You have to hand it to Mitt Romney today for getting people to cheer for unloved Tory leaders in a manner historically associated with the Luftwaffe.

[ajay]

There will not be 20,000 soldiers on the streets of London. There will be 17,000 navy, army and RAF, either working security at Games venues or supporting the ones who are (plus a small number in reserve to back up the police). None of them will be "on the streets" except in their time off duty.

[Stephen]

Another candidate for a B&T tagline?