the organisation was excellent

08 nostalgia may be becoming a thing already:

Beijing staged a magnificent Olympics. The organisation was excellent; the venues breathtaking and the anti-doping tests were stricter.

Don't know about the doping, but the organisation was just a case of a smooth fit. You're not going to get a G4S/army omnishambles because you have a giant paramilitary gendarmerie in the form of the PAP already available. All your volunteers come pre-packaged as Communist Party/Youth League members, ready and waiting to be deployed for stewarding/flag waving/litter picking or whatever's good.There were no Zil - sorry, Olympic priority - lanes in Beijing to my knowledge. But if your car has the right party/military numberplate, then you carry a priority lane around with you wherever you go and you would also be the sort of person who had privileged access to the games.

As for the weird sponsor-authoritarianism we're seeing in London, there's no way Beijing would have allowed some corporation to usurp its monopoly on telling people what to do, and no corporation would have assumed anything different. And of course, there would have been no need for the organising committee to demand that people who link to it on the internet say nice things. From Beijing's point of view, the whole London set up could be described as a failed experiment in trying to run things their way.

Comments

[nick s]

Was talking to someone who was part of the broadcast technical crew in Beijing (and will be doing the same in London) and he said that most lower-tier officials onsite were unwilling to make any kind of judgement call that might fuck things over with their bosses: Jobsworth to the nth degree. That isn't ideal for an event where you might need to improvise or do some emergency jerry-rigging to make sure the live OB feed doesn't go dead.

The way to get round this was to shout a lot and intimidate them with whatever authority you felt you could claim, and leave it to the bosses to sort out the political repercussions. Not the pleasantest situation.

[Strategist]

And of course, there would have been no need for the organising committee to demand that people who link to it on the internet say nice things.

I hadn't heard that one yet - but sounds to me like a new low. Any recommendation on where to read more?

[Barry Freed]

I saw this being retweeted a lot the other day by some of the hackers I follow:

http://blog.indexoncensorship.org/2012/07/13/london-2012-olympics-fails-internet/

[belle le triste]

yes on twitter there were a LOT of retweets containing www.london2012.com and words like twats -- this may just be my fu, or the fact that it's some time ago now on twitter, but searches aren't now turning them up

[Leo Strauss]

Ad hoc corporate dystopia will always lack the vigor of authentic political authoritarianism because a brand in the end requires the consumer to retain some residual affection if not respect.

Still, Brits and the Euros will approach closer mimicry than us Yanks because we've never had raison d'etat, just vague emotionalisms like Amerikuh, for the troops, etc. And our kind of emotionalisms since 2001 have twice the atomized demands for conformity with twice the incompetence.

[Strategist]

http://www.london2012.com/terms-of-use/

Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner.

So will B&T or I get into trouble if I call LOCOG a bunch of total arseholes, or only if I link to the LOCOG website while doing so?

I think this is definitely one for Craig Murray, he's always up for daring pricks to take him to court, and is hosted by some Dutch dudes who don't get bullied easy.

Seriously, if I was McDonalds or Coca Cola I'd be getting worried that the good name of my brand was getting contaminated by association with those twats.

[Strategist]

Please do forgive my belt and braces approach to genitalia-based insults.

[A message to B&T regulars and/or LOCOG lawyers on one cushy gig.]

[Alex]

Link policies were funny in about 2004 weren't they? And serious in about 1998?

I presume that the Perfect Curve team's Regressive Media strategy must be at work. (Weirdly enough, tonight's episode of TwentyTwelve has actually convinced me that the Olympic Park exists.)

[Martin Wisse]

The Euros did the same thing, but that was back in 2006; so did the Belgian state railways only recently. There seems to be a tendency for large, autocratic organisations to think that they can demand control over who links to them, even though court case after court case has shown this not to be true.

[john b]

Didn't the Belgian newspapers actually, insanely, win their case against Google for linking?

Ah, yes they did, but the papers then voluntarily signed up to re-add their content because there isn't much point in having a newspaper no-one can see.

[Strategist]

There seems to be a tendency for large, autocratic organisations to think that they can demand control over who links to them, even though court case after court case has shown this not to be true.

Brilliant. When they eventually take it away, this current age of internet freedom really will be seen in retrospect as a golden age. Worth fighting for, really.

[nick s]

There seems to be a tendency for large, autocratic organisations to think that they can demand control over who links to them

More to the point, there's a tendency for the lawyers at such organisations to throw their efforts into assembling the legalese while the people running the websites paste in the text that's sent to them and continue doing what they were already doing to police that policy, i.e. sweet Fanny Adams. So it may be useful to think of "link policies" as "one way of keeping annoying people at large, autocratic organisations occupied."