Be Excellent To Each Other

It's certainly helping GSK. The company that bottles Lucozade Sport has been told to "ignore all the order sheets - every bottle you can put on a truck we will buy".
This combined with the fact that the same company bottles a competitor to Fruit Shoot (which has just been recalled) means they're having a good time of it at the moment.

Have you seen the changes to the wording of the TFL emails over the weekend? Basically they now say 'Don't go near Stratford, but everywhere else is good' which is a fundamental change from the pre-olympics message.

They said that it just hasn't been the case for other host countries in the years following their games. Although I don't know how good their research was and whether it factored in other things which could have affected tourism in those years.

How dare we be positive!

The Olympics is murdering children and single handedly causing the global economic downturn.

It did cost 8373727626274848726274884 trillion pounds.

And is only for noted rich kids like Somalian refugee Mo Farah and state school educated Jess Ennis.

We should be building skate parks and sending stuff out to dead rocks instead!

I'm inspired to buy a shot gun and bags of purple powder.

Carnage in the hurdles, there.

Aye! Four fallers out of nine runners!

And Chinese guy. The superstar. He might have to defect, now.

Yeah, I think they over-egged it pretty heavily. Which I'm quite glad of, frankly - but then I don't run a London business.

We all noticed that the faller in one of the Women's 400m hurdles heats was Vania Stambolova, right?

Goldie Sayers looks like Janet Ellis. Therefore, I quite fancy her

Yeah...

That's why we're talking about bottles! Where've you been, Perkies?!

Anyone who does the 400m hurdles is mental, anyway.

Macedonia, by all accounts.

I can see I'm going to have to buy another bottle of wine on Sunday, just to throw at a horse.

Not just skate parks, obviously. That was an example of something I happen to know shitloads about. We should be spending public money for the benefit of the public is all, not giving grants to fucking rowing clubs.

I don't hate the Olympics, I get just as excited and emotional as anyone to see people who have worked hard at something doing well. I just don't happen to agree that it's a good use of all that money.

It's a one-time event. It's a good thing. You can have your skate parks later.

Besides "giving it to rowing clubs" is bullshit and you know it.

here's a table of what cash went where, and the results it got.

Has I missed a wormhole or something on this thread today?

Plenty of money being spread around. And I disagree with the notion that only poshos can get into certain sports. I agree that some sports are more likely to be taken up by wealthy private school kids because they have an easier route to access certain sports initially, but if your child is interested in a particular sport, there's invariably a way for them to do it without breaking the bank. In my experience anyway. And I come from Stockon-on-Tees.

Yeah, sure, they can have a go but then if it turns out that they're any good then unless you've got money then they won't be going to too many sailing regattas.

Because there's no 'cheevos'?

One thing that is guaranteed, if you don't provide funding to rowing clubs, there will definitely, absolutely be no access at all for non-rich people.

or thickos.

Indeed! I just can't get on with the negativity around the Olympics. It's a total one-off and I think it's doing plenty of good.

(As an aside, the Teesside rowing club in Stockon on the banks of the Tees is fucking excellent and anything but the toff-filled old boys club you might imagine. Wouldn't exist without funding. Anyone can have a go. It's not expensive, you can borrow all of the kit, and people use it 365 days a year.)

Edit edit: Full adult membership (the most expensive membership) is £315 a year. That's not a HUGE amount of money for a whole year, and means you can head down there and just start rowing using their kit.

£110 for under-18s. Plus they do school stuff - like school swimming trips I guess. I used to work by the river and they'd have groups of 50 school kids rowing most weekday mornings.

And I emphasise, this is in Stockton! I think my point is that this stuff is out there if you look for it, and it wouldn't be without government funding. People are too quick to dismiss certain sports as exclusively for public school types.

Sailing is a bit of an unfair one to pick on. There are definitely always some sports that will be unmistakeably costly to take part in. Well-off people are always going to have an advantage getting involved in those sort of sports, and there's no real way around that. 80%+ of olympic sports don't require vast amounts of expensive equipment like horses and boats, however.

It's also worth noting that sports like sailing and rowing are much easier to get into if you, er, live near a body of water...

I couldn't face 10 pages of saccharine "wow this really is great completely contrary to my expectations" "oooh come on that person" "I agree" "someone threw something really far and is the best at that now, go Team GB" to see if it had been linked yet. With that in mind, I won't trouble this thread again.

Ha!

You and Pundy should have a curmudge-off.

There's one every four years, and this is the third one in London in living memory.

And that's because you're an expert in..?

Ha! I went to "normal" school and I used to play polo!

[edit] Messed up my quotes

Our school was the only one in the country with a full-sized bowls green.

Oh well, I totally didn't play it at school. But I helped out around a yard owners house (and in the yard if I absolutely had to) in exchange for stick and ball time* while I was at school.

* Too easy.

104 years is stretching the definition of 'living memory', considering the rough average lifespan in this country is 80 years.

You're right, it is the best kind of correct.

Speaking of which, there was a dude on the tv show last night that ran a marathon at 101.
My first thought was "yeah, you look old, but prove it"

Did that on Twitter. Got to be fair to my fans over there too.

Perhaps he was talking about the time. Or he ran through Rotherhithe tunnel (ex-local knowledge win!).

Although from my perspective (and yours), it's the first London Olympics in living memory. For my Nan, it's the second.

That's too subjective a phrase for my liking.

he did it in just over 7 hours, which is probably faster than I could

If there's another London Olympics in my lifetime (or the current generation of kids), we'll likely be pretty old by then.

Unless the Olympics is like the lurgy, now we've got it and everyone has seen how much it costs, we have to keep it until we can find some mug to take it off us...

(yes, I know Rio already has it...)

Isn't it odd that despite forming only 7% of school places, private school educated athletes accounted for half of our gold medals in Beijing, and 32% so far this time (see here, scroll down a bit). And it's not all in rowing, shooting and horse riding, either. But you know, forget facts and that, they're boring.

It's not odd, no, and they undeniably have an advantage. The facilities are often right there in the school they attend every day. That's absolutely undeniable. That doesn't change the fact that similar facilities are readily available for state school kids if they and their parents are willing to find out about them/make the effort to go.

My point is, money isn't the limiting factor. Certainly not for 90% of the Olympic sports. It's convenience.

When I went to school, I played football for the school team after hours. We also had rugby, tennis (in summer) and stuff like netball for girls. Fairly limited but possibly better than some state schools.

People I've met who went to private school had all of that and more. So many sports to choose from right after school - in their school grounds - that you probably didn't even have to compete with other students to get on a team. That's definitely an advantage. If I'd wanted to try something other than footy, I would've had to go to a proper separate club. But it wasn't money that stopped me doing that. Sorry if I'm not being entirely clear!

And of course, not just convenience in the long run day-to-day, but private school kids are more likely to try a variety of sports and as they say, you never know unless you try. A private school kid is more likely to try something and realise they have a natural ability for it, whilst state school kids are left "undiscovered" as it were. That's certainly a problem, but my point about the fact that I believe anyone can become an Olympic level athlete in any sport still stands. The facilities are there, it just takes more effort to initially discover them for state school kids. And that's why the Olympics are good. They increase the likelihood of that initial discovery.

Right so not having any pressing need to get a job and earn money is no advantage whatsoever.

That's not even a factor in what I'm saying. Of course that's a bloody advantage! But how is hosting the Olympics or not going to change that?!

That's purely a class issue. Is that your underlying beef?

Errr... I think you'll find the vast majority of people at private school will still need to support themselves when they finish!