Human beings don’t always make rational decisions. But making irrational decisions is precisely what makes us human. These decisions, based on an impulse or a feeling, often lead us to those perfect moments when it feels great to be alive.
“The Beauty of the Irrational” follows Ryan Sandes, a South African Ultra-Runner, as he returns to the Fish River Canyon to run the 5 day, 84km, Fish River Canyon Hiking Trail in the fastest time possible.
He completed the run, self-supported, in amazing time of 6 hours 57 minutes!
David Cameron, The Sun and The Telegraph want to see compulsive competitive games, at least two hours each and every day.
Sorry David, but you are wrong. It goes without saying The Sun is wrong. The Telegraph can go and sulk in the quad.
I can think of nothing more guaranteed to turn kids off any form of physical activity than compulsive competitive sport.
I remember Cross Country Running, and I am not talking of a few laps around the school playing field. I am speaking of the full Public School works, twice around a common that was on a hillside on a slope of a limestone escarpment. Come rain or shine, out we went, we got soaked, we got cold, we ploughed through bogs, and came back cold, wet and miserable. I do not remember a single boy, and it was only boys, who enjoyed it. I do not recall it turning out a generation of long distance or marathon runners.
The emphasis should not be on competitive sport but on getting kids active, enjoying being active.
What is wrong with salsa, yoga?
David Cameron denigrated Indian dancing. What he meant by that I do not know, but if it is what one sees in Indian films, I would have thought that would be quite active and very enjoyable.
I am not against competitive sports per se. If kids wish to participate in such sports then they should be given every encouragement, the facilities and the coaching. But that is not what we are doing.
How are we encouraging sport when we are selling off school playing fields and public parks, building on our green spaces, making it easier not harder for schools to sell off their playing fields?
One such school is Elliot School in Wandsworth where it is proposed to sell off a large part of the site to developers.
As children we played in the field behind our house, went for walks, cycle rides. In the field we created our own cricket and football pitch, we mowed the grass, levelled the pitch. I am not sure our activities went down too well with the farmer. The field is now one huge, ghastly housing estate.
Little kids are bundles of energy. They bounce around. The main problem is getting them to keep still. What then goes wrong when they become fat slobs?
It is vital we get kids active. We have a generation of fat kids who will die before their parents. It was an obscenity that Coca-Cola and McDonald’s were allowed to sponsor the London 2012 Games when we have an epidemic of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes (a disease normally associated with late middle age).
Activity itself is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, children have to learn how to eat, how to cook. Basic survival skills.
It is a pleasure when we see children like Martha Payne aka Veg (who runs the blog NeverSeconds) and my young friend Alice (who has the blog alicemck) not only taking a pleasure in cooking, but also in food.
Tending little minds is important too. Music, arts, culture.
Children have inquiring minds, again it begs the question what goes wrong to churn out brain-dead morons whose idea of food is KFC and McDonald’s, drink sports drinks, Coca-Cola, or heavily advertised lager?
Parents are to blame, though not entirely, the food industry too.
Children are having to have operations to reduce their stomach size. Children aged five and six waddling from side to side as they walk because they are too fat to walk. A child of six weighing 11 stone!
The state intervenes when children are beaten, starved. The state should intervene when children are grossly overweight.
This afternoon in a window of McDonald’s overlooking the street. One very fat woman, one very fat child, both stuffing their faces with Big Macs.
In the Surrey Hills people lined the streets and country lanes to watch the cycle race pass through. It was as with the torch relay, a sense of involvement and participation, and of course it was free.
Unfortunately Team GB did not win a gold. Gold went to a drugs cheat. Drugs cheats should recive a lifetime ban.
Switch now to the other venues. Vast swathes of empty seats. Not empty because of lack of interest, the empty seats, the best seats, were allocated to corporate sponsors who could not be bothered to take up their seats because unlike the fans they have no interest in sport. Sebastian Coe, who seems incapable of opening his mouth without shooting himself in the foot, has tried to claim there is not a problem. Check out the pictures posted by the Mail for the vast swathes of empty seats at numerous Olympic venues to see that Lord Coe is spouting garbage when he claims ‘venues are stuffed to the gunnels’.
Come rain or shine, fans support a sport all year round. Come the big event and corporate sponsors are allocated the best seats. That is the obscenity of corporate sponsorship.
Coca-Cola are fuelling an epidemic of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes. Independent caterers at the venues are being forced to promote Coca-Cola, McDonald’s dictates what is on the menu.
The corporate sponsors who have failed to take up their ticket allocation should be named and shamed. They should be stripped of their tickets and the tickets handed to the public. At the every least the public should be allowed into any venue 30 minutes before the start to take up empty seats.
The Army have been called upon to occupy the empty seats (a pleasant change from Iraq or Afghanistan). Were these the seats allocated to G4S?
For many fans, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see live an Olympic event. They should not be denied that opportunity by global corporations whose only interest in the Olympics is insatiable greed.
The British public are the major sponsors not global corporations.
Corporate sponsorship has tainted the London 2012 Games.
Rio needs to look very carefully at the damage corporate sponsorship has done to the London 2012 Games and think again about any corporate sponsorship.
Corporate sponsorship should have no place in the Olympics.
We fly through the countryside, along The Thames, into the stadium.
A huge bell, the largest in the world, is rung by Bradley Wiggins, winner of the Tour de France
Peasants wandering in the fields. Cricket on the village green. A strange mix of Constable, Shakespeare, Dickens, Thomas Hardy.
This pastoral scene, this green and pleasant land changes, smoke pours out of the hill, workers from the factories come pouring out, black and smoky, smoke and flames out of the hill.
Drums, a thousands drums. Chaos. The Industrial Revolution, dark and satanic mills, the countryside destroyed.
Huge mill chimneys rise out of the ground. Mill owners survey the scene.
The two World Wars. The Suffragettes.
The Swinging Sixties. Dressed as Sgt. Pepper.
Molten metal flowing, rings forged, hauled into the sky
A celebration of children’s literature and the NHS. Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells. Children experiencing nightmares.
A clear message to the ConDem government, Hands Off Our NHS!
I was thinking Vangelis, and as if on cue Chariots of Fire performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Mr Bean. I just could not stop laughing.
James Bond, special assignment, bring in the Queen.
Musical montage. Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Who, The Beatles, Sex Pistols, Queen, David Bowie ….
Snippets of David Beckham in a motor launch on The Thames bringing the Olympic torch.
Athletes parade in. More nations than the UN.
Why did the Czech athletes all turn up in Wellies?
Palestine is at Olympics, why not UN?
Team GB march in to David Bowie Heroes. Team GB are competing in every single event. Billions of tiny pieces of paper fall from the sky. Each one representing one person on the planet.
204 nations!
For the first time all the nations will have women in their teams. Even Saudi Arabia.
UK is the home of sport, codified the rules of sport, the sense of fair play.
Back to the music. Arctic Monkeys. Angels on bicycles.
London is the only city to host the Olympic Games three times.
Size of the stadium huge. Like something out of a futuristic film.
A waste to turn into a football stadium Should be used for rock concerts and other special events.
The 30th Olympiad of Modern Era.
Fantastic to see Muhammad Ali but upsetting to see him so ill.
David Beckham arrives by motor launch, hands the torch to Sir Steve Redgrave.
A neat touch to have those who constructed the stadium to provide an honour guard for Sir Steve Redgrave as he brought the torch into the stadium and to have young athletes give a relay tour around the track.
Young athletes were then handed torches. Earlier we saw each team of athletes bring in a copper petal. We now found out what they were for. Each was at the end of a long thin stem. This was the cauldron, which the torches lit. But that was not all. The long thin stems then all rose up to form one huge flame.
Fireworks, not just the stadium, the entire site. To the music of Pink Floyd.
Then the Grand Finale Paul McCartney Hey Jude showing that at 70 he is the World’s Number One Rock n Roller.
Could anything match the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony?
Well now we know the answer.
Yes!
Danny Boyle put the Beijing Olympics in the shade, turned it into a sideshow.
There were doubts, should it not have been Andrew Lloyd-Webber or Cameron Mackintosh?
Well we got our answer.
Words cannot describe how good it was: fantastic, phenomenal. Nothing measures up to it.
Hollywood eat your heart out. You could not match this no matter how hard you tried.
Danny Boyle deserves a knighthood at the very least.
Danny Boyle was worried about the BBC, that they would chat over the top.
He was right to be worried. It was unbelievable. Moronic chat ruining the show. It was like being at a concert or the opera and a group of jerks giving their mates a running commentary of what is going on.
But if you thought the BBC chat was bad, on an American network it was far far worse. The video quality very poor too. How can anyone enjoy the show with a constant back chat drowning out was was going on?
With the exception of the torch relay there had been little support for the London 2012 Olympics due to the all pervasive stench of corporate sponsorship. Overnight Danny Boyle converted the public to enthusiasts.
Seeing the artistic performance, the athletes walking in, is what it is all about. An inspiration to all. Not sordid sponsorship by McDonald’s, Coca-Cola. We must kick out the corporate sponsors which are tainting the Olympics and giving it a bad odour.
A very very hard act for Rio to follow in 2016.
All pictures are from Team GB on facebook, where more excellent pictures can be found.
London 2012 the biggest sponsor of the games is the public
Its two miles as the crow flies
But I ride four wide
Due to the Olympic bubble
Plonked in the middle
And I’m thinking, John Lewis,
Will ye let me through this?
All this building mess
So Stratford gets an M&S
Wetland marshes become marches
Football pitches become clear ways
Keep open a canal tow path?
You must be having a laugh
Triathlons with a Big Mac
Have a happy heart attack.
Enjoy, Drink, Think Coke-a-cola
Sure of course they don’t own ya
Taxpayer’s money for capital builds
And whose name’s on the fields?
Every dirty multi-national
All brought to you by visa
Don’t tell me it’s for world peace
Sure what did it do for Greece?
It’s a totalitarian regime
Giving Stratford a clean
A dictator’s wet dream
No one can criticize
As the budgets rise
Contracts to be dished up
Media all hushed up
An Olympic stadium
Is a public distraction
To stop us sussing the system
Give us bread and roses
Give us sexy poses
Give us brand new noses
But we don’t get peace
To cross the land we lease
From our ancestors before us
Corporations don’t own us
– Catherine Brogan
The corporations don’t own us, they are only minority sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s have contributed less than 10% towards the cost of the Games, but one could be forgiven for thinking it otherwise.
Last Friday it was taken from Guildford to the Tower of London by helicopter. All week it has been carried around London. Yesterday to famous London landmarks like St Paul’s Cathedral.
The torch will then go from the Tower of London to the Olympic Park where it will light the cauldron.
The Olympic torch relay has proved to be very popular. Not so the Olympic Games. Not because people do not like sport but because it is tainted by the corporate sponsorship, companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s.
The UK is facing an epidemic of childhood obesity.
Seven-year-olds are eating on average half a kilo of sugary food a day
one in three children are overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school
What message does it send out when two of the main sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics are Coca-Cola and McDonald’s?
Independent caterers at Olympic venues are forced to have their stands look like fast food outlets, have Coca-Cola plastered everywhere and McDonald’s dictates what may and may not be on the menu!
Today I noticed bus shelters plastered with posters informing those waiting for a bus or passing by that McDonald’s is the Official Restaurant for the London 2012 Olympics.
Is this some kind of sick joke? What message does it send on quality food in London?
Stuff yourself with junk food, slurp a Coke and you will be given an official Coca-Cola glass and an official Coca-Cola wristband.
Is this meant to make some fat kid stuffing his face with a Big Mac and slurping on a Coke athletic?
The government claims the London 2012 Olympics will leave a sporting legacy.
The closest we will see to that sporting legacy is fat kids sporting a Coca-Cola wristband.
Does Heathrow have big signs saying Welcome to Airstrip One, with Big Bother looking down?
The sponsorship from these companies amounts to less than 10% of the cost of mounting the London 2012 Games, and yet it has given them a global platform from which to promote their junk food and sweetened syrup.
McDonald’s has been allowed to build what they claim is the world’s biggest fast food restaurant within the Olympic Park, Coca-Cola expects to sell 23 million drinks.
It is the public who are providing the majority of the £1.4 billion cost of the Games not the sponsors, and yet is is the public who are being screwed, it is the public who are picking up the bill for an epidemic of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes. Such is the obscenity of corporate sponsorship of the London 2012 Games.
It is already taking twice the time to get anywhere in London. I hate the Olympics. What a wasteful vanity project it is. — Giles Fraser
Been sat at Canonbury station for 40 minutes after being advised by the Olympics transport people that the overground is working. — Tamsin Omond
I have zero interest in sport, but if folks want a sporting event, that is fine by me. What I object to is the obscenity of corporate sponsorship, which is destroying sport, destroying the arts.
With the London 2012 Olympics, we are seeing the obscenity of corporate sponsorship writ large.
Independent caterers to the Games are being dictated to what they may and may not serve. They have to look like fast food outlets, they must promote Coco-Cola. The sponsors dictate what they can and cannot have on their menu. Efforts to serve healthy food are being undermined.
The independent caterers are not allowed to state they were caterers to London 2012. No great loss as why would they wish to be associated with a tainted brand?
Police who have had to step in to provide security after the appalling failure by G4S have been told to hide the crisps they may be eating in a plain paper bag!
The corporate sponsors were able to dodge their taxes. Several have backed down, Adidas intends to dodge tax. Adidas is using sweatshop labour for its Olympic tat.
The major sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics is the public, not the corporate sponsors, though one could be forgiven for thinking it was the other way on, the way the public is getting screwed and the corporate sponsors dictating the agenda.
Last week we saw Zil Lanes come into force in London, priority traffic lanes for exclusive use of Olympic traffic, including their corporate sponsors. The athletes live on-site in the Olympics Village, therefore who are the Zil Lanes for other than the sponsors?
Well done those London taxis who last week held a bumper to bumper protest.
Brand protection has become a criminal matter. The sponsors have been allowed to dicate what people can wear, what they can eat. It also determines what people can or cannot show.
Two hundred and fifty Trading Standards Officers have been sent to London to protect the corporate brands of the Olympic sponsors. Meanwhile the areas they have been drawn from will give crooked traders free reign to rip off the public.
To display in the front window of your own home a poster critical of the London 2012 Olympic Game is a criminal offence.
We all love the street art by Banksky. Not it seems if it exposes the corrosive, corrupting influence of corporate sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics. His latest artworks showing a missile being thrown instead of a javelin and pole vaulting over the Olympic Park security fence may be destroyed under yet another diktat from the sponsors that all street art must be destroyed.
The London 2012 Olympics was to be promotion of culture, but only mass produced plastic culture endorsed by Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.
The area around London 2012 Olympics has become a militarised zone. Any visitors to London can be forgiven for thinking martial law has been declared or the military has mounted a coup.
The Olympic Park is surrounded by an 11-mile electrified fence. 55 teams of attack dogs are paroling, drones are overhead, surface-to-air missiles on blocks of residential flats, warships in the Thames, warplanes patrolling the skies.
A no fly zone came into effect over London a few weeks ago.
Legacy?
The Games will not lead to more sport being played. Does anyone seriously imagine fat slobs stuffing themselves with junk whilst watching the London 2012 Olympics on TV are suddenly going to lead an active life let alone take up sport?
The stadium white elephants.
Qatar has bought the Olympic Village at a loss to the taxpayer.
Businesses and local residents have been evicted to make way for the Olympics.
The Olympic torch relay has proved popular, though not in Aldershot where it took place in secret. The Games are not proving popular. 49% of Londoners and 53% of those outside London have said they are not interested in London 2012.
The Olympic Games have deterred visitors from coming to London.
The Olympic Games is a vanity mega-project for the corporate sponsors.
But it does not have to be.
The Games can be smaller, they can be decentralised, spread over several countries over a period of several weeks, they could use existing sporting facilities. For example track and athletics in one country, swimming another, sailing another. There is already a precedence for this, the Winter Olympics did not take place in London.
Do we even need stadiums?
The Tour de France takes place on the streets.
Kick out the corporate sponsors. We do not want dirty money from Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Dow Chemicals.
Coca-Cola do not just serve sweet sugary syrup laced with high fructose corn syrup, pollute drinking water in India, engage in human rights abuses in Latin America, they dodge UK tax.
Imagine seeing the headline of this article on the front of your paper in the final countdown to the Olympic opening ceremony. As the eyes of the world focus on London, this is the perfect opportunity to expose the greed of the corporate sponsors who will be dodging tax during the games.
The UK’s winning Olympic bid included huge tax breaks for sponsors. As a result, massive multi-nationals like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Adidas stand to make a tax-free fortune. The UK could be losing tens of millions in this tax swindle.
Public pressure has forced McDonald’s to forego their tax windfall. Whether they can be believed or trusted is another matter and it is no excuse to now eat at McDonald’s.
Now it is the turn of Coca-Cola. They’ll be supersizing their profits at the Olympics, expecting to sell 23 million drinks. There are many reasons not to drink Coke, obesity and type 2 diabetes to name but two, but let us also make sure that they’re paying their tax.
If signatures on a petition can scare McDonald’s, let’s now turn the heat on Coke. Please sign the petition calling on Coca-Cola to pay their tax and ask your friends to do the same:
