Google review of 2012.
ThePianoGuys, Pussy Riot, Neil Armstrong, the man who fell from the sky, London 2012 Olympics, Gangnam Style …
No mention of tax dodging!
Archive for the ‘London 2012’ Category
Zeitgeist 2012: Year In Review
December 26, 2012The obscenity of Atos sponsoring the Paralympic Games
September 1, 2012We had the obscenity of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola sponsoring the London 2012 Olympic Games, now we have the even worse obscenity of Atos sponsoring the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
Ever wondered the type of person who worked in a Nazi concentration camp? Take a close look at the scum who work in Job Centres and for Atos whose job it is to force people with disabilities off benefits.
People with disabilities, be they mental or physical, have a hard enough life. Benefits provide a little cushion to make that life a little easier. They are not living a life of luxury.
Taking away these benefits is like kicking a crutch away from someone crippled, or stealing the white stick from a blind man.
It is part of a deficit reduction plan, where the weak and vulnerable are made to pay, meanwhile tax dodgers laugh all the way to their off-shore banks.
If a disabled person is stripped of their disability benefits, they are also stripped of their Freedom Pass (Bus Pass outside of London) which enables them free transport on public transport.
What sort of sick society punishes disabled people?
- Have you signed Pat’s petition?
- Protesters show anger at Paralympic sponsor over disability benefit work
- Atos protests climax with ‘day of action’ against Paralympics sponsor
- The Paralympics celebrate the strength of disabled people – and so do all the protests that accompany them
- 32 die a week after failing test for new incapacity benefit
- Atos appeal woman Cecilia Burns from Strabane has died
- Oh, dear Dave. Now GPs have turned on you. Time for an exit strategy on the disabled, perhaps?
Opening Ceremony London Paralympics
August 29, 2012It is a shocking irony that Atos is a main sponsor of London 2012 while destroying disabled people’s lives on behalf of the government. — Tara Flood, gold medal-winning Paralympian
Why are broadcast contracts given to broadcasters who cannot deliver?
Live streaming by Channel 4 of the London 2012 Paralympics Opening Ceremony was a sick joke. Their servers were not up to the job.
First, before you could watch, was forced to register with Channel 4. Why?
Then forced to endure 2.5 minutes of commercials, then … nothing.
Tried again, reloaded page, same as before. Forced to endure 2.5 minutes of commercials, then … nothing.
At this point gave up. Later listened to The Proms live on BBC Radio 3, but apart from Imogen Heap, was not worth listening to as most of the concert was an awful noise.
It is an obscenity that Atos, who are denying disabled people disability benefits, are sponsors of the London 2012 Paralympics.
Disabled people are being driven to suicide by Atos.
Karen Sherlock had her benefits stopped by what she described as “this inhumane government”. Her twitter account – @pusscat01 – remains, where her biography reads: “Preparing for dialysis. Each day is tough xx”. Her kidneys were failing, but she had been found capable of some work and placed in an activity group with time-limited benefits. She died in June. As disability rights campaigner Sue Marsh put it: “Now she’s dead and she died in fear because the system failed her, because cruel men refused to listen and powerful men refused to act.”
You may wish to tell Atos CEO Thierry Breton what you think, thierry.breton@atos.net or call their public relations: 020 7830 4233. Tell them to stop wrecking lives!
Atos are running scared and have protected their twitter account in a crude attempt to silence critics.
Compulsory competive games
August 16, 2012
Martha Payne baking
What legacy the London 2012 Olympic Games?
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.
London 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony
August 12, 2012
The chimes of Big Ben at 2100 marked the start of the close of London 2012
London 2012 the world’s biggest rock concert
Spice Girls London 2012 girl power
London 2012 Matt Bellamy of Muse
London 2012 Take That
London 2012 The Who
Britain we did it Right. Thank you. – Seb Coe
A happy and glorious Games. – President of IOC
To be or not the be, that is the question. – William Shakespeare
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, – Samuel Johnson
I missed the first couple of minutes.
Woman singing. Never heard of her.
Traffic driving round.? M25? People banging posts and pans?
Let us show the world the worst of the UK pop scene. A poor start.
Stomp, using dustbins for a drum routine. Brilliant.
Clever dance routine to Sgt Pepper. At last some decent music!
Brilliant! Kinks Classic Waterloo Sunset Ray Davies. Third time I have heard in 24 hours!
Black females singer, wonderful voice, awful hairstyle,. No idea who she is.
Entry of flags, followed by athletes. Having the athletes come in through the crowds was clever.
The choice of music was also clever as tied in with the Olympic spirit.
The Dhol Foundation playing drums! I saw them live in June! Excellent dance routine.
Kenya won more medals than all other African countries.
Yorkshire won more medals than Australia!
Wonderful John Lennon Imagine, preceded by Queen. Remastered by Yoko Ono, children mime, face formed on the ground.
Very clever use of graphics to show keyboard around the stadium for George Michael. Brilliant performance George Michael!
Fantastic Pinball Wizard The Who entrance on scooters, Kaiser Chiefs, but why not The Who! We got the a answer later
David Bowie!
English fashion, models on the catwalk.
Amazing entrance Annie Lennox on a flaming boat! Dracula theme.
Fantastic Pink Floyd number. Nick Mason, Mike Rutherford. Wish You Were Here clever on tightrope reproducing the cover.
More Sgt Pepper. Brilliant dance routine.
Great dance routine Fatboy Slim.
Price Tag I assume Jessie J
You should be Dancing Bee Gees classic.
Spice girls enter in London black cab taxis. Thne on top of cabs, whizzing around the tracks. As we have seen with Team GB medals, girl power.
Beady Eye Oasis classic.
More Sgt Pepper Mr Blue Sky. Amazing graphics around the stadium.
What seemed a celebration of musicals, not sure.
From canon man fired, then appears in net.
Muse. No idea who he is Heavy rock, choir, pyrotechnics. Brilliant!
Wonderful, Freddy Mercury. How he is missed. Where did the big screens appear from? Followed by Brian May on guitar as solo intro, then Queen We Will Rock You, with Roger Taylor on drums. Electrifying. Jessie J on vocals.
Brilliant, Usaine Bolt caught doing his trademark stance in the darkness.
Mayor Boris hands over to Rio, now their turn.
Samba!
Rio was good, and as a stand alone, would have been brilliant, but they had an impossible act to follow. It was like putting the warm-up act on after then main act everyone had come to see.
Excellent closing speech by Seb Coe.
Fine tubes holding the flame slowly lowering.
Just when you think it is over, Take That!
More than 200 ballerinas from Royal Ballet. Breathtaking!
Olympic flame extinguished.
The Who! The last time I saw The Who was not long after they played Woodstock.
What a finale, The Who My Generation with fireworks going off in the Olympic Park.
The fear was, what the Olympics would do to London. What we saw was what London did to the Games!
Absolutely no way should the stadium be used for football. It should be reserved for rock concerts streamed to a global audience.
The Closing Ceremony got off to a poor start, but it was brilliant. Think of a rock concert, then think of a rock concert two orders of magnitude and you get it.
It says a lot, the two bands that had everyone rocking: Queen and The Who!
Strange, I was thinking Imagine John Lennon, then BBC played it at the end with London 2012 highlights. Stunning images.
Before the Games started, there was little support in the country. This was entirely down to the tainting of the Games by corporate sponsorship by companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Corporate sponsors must be kicked out of the Games.
But once London 2012, opened with the amazing Opening Ceremony, we were all supporters of London 2012.
In Guildford, people queuing at the station wanting to go up to London for the Olympics. A friend Pandora and I wished to go, but could not get a ticket.
Before few were looking forward to London 2012, when it ended everyone was regretting it had ended.
London you did us proud!
And well done Team GB, you did us proud too, third in the medal table.
Rio, you have a very hard act to follow.
BBC are releasing on Blue-Ray and DVD the opening and closing ceremonies and highlights of the London 2012 Games. A must. For Americans forced to endure the absolutely appalling coverage by NBC and absolute must!
#NBCfail censored Kinks front man Ray Davies with his emotional rendition of Waterloo Sunset. What a bunch of arseholes!
And of the legacy. For that we wait and see.
Cycling’s for Athletes
August 9, 2012It’s the Olympics
And cycling’s for athletes
So now i’m told
If your bike doesn’t fold
You can’t take it on the train
Cause of a silly flame
And i’m kinda pissed it came
Cause cycling’s for everyone
Not just the one’s that won
Everyone should run around
And now no one goes to town
Cause you’re worried it’s too busy
And now it’s empty in the city
You can’t even take your bike
They do whatever they like
Whose streets? Whose Games? Whose City? Whose Trains?
If you’re waiting for while
Make sure you wear a smile
If you suffer from Parkinson’s
Do Martial Arts demonstrations
And you’re waiting for the race
Cops will put you on your face
You’ll spend your daughter’s birthday
At the pleasure of her majesty
It’s the Olympics
And cycling’s for athletes
I don’t need to ask permission
If I wanna go cycling
I don’t wanna ask your approval
About where my bike is suitable
They want you to stay at home
Watch TV, have a moan
See all their advertising
It 10 percent of cost to cover it
With all their monopolizing
Every final Friday of the month
In cities, bikes give cars the shunt
It’s the anarchist Critical Mass
You don’t have to be top class
You don’t have to be Chris Hoy
They don’t care if you’re a boy
The greatest global bike event
And it doesn’t cost a cent
But it’s the Olympics
And cycling’s for athletes!
So when they ride to the stadium
For that opening ceromanium
Trying to get away from the vehicle
They arrest 180 people
Confiscate their bike
Police do what they like
Imprison them all night
In buses and a shed
Make them sleep without a bed
And no water and no food
The Chinese would think this good
Cause it’s the Olympics!
And cycling’s for Athletes!
— Catherine Brogan
Posted by Catherine Brogan on her blog.
Catherine Brogan is currently at the Edinburgh Fringe.
The London 2012 Olympics is to leave a legacy, or so we are told.
Try taking your cycle on the train. You cannot.
Try cycling around London. Critical Mass tried to do just that on the evening of the Opening Ceremony and go the shit beat out of them by the Police and mass arrests took place for the heinous crime of riding a cycle.
Huge projection overlooking Olympic park exposes Adidas exploitation
August 6, 2012
Adidas exploitation projection at Olympic Park
People leaving the Olympic Park last night after the men’s 100m final were greeted by this huge projection on a building, exposing the exploitation of workers who make clothes for Olympic sportswear partner Adidas. Yet one more example of the obscenity of corporate sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
While thousands of people who were at the London 2012 Olympics would have seen this, we want to make sure that thousands more see and share this image.
Please share with all your friends. Please tell your friends that Adidas sources its Olympic consumer tat from sweatshops.
The projection was made possible by the generosity of War on Want supporters, this projection can help shame Adidas to take action and end poverty pay. The more people who see it, the bigger the impact. Please share it now.
Please e-mail the boss of Adidas and demand an end to worker exploitation.
Adidas has already sold £100 million of Olympic clothing whilst workers making its goods around the world are paid poverty wages and are having to skip meals to survive.
This is exploitation. It wouldn’t be ok for Adidas to do this in the UK and it shouldn’t be ok anywhere else. Adidas must ensure that workers are paid enough to live.
Child blogs how to win friends and influence people at 9
August 5, 2012
Child blogs how to win friends and influence people at 9
The front page story on the cover of the Weekend section of The Times was Child Bloggers. Inside a two page spread and a centrefold picture of the child bloggers.
A diverse range of topics, fashion, politics, football, food.
Martha Payne aka Veg with her blog NeverSeconds writes on food. When she started her blog she expected family and friends to read NeverSeconds. It was quite a surprise to find the next morning 25,000 hits. She has had bully boys at her local council try to shut her down, these with the help of her friends and supporters she has seen off, an endorsement by Jamie Oliver, interview on the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, nominated for a Great Scot Award, has raised over £110,000 for a food kitchen in Malawi called Friends of NeverSeconds, in September she plans to visit Malawi for the inauguration of Friends of Never Seconds and from where she will blog about Malawi. To date her blog has clocked up nearly 7.6 million hits and they are running at about one every couple of seconds.
Adults, especially teachers and parents, get worried when they see children achieving something. Will it not interfere with their school work? The simple answer, so long as school work is not neglected, is no, it is part of life’s learning process and they are usually life’s high achievers.
Practice makes perfect. We learn to write by writing, and by reading good literature.
Watch Jamie Oliver cook. He makes it so easy. It is as though he has some innate skill. He has been cooking since he was a child.
People who are good at something, be it cooking, music, writing, usually have a love of what they are doing.
Adults too often underestimate what children are capable of or patronise them.
When my niece Jessica was at primary school she wrote about being blind. She did not simply sit down and write, she went and interviewed a blind lady, she wore a blindfold to experience what it was to be blind. I think she also edited a school newspaper.
In the New Year I showed a young friend Alice how to set up a blog. We spent about an hour together. She went home and within a couple of hours had her blog alicemch up and running and had opened a twitter account to promote her blog.
How do these young bloggers cope with evil trolls and their abuse? Easy they recognise them for the pathetic individuals that they are and ignore them.
Unfortunately The Times article on the young bloggers is not available on-line as The Times is owned by the Murdoch Empire and a pay wall intervenes. It is not even possible to find it using google. I read the article in Waitrose but on principle refused to buy.
To erect a pay wall goes against the entire ethics and ethos of the World Wide Web. During the Olympics Opening Ceremony a week ago, Sir Tim Berners-Lee tweeted This is my gift to the world.
The web is a global common of information for all to pick from. We pay back by doing what Veg and the other young bloggers are doing.
The London 2012 Olympics, with Bradley Wiggins and Andy Murray winning Gold, with Team GB third in the medal table, has inspired many youngsters to follow suit. Even if only a walk in the park would be better than sat in front of a TV.
But look at the winners. A disproportionate are from public schools and private schools, not state schools. Nothing wrong with that, but where will the legacy be for state schools when the kids lack the facilities, when school playing fields are sold off to developers, when parks are sold off?
If we can get to Number Three in the medals table for London 2012 without the state sector, think what we can do in Rio 2016 if we give them the help and support they deserve.
Contrast Martha with Coca-Cola and McDonald’s as main sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics. With an epidemic of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes, which these sponsors are helping to fuel, what message does it send out?
I have nominated Martha and NeverSeconds for the Food and Farming Awards, will you?
I cannot think of a more deserving recipient for the Derek Cooper Award than Martha and NeverSeconds as a writer who has raised awareness of food, especially with children, and raised more than £100,000 for a food kitchen in Malawi for schoolchildren, to be called Friends of NeverSeconds.
The Adidas sponsored Exploitation Games
August 5, 2012
The Adidas sponsored Exploitation Games
we are not in the welfare business. Our job is to make a profit. — Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer
Saturday War on Want put on the Exploitation Games, no corporate sponsorship necessary, outside Adidas flagship store in Oxford Street in London in protest at Adidas sourcing its Olympic consumer tat from sweatshops. Protests also took place outside Adidas stores in Manchester, Portsmouth and Exeter.
The Exploitation Games included activists confronting the hurdles faced by Adidas workers, such as poverty wages and up to 90-hour weeks, and, after the Olympics cheats scandal, badminton to symbolise alleged unfair play by Adidas.
War on Want sweatshops campaigner Murray Worthy, who stuck its anti-exploitation poster on the London store’s window, said:
These Exploitation Games expose the ugly truth behind Adidas’s failure to uphold the Olympics values of fair play and respect. Adidas must stop raking in profits at workers’ expense and instead ensure their pay reflects the vital part they play in its success.
Adidas are one of the sponsors of the London 2012 Olympic Games, but cannot afford to pay its sweatshop workers a living wage.
While Adidas reveals the company has already sold around £100 million of Olympic merchandise, War on Want points to Indonesian workers struggling to survive on pay as low as 5,000 rupiah (34p) an hour, and having to skip meals to get by.
War on Want stresses the stark contrast between workers’ poverty pay and the £529 million profits Adidas declared for 2011, as well as chief executive Herbert Hainer’s £4.6 million “compensation” last year.
It cites Adidas workers receiving far less than a living wage in the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and China.
In addition, Cambodian workers earn £10-a-week basic pay, are forced to toil overtime hours, cannot afford decent food and live in squalid housing conditions.
In the run up to Exploitation Games thousands of people have written to Adidas, had tagged their clothes to expose the exploitation behind the brand, yet Adidas are still refusing to make basic commitments like paying a living wage.
No1 Top Story in The Exploitation Daily (Sunday 5 August 2012).
- New Olympic protest targets Adidas
- Adidas CEO “We are not in the welfare business. Our job is to make a profit.”
- The rise (and fall?) of Adidas
- Adidas rocked by price tag protest over workers’ rights
- Adidas worker exploitation for London 2012 Olympics
- Whose Games?
- Obscenity of corporate sponsored London 2012 Olympics
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