The Olympic torch bit is over. MP Aidan Burley, who was sacked as a ministerial aide for attending a Nazi-themed stag party, tweeted: "The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen – more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?" Then he followed through with: "Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multicultural crap. Bring back red arrows, Shakespeare and the Stones!"
Well done Burley, in France the PS will no doubt be feeling sweet about that, good old British hypocrisy for them. How on earth can this fool of a man allow himself such a gaffe about an event in one of the most multicultural cities in the world? Just looking at people of European descent in the city for generations alone would allow that to be said, but now the British people are of every conceivable ethnic origin and, Mr Burley, justifiably the vast majority call themselves English, Irish, Scots or Welsh.
Brilliant work in the wake of Mitt Romney's intervention. That man often has his feet in his mouth. This time he appears to have swallowed himself to about the waistline. Mind you, I find the "looking out of the backside of No 10" bit funny in itself. Not only is he not a welcome guest in London, and Boris made that patently clear with his speech, but it has done him no favours in the USA where he wants to be president. Now let him visit France and start a Franco-American war. At present there seems to be enough bad blood anyway, even the formerly French territories in the USA that the Brits chucked the French out of, bar a few enclaves the post-revolutionary Americans did themselves, are attracting attention. Because of the hullabaloo about Spanish speakers who are nearly as numerous as English speakers, there are French folk remembering how even up to living memory there were French speaking pockets in Louisiana that have been squeezed out of existence by the imposition of English to complete the work of the last couple of centuries getting rid of it. The country that was once held so high because of the example of Benjamin Franklin and his contemporaries is now no longer top of the list of favourites. Madonna has also fallen from grace after a couple of gigs, the most recent turning into a lesson in politics for the French through the Paris club audience and stomping off stage after 45 minutes. Obama has scored no plus points with Sarko and now Hollande, so bring it on Mitt.
Back in the UK, Dave is telling the nation that the five billion quid extracted from their pockets will come back through all the additional tourism and so on. Well that depends on whether the Border Agency is around to let anybody else in... The hopelessly inept security contractor is still insisting on being paid its five million smackeroos for the security consultancy for the government. Heh? That is, unless I have missed a point, a somewhat meaningless consultancy. Taxpayers will again rejoice. Along with profiteers selling tickets at up to 40 times face value, wrong flags, forged tickets at the archery event, most of the revenue at London hotels flowing out of the UK into foreign bank accounts and all other leaky bits of organisation, is the government proposing to put lots of people out on the streets with hats and a sign asking for donations to Save UK? Along with the phoney charity collectors they should do well. Getting back the five billion...
There is a fairly sizeable opposition too. People are refering to the event as the 'Apocalympics'. Law abiding, totally apolitical people like my sister are ashamed of what is going on, the transport problems it is causing, those taxes and a lengthy list of complaints. At least they managed to stage the multicultural opening ceremony, until Burley chucked in his handful of salt.
The 'leftie' (hmm, hmm) political elite here in France will all be in 'we would have done it better' mode. Each French medal will prove which is the best country in the world, despite Boris's speech, and if they get none how much cheating there will have been. So, the Olympics has turned into something worthy of a Whitehall farce and now all we have to do is sit back and wait for Valerie Trierweiler's sage remarks in Paris Match to know the truth about the 2012 Games in London.