I lived in SW19 until age 9 too! But at the bottom of the hill!
My son is working the Olympics as a security guard. Can't say I'm thrilled about it, since his day job is as a bar manager at a univeristy. But since he already has an SIA license, he was snapped up - and is to be trained to search cars. The job that the army/police etc do normally. They'd better provide him with appropriate equipment.
David - yes, memories. We had the totally thick Charlie Windsor came up to Cambridge in 1967 to read archaeology and anthropology at Trinity. I went to do arch and anth in 1966. We had two bodyguards (police thugs) in the department and at other lecture rooms. Some of us, especially with hair past my shoulders, were regularly body searched. Duty goons, of whom there were obviously more for three shifts each day, were put up by the university. Fortunately Chas changed to history for the second part of his degree and gained a 2:2 degree, which he would not have got in soc anth because nobody was corrupt enough to not fail him.
His parents paid regular visits, sometimes requiring some of us to stay away from lectures and seminars because of our appearance (real world monarchy eh!) and find other places to stay and eat if it was an evening event. I could go on, the who shamazzle simply disturbed everything and everybody each time. Then the degree ceremony in 70 was security guards checking parents at the front gate of the Senate House and graduands as they went in the side door to get the bit of paper. There was a space with no other graduands and most of the Senate House emptied of all but royals, Special Branch goons and nobility fot its nibs. I am so glad I went up a year earlier than him (being a mere month and a bit older) because I would have exploded. However, one of the accounts clerks in the Old Schools leaked the entire cost of Windsor's three years plus the degree ceremony to journalists and to this day the average family still does not earn such a sum over a lifetime and there I think a second generation could partially be included.
Point. Why the hell does the UK put up with being turned over time and time again and told it is so that 'they' can walk proud in the world. I have worked in or visited professionally 80 odd countries and have yet to find a place where they give a toss about the British and have an opinion other than what an arrogant and overbearing lot they are. The exception is the USA where so many people told me that having a monarchy was such a wonderful democratic institution that I learned off by heart the republican principles that made them split off from England!
But yes, a sandwich, bottle of mineral water, a broom for each spectator and a black rubbish sack given the state of London as I see it nowadays it ought to be normal anyway. I could rant all day... Have a good Sunday anyway!
It's been marked, and it's not your average "terrorist" that's carrying this one out. I'm saying no more, but watch this space, a
As usual, all the promises made for accessiblity and "austerity" games have been broken.
All this dashing around the world for the Winter and Summer Olympics, Commonwealth Games and World Cups seems to me so far from the original point of playing sport that it needs a complete overhaul.
What about the example it sets to children who are now taught that we need to be "sustainable", when all these athletes, football players etc. are jetting around the world followed by their "barmy armies".
I can't stand the hypocrisy of these football players and managers who are on such huge salaries that they are bankrupting their clubs, charging exorbitant fees for season tickets and the club strips and then have the gall to criticse bankers. People in glass houses comes to mind.
I paid £39 for my season ticket to Cirencester Park Polo Club (as a senior citizen), I could park my car right by the ground and take a friend. There would be play on at least four days a week. Now that's value for money!!
Why is that the average Physcie seems to be that all things should be , if not free, then cheap as chips. Avid fans, and even the not so avid fan will pay nearly a quarter of his /her monthly salary just to watch a footie match thats their choice. If i were a fan of anything perhaps i would do the same, but in reality i would sooner sit in front of a T.V. and watch, whatever, from at least three different angles and if it were a long race, could nip out and have drink of something.
If those that want to pay exorbitant prices for seats to watch something,they obviously don't think they'e being ripped off, me, well my lack of interest keeps my money inmy pocket.
I know of someone who's daughter is competing in the gymnastics. She wasn't given tickets to accompany her daughter and cannot get any - so her daughter is competing for her country without her family able to watch her - that is just so sad.
Some residents of Hackney were offered £7,000 to move out. I know this as a fact because they bought our house. So some done OK out of it.
I've been complaining about this for ages - Nicholas and I tried to get tickets for loads of events when they were first launched - at a starting price of £20.12 - we didn't get anything - then we tried again and again and have now given up... it's just so annoying and frustrating when people want to go and support individuals and GB and you just can't get any where - yet go into Thom Cook and you can get a package for one event and one ticket (with overnight stay in a Travel lodge) and pay over £500 for events that should be free anyway but the Opening and Closing events - £3,000 + per person.... makes me sick...
Of course there could be a terrorist attack, but if you stay away from London, or anywhere else, because there might be a terrorist attack then the terrorists have won without even exploding a bomb.
ticket prices aside, I would avoid the London olympics this year because it stinks of "terrorist attack"
RIP OFF
I can't understand why in these "austerity" games the competitors can' put up at a local B and B, take a packed lunch, compete and help clear up the stadium afterwards. All this unnecessary expenditure rather puts me in mind of when HMQ came to open a Rare Book Room at the library of my university. The entire foyer/reception area had to be ripped out and then later reinstated at enormous cost because Her Majesty does not walk through a turn stile.
Re Glastonbury; the easy way; there is a very well esthablished team of volunteers who get a free ticket,crew camping area and food, and in return for doing just that!grubbing around in rubbishbins etc... If you still want a ticket and can't get one it's a very good way of acquiring it. You can also volunteer as an oxfam or carnival club steward (much more refined than litter duty).Carnival club is a local somerset charity. Much more fun than camping with the masses and queuing for the toilets and you get to meet and work with a huge variety of people. If Glastonbury is too big, there are dozens of other medium and smaller festivals that run similar crews, WOMAD, BESTIVAL, etc...
As for the 'worthy' well the inhabitants of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney and Waltham Forest had their rates put up to help 'contribute' and how many of them can afford to go to as much as a half day? So suffering began in about 2004 on the Olympic stadium's doorstep.
London hotel prices are already inflated, so good point barbara, inflated inflated prices for (excuse my French as they say) merde. Two bits of nasty bread, badly toasted, coffee that is disgusting, some butter and a small blob of jam, then the grease buster overfried eggs and bacon followed by rude staff (or those hired on the sly who speak anything but the languages necessary), uncomfortable beds, etc. Just listing the comments I have had from friends who visited London and decided to pay a little more than just b'n'b and came back disgruntled. Hot dog and chip sales, yep...
If it all goes wrong the cops are gonna have a field day hitting people, including the wrong ones because they are foreign, so let's hope it doesn't happen.
I think we share some scepticism barbara.
I Wonder what price London will really pay for these moments of glory.
Just a glimpse at the balance sheet ....expenditure against the hot-dog sales and
the inflated hotel room rates. That could be interesting.
Will the wrong people be winning and the worthy looseing?
Who will suffer the sheer busyness of Olympic Leggo Land?
Will the police manage to control any expressions of violence?
It is your middle paragraph that is so many truths in few but well chosen words. It is my lifetime (I was born in 1948 albeit later that year) and spent my first seven and a bit years in Cologne where my father was stationed and remember how people used to remember the 1936 Olympics as the one proud moment in the pre-1939 period. Yet Hitler propagandised it to the hilt and maybe nobody there noticed because they were already 'brain washed' but other nations did. It has the potential with the fickleness of modern politics to happen in some equivalent form again. Munich, I remember, what a mess in every sense and a shame on those who pretended nothing was wrong. Athletes should have boycotted events and gone home.
I feel precisely the same as you say at the end, but if we think about Glasgow Rangers in receivership and potentially many other clubs and other sporting events in a similar mess, the Olympics is almost a sitting duck. I feel very sad for those who may not have the opportunity but a kind of optimism about humanity who are capable of replacing it with something less monumentally ostentatious and possibly even by continents or regions with a final competition where the winners of those are matched on 'neutral' ground. I doubt we shall be around to see but hope lives on beyond the mortal being.
I grew up (well seven to 18) in SW19 and when I was 12 and 14 was selected as a ball boy and at school we had Rod Laver coaching us during his years living in the UK. I (theoretically) had free entry, including Centre Court, for life. I got in occasionally up until 1992 when they said 'the Committee' had rescinded all such arrangements. That is where the kind of spirit of contemporary sport seems to have gone awry, I also stopped travelling from Cambridge over to see Chelsea at much the same time because they had started buying players for outrageous sums (nothing compared to now) and from one season to another the 'season ticket' for home matches slightly more than doubled. Since then I only ever attend amateur sport anything...
I agree with you Brian. Everybody should have an equal chance but it's unrealistic to think it's ever going to happen. That said, It always amazes me just how much people are prepared to pay and the sacrifices they are prepared to make just to follow their team all over the world. I know people who saved every penny for four years and more, foregoing holidays, extras and anything else they could do without just to get to New Zealand for the rugby world cup. And they've never had a moment's regret. I just don't have that kind of commitment or total absorption in a team or a sport and I don't understand it. I've obviously been spoiled by all the major sporting events I've been to, and the need to remain objective, to stand back and not get involved has effectively killed off any ability to wed myself to a team be it Man Utd or the Welsh rugby team.
The commercialisation of the games is distressing and it's got out of hand. But you can't go back to 1948 (although we might have to if the world economy doesn't pull out of its nosedive!). It was after that that the politicisation really kicked in I reckon with the games being used as an element in the cold war. Although the immediate pre-war games in Berlin were a classic case of politicisation as well. Then of course there was Munich and the various boycotts. Munich was very odd. On the one hand you had this dreadful kidnapping and massacre and on the other totally self-centred athletes oblivious of everything but their desire to win a medal. From our office we could see the olympic village through binoculars and you would never have known that anything untoward was happening. It left me with a very uncomfortable feeling.
Whether the games will survive? Maybe not but I would be sad to think that the daughter of some good friends who is devoting her life to horse riding or the young lad next door who is fast becoming a top-flight athlete wouldn't have the chance to experience what is still, despite all the hype and political shenanigans, a unique and exhilarating experience.
Journalist with Reuters, Jo. I used to cover cycling at the summer Olympics and alpine ski-ing at the winter games. The last couple of times -- Los Angeles and Seoul -- I was writing a special report for Africa on just about everything. I also got to the world soccer cup finals in Argentina, Commonwealth Games in Canada, Formula One in various places, Roland Garros, Wimbledon, world cyclng chmpionships all over the place, cricket in the West Indies.... I know just how lucky I was to get the chance to see so much. But I never got to Glastonbury and I envy you that. I'd have happily helped you with the dustbins!