Monday, February 01, 2010

The Vancouver Olympics: What could possibly go wrong?


Oh.
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7 comments:

Michael said...

Give me a break. "This manic mix of hype and gloom is a byproduct of the games' utter pointlessness." No agenda at all there. I'll wait until after the Games are over before lamenting their utter "failure"... just on the odd chance that they turn out to have been a pretty successful event.

8:26 AM
The Seer said...

CC, you always look at the dark side.

Once you've done some hard time, you've had some time to think and what you think, unless you're brain dead from coke or something, is that high-value targets are hardened targets. If you're going to make a career out of crime, you have to go where the cops aren't. If they've got 15,000 cops in Vancouver, then where the cops aren't is the rest of Canada. That's where you're going to make your killing.

9:01 AM
Lindsay Stewart said...

Michael the success or failure of the games will hinge more on the lasting damage done to the tattered remnants of the Olympic spirit and the crude manipulative path to corporate glory that this event actually represents.

2:19 PM
Michael said...

Lindsay, you misspelled "Los Angeles 1984 and every Olympics since" as "this event". Hope this helps.

4:24 PM
Jim Parrett said...

The writer may be right about the outcome but he's totally wrong that Vancouver is 'gripped by dread'. Au contraire mon frere. The city is vibrant with celebration and good will from the common folk.

Do not Olympics always lose money and cause pain to many, especially those already in need? It's the nature of the beast. I think the more appropriate time for Haddow to tell the world of the horrible outcome would have been 2003 and not 2010, now that it is too late.

Sounds like just another Vancouver/Canada bashing fear mongering article in a British newspaper. The outcome was inevitable. Get over it.

7:13 PM
ForestP said...

I'd rather see the various bankruptcies and last minute calls for cash bring down the games once and for all then see an athlete take home a bit of gold (or silver or even bronze cause bronze is shit)

I mean really its the difference (call it a balancing act) between routing for somebody you didn't care about a month ago to perform some inane act to please a crowd for a ribbon with a piece of metal with the desire to see the utter collapse of a greedy selfish monopolistic regime that basically doesn't give two dimes half of the time for the person next to them.

I don't necessarily have to care about the persistent or obsessive person who has to fling themselves down an icy slope for very little reason, but I kind of have to care about the corporation that is bilking millions and billions of taxpayer money from actually beneficial programs. Paramedics, education, homelessness, charitable organizations that support children's right to play...


if it fails to return a profit, good.
if they come out of it with a deficit, it's expected but not accepted.
if it succeeds in bringing out something tangible, rather than this bloody spectacle - a longshot.

1:17 AM
The Seer said...

Dear ForestP:

I feel you are very poorly socialized. How quickly the sun would have set on the British Empire if British warriors during the 19th Century had your apathetic attitude to people you didn't know last month laying down their bodies for the profit and glory of Britain! The prime minster is very sensitive to the need for Team Spirit in Canada. He has encouraged and enabled MP's to take their places in the cheering crowds, from which you say you intend, in a highly unCanadian manner, to absent yourself. The cost, and the losses, have, as a minimum, an indirect benefit. Every time pre-WWI liberals in Britain wanted to dissipate tax proceeds on the lower classes, the warrior class was ready with another colony that would be lost without spending every available penny on keeping it. That kept socialism at bay. As it is keeping social spending at bay in BC today. I think you should sit yourself down and think this through. Christ, Prime Minister & Country, I always say.

WV: this is too much, dambugga.

12:21 PM

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