beer will cost £8 a pint in the Velodrome

Eh???

120,000 hotel rooms released due to slow take up for Olympics.

I'm not surprised. Lets hope they find 120,000 teetotallers in double quick time..

chance of taking bottled water/sandwich in?

it will run fine RTB as i'm in charge of some of the transport to Stratford

What about something in the middle, a shade of grey.

The queues will be enormous.  The prices for cr*p products will be massive.  There will be stories of grid lock in London.

The BBC will be remorsely cheerful and the media in general will be by and large pro-Olympic.

Afterwards, the so-called "legacy" will disappear like the Cheshire Cat's smile.  The main players will get their corporate boxes and places on the honours list.

Most people won't give a flying f*ck.  A lot of people will be massively inconvenienced.  Some people will enjoy it.  A few people will get rich from it.  Virtually nobody will benefit from it.

roger,
      From my 10.20AM post you will have realised that I have a great commitment to Athletics.I would have loved to go to the Olympics had there been sensible prices and tickets made available to the general public.Tickets for the evening sessions run for £150-£750.I have a number of friends who travel World-wide to the major Athletics Champs,indoor and out.One told me that he had paid £250 for a ticket for the entire games at the World Champs in Seoul.Included was a free buffet at every morning and evening session.The most expensive ticket cost £500.My antagonism to the 2012 Games is based on the fact that it is a massive rip-off and that genuine sports fans are being excluded.

The father of one of the athletes at my club told me that he had paid £875 each for 2 corporate tickets for Mo Farah's finals evening,ffs.So presumably someone has pocketed £1750 from his freebee.

I'll be watching nearly all of the Athletics and a good part of the Swimming and Cycling.Regard the rest of it as rubbish.

Best of luck to your daughter(s).Is there more than one involved?

Multinational companies spend billions of dollars a year on advertising their product. Unless they are all deluded, that's because there is a net benefit in doing so.

All around the world at the moment, Big Ben, the houses of parliament and red double decker buses are appearing on people's televisions pretty much hourly. As I opened this thread I looked at my TV and there was an advert for a competition with tickets to the Olympics as first prize.

Obviously the huge amount of whining that goes on in the UK, and the sense of negativity that it causes, leads to a tangible negative effect on our economy as well as general unhappiness, but one thing we have going for us is that all around the world we are considered to be a real power with real history. We have a level of respect that we probably don't deserve, and this gets topped up every time that an English team wins the Champions' League, or one of our universities publishes some ground-breaking research, or we invent something, or we host a major tournament.

If you're not interested in the sporting event in itself, it's fair enough to have a little moan on Chit Chat I guess, if you reckon the money would have been better spent somewhere else you're entitled to your opinion, but this will top up our status as an important country that is still to be reckoned with, and that's no bad thing.

"All around the world at the moment, Big Ben, ... [is] appearing on people's televisions pretty much hourly"

Point of order Mr Chairman - Big Ben is hiding behind the clock faces at the top of St Stephen's Tower.

Good point. Forgot about that. Well, they always say Big Ben anyway.

All around the world at the moment, Big Ben, the houses of parliament and red double decker buses are appearing on people's televisions pretty much hourly. As I opened this thread I looked at my TV and there was an advert for a competition with tickets to the Olympics as first prize.

Big Ben ain't in Newham.....hth

Are there hourly shows of Newham's muggings, stabbings, drive-by shootings, rapes, drug deals, kids being murdered for withcraft, young nigerian girls being circumcised, armed robberies, burglaries, and not forgetting pavement cyclists   

Did they show the rioting in Newham last August ?

Did they bollocks, it was all covered up

The paralympics spoil it for me. We either have the sporting elite and leave it at that or have an olympics for every group. If we have to endure the paralympics then we should have an olympics for obese people, one for 'p1ss heads' another for anorexics, one for vegans etc....

Hordes of people from third-world backgrounds thrown together and left to practice their religion and backwards cultures.

I just randomly sorted the Guardian's list and the top five (excluding the unnamed urchins whose parents should be neutered) are:

Daniel Moran
Clive Owori
Curtis Blake
Natalie Lee
Gary Howe-Sampson

Admittedly, that included the whole list, not just Londoners. I would have differentiated but it was a bit tricky given the way the data was represented (the location was only mentioned in the first row when multiple people were charged).

Anyway.

Given a punt, I'd guess that Owori is a black African, Moran is probably white of Irish descent, and I don't have the foggiest about the rest, but I doubt that their religion and backward cultures had much to do with them just being a bunch of thieving tw*ts.

I'm not whingeing about the games, I just don't find any of the sports, apart from football, remotely interesting. It's just one big borefest for me. Others feel differently, each to their own.

Are there hourly shows of Newham's muggings, stabbings, drive-by shootings, rapes, drug deals, kids being murdered for withcraft, young nigerian girls being circumcised, armed robberies, burglaries, and not forgetting pavement cyclists

Well, of course not. Would you want there to be? I don't actually understand your motive for asking this. Why don't you want the world to see Britain portrayed in a positive way?

The next World Cup is in Brazil, which has a murder rate 20 times higher than that of the UK.

.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_rate

I imagine, however, that the opening coverage will show beaches, Brazilians kicking a football around and girls in tiny bikinis, rather than tourists getting stabbed. Jesus, do you think that Brazilians are all sitting around moaning about the effect on their economy and how the world will see their massive slumns or do you think they are saying "Great! We're getting the World Cup! Let's have another Caipirinha"?

confusing them with facts... whatever next?

Well, of course not. Would you want there to be? I don't actually understand your motive for asking this. Why don't you want the world to see Britain portrayed in a positive way?

No I facking don't

I want east London to be portrayed the WAY IT IS, not with shiny red facking buses going over Westminster Bridge

BTW, did they televise all the tent dwelling soap dodgers outside the House of Commons ?

hurrah for the sporting event that is the olympics and what it means for so many people to be involved in it.

yahboo, a massive yahboo to

i. the amount it's costing
ii. the rampant profiteering at the expense of the public purse (but if it makes you feel any better, you're welcome to clean the bogs and pick up litter for nothing)
iii. the ticket allocation
iv.  Locog's being a private company. wtff?

and mainly that if you raise any queries or criticism, you're anti-olympics and anti britain, and a big meany party pooper.



v. that any criticism is

Blackwall Tunnel will be closed at 'certain times' to the public, and only open to VIPs and athletes.

Dartford Council wrote to Greenwich Council with words to the effect of 'Are you having a facking laugh ? You'll cause chaos here.'

Greenwich Council said it would cause no problems (Like they know)

Dartford have been very clever in their response, they're going to raise the cost of cars going through Dartford Tunnel by 50p

Well, I'm glad they didn't put Tmp and Moisok in charge of promoting the Olympics. What a success that would have been.

In my honest opinion, and I've actually gone to the trouble of typing out all four words there in order to show my sincerity, you two do actually raise some reasonable points with this doom and gloom approach to our country, but...

1. You have a poor sense of perspective (there are equally infuriating examples on the other side of the argument; people who refuse to consider any anti-immigration arguments at all, or those who are overcome by a paroxysm of blind patriotism whenever an international sporting event comes up).

2. You won't like this, but by being so negative you are a huge part of the problem. A bunch of whining inhabitants (but with houses, food, cars and social security) does not a successful country make.

Now, let's see if we can beat the Germans again, shall we? I'd love it if we could give the Russians a run for their money too - those vodka-swilling motherfeckers may have over twice as many people and inhabit a country about 70 times as big as us, but we'll be on our home turf after all.

And I want Great Britain to be portrayed the way it is, with the proviso we should be putting on our posh togs since it's us that's throwing the party.

I suspect my 'truth' and other people's 'truth' are vastly different, but I'd rather that than what the Chinese did - now there was propoganda for you!