Give the Olympics back to Greece

How do you match the Chinese? As the Olympic Games draw to a close, presumably the London 2012 organisers get even more jittery about how they can even start to match the Beijing extravaganza, on half the money.

There are some obvious tactics. First, they could go even further down the Beijing road. Why stop at voice-overs and fake fireworks? It would be much more economical to have the whole opening ceremony done digitally – and distributed to anyone who wanted to watch on a CD. No athletes need ever march into the stadium. It needn’t even be finished.

Nor should we bother too much about the spectators. China has had enough trouble bussing them in, so we could just build an Olympic sports television studio, with carefully positioned cameras, but no human on-lookers, except a few cheer-leaders.

Or alternatively make a virtue out of necessity and scale the whole opening extravaganza down a notch or ten. Perhaps just the Queen, the athletes and some Girl Guides and Boy Scouts… and NO fireworks.

For the future, though, the answer is obvious. The games should go permanently back to Olympia (in Greece, that is).

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not necessarily in favour of all Greek treasures returning to Greece, but the Olympics seem a good can didate.

Olympia is a truly wonderful place, and I am sure that you could accommodate a nice stadium plus Olympic village there. And in the off years, the facilities could be rented out to athletes in training, or a variety of holiday makers.

It would stop the mad and expensive bidding process, controversies about human rights, and ridiculous over-spends on flummery (which could much better be spent on hospitals, the Third World, or almost anything else, honestly).

And everyone could re-connect with the ancient Greek roots.

(I should confess here that my generally curmudgeonly views on Team GB’s sporting success have been undermined by a substantial clutch of golds. But you will have spotted what a large proportion of our medal winners are from independent schools… how many ordinary citizens can afford to go yngling, after all?

OK, we’re very proud of them. But if these were Oxbridge students, then the sporting associations would be being vilified by the government as ‘insufficiently committed to access’ – and would be threatened with a cut in funds. One law for the sportsmen and women, another for the universities.)

Comments

[maddison]

I agree with Murr above. Scrap the Olympics ! What about the Eurovision song contest too? Bring back grammar schools, secondary schools and a few private schools for the filthy rich. It worked so well! We tried to replace that system and all we did was finance education for the Government with independent schools mushrooming all over the country. If all those pupils came back on to the state school market the government would have to run to the hills! This is not a class war this is the British trying to maintain a standard to which they had become accustomed but now with the help of successive Governments has been well and truly lost at state school level. You cannot give everyone the same thing there will be products in education for everyones budget, social circumstances etc. That is life lets stop moaning about it and get on with working hard to improve state schools, God knows the money must be there as a third of the nation is not using the budget!!

[maddison]

So the question of Olympic success now turns into criticism of the élite school. Independent schools exist because there is no other way to escape the all time low of educational standards in Britain. The real argument is about why their numbers have grown so dramatically and says a lot about a nation that has put its money where its mouth is on the importance of education. I take my hat off to these self sacrificing parents who struggle to keep their children in good schools giving up many showy trappings of success that they could otherwise possibly enjoy on their incomes.

I would criticize pupils and independent schools however for
shortchanging these good people on all kinds of issues.

[F.Gamberini]

About the old PCI.
I never heard that that was their policy towards the church -I did not even hear from their opponents that that that was the policy they feared. I must admit I never really took that much notice of policies, but perhaps there weren't all that many in Italian politics as a whole, due to the static nature of the situation.
Searching the web, I have found that there was a book published by CUP in 1980 which would no doubt clarify these matters.

http://www.davidkertzer.com/en/books/comrades_and_christians.html

"While national Communist Party policy calls for conciliation with the church, the Communists in practice are faced both with a population in which anticlericalism is deeply rooted and with a Church that decries communism as incompatible with Catholicism. Against this background, Kertzer examines the pressures and choices individuals face as well as the forces affecting the relationship between the Communist Party and the Church."

[Paul Potts]

Jackie

I have it on not very good authority that when the previous Labour Government (1974-1979) apeared to be serious about abolishing fee-paying schools, Eton College purchased a very handome castle with land in Ireland, maybe something to do with the late Earl Mountbatten (RIP). Maybe they own it still.

Also I was told that the Vatican had contingency plans to move lock stock and barrel to Quebec in the event that the communists take over in Italy and were to pursue their agenda (no Concordat, and the Vatican to become part of Italy). Well, the Vatican has done it before, to Avignon.

Whether Eton would survive its corollary severance from that faction of the Church of England to which it is beholden I do not know, and I rather doubt that Canada would welcome the setting up of a new Nation (?Religion) State within its already rather fragile borders.

Paulo

[Hein Maassen, Leidschendam, The Netherlands]

I can see a few problems. Human rights will continue to be an issue when the Olympic Games will be held in Greece permanently: Greece's treatment of asylum seekers is widely criticized, as is its treatment of religious freedom. And what about the traditional 'medals bonus' for the host country? Greece itself is a prime example: very succesful at the Athens Games, not nearly so succesful now. I predict a mass emigration of ambitious sportsmen and -women to Greece...

[Jackie]

Michael Bulley - I may be talking absolute rubbish, but I seem to remember there was a suggestion a few years ago about banning fee paying schools. As a result many of them made plans to move to France. The really rich would continue to get an education courtesy of money.

[anthony alcock]

In the scholarly productions industry the use of "Common Era" has been influenced mostly by Jewish usage. Jews do not recognize the concept of "Lord", any more than they recognize the concept of the Old Testament, the books of which are normally referred to by the acronym TaNaKh (Law, Prophets, [Historical] Writings).

[Xjy]

Re Michael B's excellent suggestion of free education for all up to and beyond tertiary level, the Swedish poet (and aristocrat) Verner von Heidenstam had this to say on Citizens' Rights (a similar thing) back around 1900:

Det är synd och skam i Sveriges land
att medborgarrätt heter pengar.

It's a sin and a shame in the Swedish realm
that a Citizen's Rights are but Money

[Mary]

On BCE/CE, I'm a bit of a vacillator..and, as I work across the divide, I can tell you that you annoy people whichever you choose.
My heart is in taking the Christianity out of dating, but honestly I'm not sure if using the Christian era and just calling it something different has much impact. Orally BCE/CE is a hopeless system. Even if you enunciate VERY CLEARLY it is hard for a lecture audience to pick up the difference.

[anthony alcock]

BC/AD. Calendars in Egypt carry three dating systems, the Muslim, Christian and Coptic, that is, the flight to Medina, the birth of Christ and the accession year of Diocletian (the instigator of the Great Persecution). All have a religious meaning, one way or another.

[FG]

Jame (Jane?),
re the points you raised, see the following posts/discussions:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/10/orientalism-or-.html#more

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/12/five-things-the.html#more

[Val]

Why not hold the Olympics in a developing country using the facilities that their athletes train on - no specially built stadium, no Olympic swimming pool - just the local river, that would sort out the real talent!

[Michael Bulley]

The comparison between fairness of selection for Olympic events and that for entry to prestige universities seems strained to me, but there is a solution to the latter, though I'm not sure how the analogy would carry over to the former. The answer is the abolition of fee-paying education. That would be possible and politically justifiable (though, of course, highly unlikely under any foreseeable British government). The argument is that, whereas the use of personal wealth to get posher shoes or a higher quality of orange juice does not create much social injustice, the use of it for other things does. Among those are justice, health and education. Many people think it wrong that the richer someone is the better chance that person has, by using personal money, of gaining legal redress, of recovering from serious illness or of securing a good education for their children. In the educational field, there would still be inequalities: a child from a rich family would still be more likely than a poor child to have access to certain educationally beneficial opportunities, but at least there would no longer be the possibility for the parents of buying a better school, as it were, for their child. The issue is bound to remain hypothetical, since there's no indication of its happening in Britain, but I'd be optimistic that, if any governement (in 2052, for example) grasped the nettle and made the paying of fees for education illegal, a spirit of "all in the same boat" would eventually develop and all children would be educationally better off.

[Professor Robert Giddings]

Of course, the cry goes up: "Keep Politics Out of the Olympic Games” and whether, with its human rights record etc., China should have had the Games and then coverage of the protests aroused as the torch processed through the world. Then media blatherchat about the treatment of Chinese political protesters. Bush was there before you cay "Aby Graib". Well, that’s the whole point. Politics always was an essential part of the Olympic Movement. The Games very origins were political.

They were founded by Baron de Coubertin, and a few of his fellow French aristocrats. They were deeply shocked at the easy defeat of the French in the Franco Prussian War.

They considered French manhood had been rendered degenerate in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. During the Second Empire Paris was the sex capital of Europe. The theme is elaborated in Zola’s Nana 1880 and La Debacle 1892. Zola was quite explicit about his intentions to attack the “power of the cunt”.

The diagnosis was not wasted on Coubertin who, inspired by the example of the use of organized sport in British public schools in attempting to stop boys playing with themselves, that they resolved to set up an international amateur sporting event to revive French national manhood. Get them out of the brothels and into the gymnasium.

With the eyes of the world upon them, political feelings have frequently intensively manifested themselves on the Olympic Games – in Germany 1936, Mexico 1968, Munich 1972, Moscow 1980 and now in Bejing in 2008.

We Brits, covered in Olympic medals as we now are, can once more hold our heads high, it seems.

We have so much to be grateful for.

[Paul Potts]

Thanks, Michael, for your correction. I suppose I should have said that small countries have little chance of success in the Olympics, because the criteria on which they are chosen are local and not international.

As for political correctness in choosing or naming the team, I ask myself whether a national team should represent the nation and its political demography, or rather the individual prowess in the various sports. It is nonsense, and always has been, to say that sport and politics are separate, and must seem to be so. The recent cricket match between India and Pakistan, fr example, was a triumph of diplomacy, and we can all be grateful that it was the lady and not the footballer who became president of Liberia. But surely also, a team which was selected from among people who would have made it if they had had the opportunity to do the training when younger could hardly represent the nation in any plausible sense, if only because it would not win so many medals. I mention this because of recent discussion on this website suggesting that in selecting candidates for Oxford and Cambridge, the demography should be the criterion rather than the individual achievements.

The number of British Olympic competitors who became politicians is striking. Chattaway, Campbell and Coe spring to mind.

Paulo

[Jamie]

May one ask a question about usage? I notice that you use (albeit sparingly) BCE and CE rather than the discredited BC and AD. I wonder, do you really like this usage? or is it simply caving in to the inevitable? Jesus is not my lord and savior, and I have no difficulty at all in seeing the arrogance (and irrelevance) of AD. But what does CE actually mean? One is told it means "common era," but please define "common." In 1 BC, did people start feeling common in some way? Whatever commonness there was about in the world was the same 2009 and 2007 years ago. For better or worse, inaccurate or not, our method of reckoning of the years is based upon the concept that the Year One marks the beginning of the Christian era. BC may make some people feel excluded, and the system may be off by a few years, but at least it has the virtue of meaning something. It would be hard for anyone to deny that there really is such a thing as the Christian era, and it isn’t over yet – ask any American politician. Non-christians need not feel excluded: The Buddhists and Muslims have their own start dates, along with many other groups – if people don’t feel they’re part of the Christian era, then fine, they needn't be. For those who follow the Muslim calendar, this is the Hijrah year 1429. I don’t think they would like it much if there was an effort to change it to the Happy year 1428. I’m not old enough yet to be too old to change, but this idea of retrofitting abbreviations seems to me irrational.

[Janus]

I have just watched a news report that 10 of the 20 Olympic venues for the Athens Olympics now lie unused, some derelict. If your idea gains speedy approval the Greek investment can be recouped. Let's just have the equestrian events at Olympia; not too many people, pleasant surroundings.

[anthony alcock]

The Olympic Games may well be faced with a worthy rival when the recently revived International Delphic Games gets up a head of steam. Perhaps the Professor could represent the UK in the Communications and Social Arts division (the blogging event).

[Michael Bulley]

To Paulo: Swaziland has 6 competitors at the current Olympic Games, Lesotho 1 and Botswana 12.

The newly-invented term TeamGB isn't quite correct politically (whether it is politically correct is another matter). The team is certainly officially abbreviated as GBR; those are the letters that appear on the athletes' clothing. But when the national anthem is announced, it is as of "Great Britain and Northern Ireland". It would therefore be more politically accurate to say TeamUK, but has that the same ring?

[Desiree Gerner]

Oh, how silly of me. Of course, the truly elite always find a way to rise to the top and institutions always recognize them based solely on natural talent and hard work. That must also be why intellectual discourse (in addition to nearly everything else under the sun) has been dominated by wealthy white males for millennia. I guess we women and savages just hadn't evolved far enough to join the game. And those poor wretches who could be competitive if they didn't need three jobs simply to keep a roof over their heads? Well, I suppose if they were really worthy their poverty wouldn't pose any obstacle at all. They just haven't worked hard enough or made enough sacrifices.

[Richard]

The relationship between pharmacists and doctors in Scotland is the same as in the rest of the UK.
Neither the Isle of Man nor the Channel Islands is part of the UK (or governed from Westminster), so they presumably have their own rules.
Best wishes,
Richard

[Paul Potts]

Your thing about the Olympics has made me start thinking (again) about small countries and big countries. Swaziland (pop. c. 1m) is obviously never going to get to the Olympics, or even put a decent football team together. Swazis tend to blame themselves. What's wrong with us? The answer is simple: you are a small country. Similarly Lesotho, Botswana and a hundred others.

Being a small country has other consequences, such as in matters of legislation. After the liberation of South Africa, there was a whole flood of new legislation, and their new constitution (drafted with the help of the UK Labour party in the good old days).

But none of that ever touched Swaziland. How could it? We don't have the time or the expertise to implement it. Our legal structure (where it concerns literate persons) dates back to colonial legislation of the 1940's and before. For example, South Africa relaxed the laws on abortion. Never implemented here. Then there is the matter of prescription drugs. South Africa adopted the UK system, whereby you have to get a prescription from the doctor before approaching the pharmacist. Not here.

Here you can go to a chemist and ask for whatever you want, and sometimes with questioning, it will be provided. Suits me fine, because I know well what drugs I want, and there is a danger that if I go to a doctor, he (yes he, here) will require blood tests and delays before prescribing. Obviously I could go on.

Some of this presumably applies to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man (and maybe even Scotland). I mean, when Westminster creates new new legislation, do they automatically implement it? If not, what happens? How?

Britain is a small country, comparatively, but has been punching above its weight for 70 years. Isn't it time to stop? Give up the "Nuclear deterrent" for a start. Let's rely on our scholarship and writing.

Paulo

[Jane]

Great to see distinction between the elite as the best and the elite as the privileged few.

If only everyone else could get this distinction clear what a lot of trouble it would save.

Please can the intellectuals just leave the sportspeople alone, and stop aiming cheap jibes at them, just because they can do something that can't be done by sitting at home working with words.

[Ellie]

Being a female coming from a middle-class, ethnic minority family, having gotten into a lesser-known independent school (and only able to afford it because of getting a scholarship) and now Oxbridge (with a generous bursary), I would say a lot of people have NO IDEA HOW MUCH HARD WORK AND DETERMINATION ACTUALLY GO INTO GETTING INTO OXBRIDGE.

To accuse Oxbridge of favouring students from a privileged background is the deepest insult to all of the Oxbridge students who not only have the academic ability but also the determination to work hard and sacrifice many other things in life to get in there.

Of course, those who attack Oxbridge would have no idea - they hadn't gone through the process (and if they had, they'd probably got rejected, and hence bitter); they didn't spend three years there to know that the majority of students there are a hard-working, talented lot who are quite dependent on their student loans. ('Skint' is one of the most used word around the place) All the public ever see is the glamour of Oxbridge (and that's what interest people anyway), and not the many hours spent working in the library, burning the midnight oil. We had to work hard to get there, and work even harder to keep up whilst being there. Thus we also play hard, shame only this is emphasized.

Fact: Oxbridge is always, and will always be, a place of sheer ACADEMIC elitism.

[Murr]

Can't we go one step further in wicked subversiveness and call for the banning of the Olympics completely?
Isn't there any one else out there who is sickened by the whole spectacle? The vast amounts of money in bribes and backhanders, the razing of entire neighbourhoods to make way for the white elephants of the stadia, the removal (often permanently) of undesirables and those who might show the host country in a bad light, the shameless national self- promotion of the opening and closing ceremonies, the endless and recurring political controversies creating bad feeling, the money, the money... I find it all obscene when considered in the light of the struggle against poverty and disease in Third World countries.
Am I alone in this? I say scrap the whole thing and let's spend the money on something more worthwhile and enduring and ultimately more conducive to "peace and respect for universal moral principles" (sic) than a futile and ephemeral sporting event.

Reading the Beijing Opening Ceremony:
http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2008/08/fragment-1808.html