British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne had no place to hide when the boos rang out around the Olympic Stadium today in London. It’s allegedly the first time boos have been heard inside the stadium, which says much about the loathing for the ghastly Osborne and the current Con-Dem Government. As Channel 4 News reported:

‘The first boos of the day ring out in the Olympic Stadium for George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was presenting medals at the 400m T38 victory ceremony.’

Surprisingly, there was cheers for former Labour PM Gordon Brown, which suggests the public do have short memories.
 

 
Via Channel 4 News
 

 
Congratulations to Danny Boyle, Frank Cottrell Boyce, and the thousands of people (volunteers, builders, technicians, caterers, nurses, doctors, dancers, singers, musicians, actors, etc) involved in London 2012’s opening Olympic Ceremony. You all did a grand job.

For me the real and most important message of the ceremony is the one above. Health care is a right. No one can help being ill, and no one should ever be denied access to free health care.

In 1948,  the Labour Party established the National Health Service in Britain, offering free healthcare at the point of use to all of its citizens.

Today, tthere are many countries across the world with universal health care coverage (including Germany, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Russia, etc, etc), but it is said the NHS is the largest and oldest single-payer health care system in the world, funded primarily by taxation.

However, over the past few decades, successive governments, both Conservative and Labour, have pared down the services available to the public, and now the NHS, as it is known and loved by the British public, is set to be destroyed by the present Tory government.

To stop this happening we need to write to the Prime MInister David Cameron, and your Members of Parliament, demanding that the government rethinks its plans and listens to the people they are supposed to serve.

Please share the above picture and get involved through Keep Our NHS Public.
 

Picture by Rob Hyde
 
This window display might look like it was put together by someone with severe dyslexia, but it is in fact a glorious “fuck you” to the London 2012 Olympics and their ludicrous and draconian “brand police.”

“Brand police”? What’s that? I’ll let The Independent:

Hundreds of uniformed Olympics officers will begin touring the country today enforcing sponsors’ multimillion-pound marketing deals, in a highly organised mission that contrasts with the scramble to find enough staff to secure Olympic sites.

Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not staging “ambush marketing” or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and BP. The clampdown goes on while 3,500 soldiers on leave are brought in to bail out the security firm G4S which admitted it could not supply the numbers of security staff it had promised.

...

Olympics organisers have warned businesses that during London 2012 their advertising should not include a list of banned words, including “gold”, “silver” and “bronze”, “summer”, “sponsors” and “London”, if they give the impression of a formal connection to the Olympics.

 
A lot of grumbling has been going on about the “brand police” and I hope we’ll see more of this as the games roll on.

 
So much for an Olympics for the people.

This poster has allegedly been put up on London 2012 Olympic sites, notifying customers that chips (or French fries) will only be served with fish, “due to sponsorship obligations with McDonald’s”.

Fast food chain McDonald’s, along with Coca-Cola and Cadbury’s are among the main sponsors of this year’s Olympics, well that is, along with the British public who will be actually footing the bill.

Note - the original estimated costs of the London Olympics have increased tenfold from £2.4 billion to £24 billion.

McDonald’s will be supplying 10% of all meals served at the games, and under an exclusive deal with the International Olympic Committee, the burger chain have the sole rights to sell chips / fries at the event. This means any other of LOCOG’s (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) caterers can only sell chips with fish and not on their own. So much for the capitalist belief in free enterprise.

Och well, another fine example of how capitalism works - if you are a major company, you can pay in your fifty cents and fuck-up all the competition and customers. Nice. Especially when the Olympics are being underwritten by the public’s money. 
 
Via Reddit, with thanks to Kash Farooq, Jon Stone and Graham Linehan
 

 
The Olympics are coming! O, yes they are. And It’s been relentless, ever since 2005, when London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has jollied along the British public with daft ads, events and exhortations to get behind 2012.

No matter that the country can’t afford it - latest figures for the estimated cost of hosting the Games has risen from £9.3bn (GBP) to between £12bn and £24bn (GBP). No matter that there is high unemployment. No matter that there is a world-wide recession. No, no, no. Let’s forget all about that and enjoy some bread and circuses.

It strikes me that rather than London hosting the Games, or any other country for that matter, it might have been an idea to keep the Olympics in Athens, thereby helping Greece out of its economic meltdown and bringing the country a regular and sustainable income. It would also make better far better and more sensible economic use of the £9 billion’s worth of buildings erected for Athens 2004, which are now abandoned, derelict, and vandalized.

But fuck all this whinging - the Lympics Are Coming! And here are The Exploding Heads - Mark Davison and Anthony Richardson - to get us in the mood! But first a word of warning:

“This video has very little to do with the actual Olympic Games. We didn’t copy the London 2012 logo. I simply imagined a suitable logo and did it on paint. Maid Marian, an Owl, the cast of Sister Sister and Home Improvement, Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Des Ree will not feature at the London Games.”

The Exploding Heads are the very lovely and perfectly formed Anthony Richardson, Mark Davison, Ben Tonge, Keith Gubbins.