Looking back on the 2012 Olympics, 10 years on

[Fambo Number Mive]

I was pleasently surprised to read this article in the Guardian who goes against the centrist gushing over the 2012 Olympics and when the Queen dressed up as Dr Who and fought Stormtroopers or whatever she did.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/30/a-massive-betrayal-how-londons-olympic-legacy-was-sold-out

It's a long article but worth reading, shows how residents of East London have been screwed over by the Olympic bid.

"The whole place just feels like a walled city," said Suppaya, who is now 17. "There's the new, clean, shiny Olympic world on one side, and the old, rough, litter-strewn Stratford on the other. The nearest bus stop to the park is a 15-minute walk away through the Westfield shopping centre. I've only ever been there on school trips. It doesn't feel like it's meant for us."

The ArcelorMittal Orbit was intended to be a money-making attraction, with tickets for £17 a pop, but it ended up costing £10,000 a week to maintain. A slide was finally added in 2016 in the hope of boosting ticket sales, but it hasn't had the desired effect. The attraction has slid into at least £13m of debt, as a result of interest on the £9.2m loan from Mittal.

Crucially, Johnson ensured that the locally elected representatives were in a minority on the planning committee, which meant that big decisions could be steamrollered through. Johnson wanted to see results, and fast, before his mayoral term ran out. "He asked us to massively accelerate the delivery of the Olympic legacy housing plans," one former corporation employee told me. "It essentially doubled the speed. We had to do everything in half the time, in the most expedient way possible."

I remember how people who objected to missiles being sited on top of people's homes were shouted down (not on CAB but in the wider world) because it was meant to regenerate East London. And you had that new DLR line from Stratford International (which doesn't have any international services) to Canning Town which always seemed a bit pointless to me, it has ok usage but there are far more important transport projects even within London (extending the Bakerloo Line for a start, the Old Kent Road-Walworth area seems to be devoid of stations).

To be honest I'm a non-sports fan and didn't watch any of the Olympics so maybe that has something to do with my disdain for the event, but spending billions on a giant sporting event at a time when austerity was being ramped up always felt wrong to me.

[bgmnts]

Yeah I remember just not caring about it myself. It's the olympics so who gives a shit beyond the 100m sprint anyway but yeah there must have been a fucking awful sense of abandonment in parts of London. Just everything that's wrong with life right there.

It happened two years later in the Brazil world cup, a massive lack of any investment for their own people to then spend billions on a football tournament.

[Butchers Blind]

The level of jingoism around this at the time led us to Brexit.

[Fambo Number Mive]

I'd be interested to know what effect the 2022 Commonwealth Games will have on Birmingham. Did it help with the long overdue extension of the West Midlands Metro?

[Thursday]

The best bit was when George Osbourne was booed.

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

I was saying OsbBOOrn

[Gulftastic]

I liked it. I don't live in that there London so it was easy to ignore the dark side.

I enjoyed that they used the Beth/Margaret kiss from Brookside in the opening ceremony, meaning it was shown in lots of countries where that sort of thing is illegal.

[studpuppet]

I still remember it being lauded as the cleanest Games ever in terms of athletes' drug use, and then I listened to a BBC doc called Bloodsport a couple of years ago (still available HERE) where it turns out that it was probably the dirtiest Games ever, thanks to the systematic Russian doping that went completely under the radar.

[king_tubby]

Sorry Leeds, no tram for you, we need the money to improve Eton's boating lake for the fucking Olympics.

Fuck the Olympics. I HATE SEBASTIAN COE.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Wasn't interested and got mildly irked like I do during the World Cup because it penetrated everything and became impossible to ignore.

I did have to visit London when it was on and seeing everyone gripped by it and flitting between pubs and events etc was quite nice I suppose. Usually this sort of thing is going on away from me even if the UK is hosting so it makes no difference if it's here or not given my levels of indifference.

[Zero Gravitas]

The depths of the evil of the Olympics beyond being a funds sink and leaving useless waterparks wasn't something I'd ever considered before there was a TrueAnon on them a few years ago https://youtu.be/VQ9Rx0Ntbh0?t=936

[Kankurette]

Yeah I remember just not caring about it myself. It's the olympics so who gives a shit beyond the 100m sprint anyway but yeah there must have been a fucking awful sense of abandonment in parts of London. Just everything that's wrong with life right there.

It happened two years later in the Brazil world cup, a massive lack of any investment for their own people to then spend billions on a football tournament.

And it's happening again in Qatar.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It happens everywhere, society at large usually has more important needs than access to a velodrome.

[crankshaft]

I enjoy watching the Olympics every 4 years so it was fun that it was happening in my home city. I particularly enjoyed popping into a crowded pub to watch the men's 100m final and listening to a gaggle of excited twentysomething Black women melt at the sight of Usain Bolt.

Sport aside, the social cleansing that occurred to make it happen is a disgrace. I read that Guardian piece yesterday, and whilst there was a lot in it I didn't know, there was a LOT of noise at the time about people being moved out of Newham and forcibly rehoused, often hundreds of miles away. It made the news, but people didn't give a shit because, well, they were poor, weren't they?

I think the "Olympics led to Brexit" angle is inaccurate. "Decades of yellow journalism and Murdoch / Dacre-sponsored sustained othering led to Brexit" is more like it.

[Quote]

It was alright. Everyone moaned for years about what a waste of money hosting the Olympics would be beforehand (and rightfully, there's obviously better things that could've been done with that amount of cash) - but once it rolled around it was enjoyable. For a month. Helped that I was between jobs at the time and could just loaf my way through the days watching handball or sailing or some shit.

Seemed like the whole opening ceremony thing was more 'how Britain likes to think of itself' than the actual reality of 'how Britain is'. Self mythology, and the cruel reality was already becoming apparent at the time with austerity etc.

Technically the opening ceremony was pretty impressive tbh, or I remember thinking so at the time.

[Psybro]

People outside Sheffield aren't usually aware that the year after a load of athletes who trained here won a bunch of medals, the council shut down and demolished our athletics stadium (the highest capacity one in the country not built for the Olympics) due to lack of funds.

[Blumf]

I'd be interested to know what effect the 2022 Commonwealth Games will have on Birmingham

In Dudley, we got the bicycle time trial, which means for a whole fucking day we will be unable to leave the house to go anywhere as our road (a pretty major one for the area) will be closed off. Very hard to find info about this, and I suspect a lot of people will be surprised when they wake up to see themselves coned in. Not to mention people in the wider area finding their usual routes blocked.

On the plus side, as I type, they are painting the lampposts... beige.

[ProvanFan]

[Martin Van Buren Stan]

Are art galleries and museums a waste of money when CHILD ARE DYING or just sports?

[studpuppet]

People outside Sheffield aren't usually aware that the year after a load of athletes who trained here won a bunch of medals, the council shut down and demolished our athletics stadium (the highest capacity one in the country not built for the Olympics) due to lack of funds.

A stadium that was built for a World Student Games that bankrupted Sheffield Council. (I know, because I was part of the accompanying cultural event that helped it along free pizzas and as many goes on the paternoster lift at the University as I could stomach!)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Are art galleries and museums a waste of money when CHILD ARE DYING or just sports?

Is the prime purpose of art galleries and museums just to bung a load of money to development firms and huge corporate sponsors like visa and pepsi?

[cosmic-hearse]

Are art galleries and museums a waste of money when CHILD ARE DYING or just sports?

If they were only used for a fortnight then cheaply sold to West Ham, then yes

[cosmic-hearse]

It was a vastly destructive event that parts of the city still haven't recovered from.

I was living in Deptford at the time & ended up getting the train back from work to Greenwich whilst it was hosting some dressage nonsense. It was virtually impossible to get out of the station without being funneled to the park where it was taking place (I just wanted to go to Music & Video Exchange); there were tons of volunteers directing people away from the centre & many places were fenced off. Local businesses had been promised that the Olympics would bring tons of money, but it was clear that the Olympic body only wanted people to spend money on site. Walking around Greenwich that day was a desperately sad sight; empty shops & restaurants adorned with Olympic tat, waiting for customers that would never come (the only time I've Greenwich that deserted was during lockdown).

I knew some friends who were kicked out of their flat so it could be rented out for the fortnight (anecdotally that sounded like quite a common occurrence, but I don't have any figures for it so who knows). They could never afford to live in the area again.

Large parts of Greenwich Park were closed prior to the games & for months afterwards. People associate Greenwich with affluence due to all the royal shite but it is one of the poorest boroughs in London, so the park is a vital asset for people, as much as Victoria Park is for the East End. But none of that seemed to matter because 'Team GB' were winning medals.

To build huge sporting arenas that lie idle afterwards is just some a grotesque waste of money, especially as many of the facilities existed already. Zaha Hadid's swimming pool is very nice, but London already had an appropriate swimming pool in Crystal Palace (one of the finest post war building in London as well) – in fact the whole park had facilities that could have been effectively 'recycled' for the Olympics, making it a truly green affair – but that's not how these deeply corrupt events work.

I despised & then & despise it now; thinking about it makes me angry & sad in equal measure. Iain Sinclair was right about the whole thing.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Are art galleries and museums a waste of money when CHILD ARE DYING or just sports?

There's a big difference between art galleries and museums, which can be enjoyed by the general public every day, and an elite sporting event which takes place for a few weeks and the general public are just spectators at. I think grassroots sport is very important and should be funded by public money, but stuff like the Olympics is very different. Did it even encourage many people to take up sport long term?

[madhair60]

Are art galleries and museums a waste of money when CHILD ARE DYING or just sports?

of course they are.

[Endicott]

Did it even encourage many people to take up sport long term?

Yes, it did, or it would have, if those people hadn't then found that there was no funding in their local area for the things they wanted to do.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I'm pretty dumb so I don't know much about the after-effects of the olympics. I just hated how fbpe twats kept using the opening ceremony as an example of some sort of imaginary golden age. We were already deep into austerity bollocks by then but of course none of that impacted on them so it didn't matter.

[bgmnts]

Are art galleries and museums a waste of money when CHILD ARE DYING or just sports?

Nobody said "sports" are a waste of money.

Mask came flying off today!

[Stone Cold Steve Austin]

I don't remember anything about it except Chris Addison being the most annoying man in the country for the duration and George Michael doing new at the closing ceremony

[ProvanFan]

Did it even encourage many people to take up sport long term?

I've been pole vault daft ever since. Bring my pole with me everywhere.