The Olympic Legacy

[LoveTheBobby 1]

 

 

He didnt need to do adverts before major championships he appeared in, that may have kept him out of the public eye....developing a stable of horses and inviting skysports to a tour around it to publicise it may have been a bad move for the shy, retiring Michael too. Plenty of brilliant footballers are virtually anonamous...Paul Scholes springs to mind, and a lot of the foreign players seem well balanced people too, but honestly, if self delusion was an Olympic sport Owen would be in the Michael Phelps category.

 

I'm sharing the distain .

 

Don't worry though, I think Big Joey is advising him on Twitter, putting him right on it all around the theme of 'football being out of touch with reality' . . No truly he is

 

And thusly, the circle is complete . A photo finish . Golds all round

[PaddockLad 17643]

Coe is part of the establishment. Top uni, middle class background etc..His 'vision' is going to be very different from the average Joe in most cases. The O were a very energising and uplifting event, I certainly enjoyed them (especially cause we won a lot of golds), but the impact will be short term. If there is a boost it will be for the next gen of athletes if there is proper follow up. As a spectacle it will soon be forgotten and replaced by the next entertainment hiatus.

 

The long term gains will be with the branding exercise and the multinationals (the whole thing about McDonalds chips/fries notwithstanding). The subtext will remain one of corporate alliances with the state as the circus moves onto the next victim host country.

 

All meaning is lost when put through the prism of nationhood.

 

Funding for elite atheletes will be maintained at its present level, but grass roots money is likely to be cut. Anyone wanting to play handball or volleyball is fucked as because its unlikely that team GB will qualify for Rio theyre not going to be given as much funding as they received for London. The Dutch Volleyball coach of team GB at the Olympics has already left his post, as per his contract. The "legacy" crowd talk fine words, but follow it up with fuck all.

[ewerk 31195]

People's perceptions changed massively from before to after the event according to the poll. My point is simple, people in general don't have the sort of vision required to see how things will turn out. Having broad insightful strategic vision is not a common characteristic otherwise we'd all be CEOs.

 

So it's the small number of people with this 'insightful strategic vision' that are going to change the UK for the better and drag the rest along with them?

[PaddockLad 17643]

So it's the small number of people with this 'insightful strategic vision' that are going to change the UK for the better and drag the rest along with them?

 

 

 

That is generally how things happen iyam. Roy Jenkins was home secretary in the 60s, he abolished hanging and leagalised homosexulality and abortion.He did it becaue he thought the country would be a better place to live if he did. Thatcher crushed the unions for the same reasons. They were elected, but its their level in society who impose their decisons on us, elected or not. Very little comes from ordinary people that changes other's lives funadamentally.

[ChezGiven 0]

 

 

So it's the small number of people with this 'insightful strategic vision' that are going to change the UK for the better and drag the rest along with them?

Absolutely anything positive that happens to the UK economically in the next few years will be down to the vision of entrepreneurs, the boldness of corporate decision makers. The politicians have their role but on the whole it's a few people who make a real difference.

 

Anyway, the point being that if 54% of people think there will be no long term benefits this does not translate to a 54% probability of it being true. My point is that the likelihood of any long term benefits can not be discerned from a sample of people who were incapable of predicting even the games themselves being a success.

[Howmanheyman 33823]

One of the points of that article is to highlight how little vision people have. Lord Coe has vision and is probably one of the 36% who believes it will have a long term impact. In a random sample of 2000 people, half of them will be below average intelligence.

I'd say the half with lower than average intelligence are more likely to be riding the Olympic wave of optimism.

People's perceptions changed massively from before to after the event according to the poll. My point is simple, people in general don't have the sort of vision required to see how things will turn out. Having broad insightful strategic vision is not a common characteristic otherwise we'd all be CEOs.

This thread is about an Olympic legacy to Britain?

 

If Coe's vision (and 36% other people on a poll) was to have an Olympics in Britain that went off ok with no major fuck-ups, (we'll not mention the football queues/ticket balls ups early on) and also to win medals then his vision came true. I'd assume anyone running the event would have had that vision just maybe not the capability of pulling it off. When it comes to the legacy part what exactly is his vision? A part of London might be a bit better on the eye and what else? What will the legacy be to the rest of Britain who may or may not be gifted with superior intelligence?

 

I've a feeling their will always be scaremongering leading up to an event like this and London would've been no different to Athens for example and at the end of the day things tend to get sorted out.

 

So what is the 'strategic' plan for Britain that will come from these games? (because CEO's like politicians have a tendency to use many words where few would do and also to deliberately obscure their meaning. Some may even call bullshit when they blether on. Just an A will hopefully lead to B will do for us thickies!

[CleeToonFan 1]

I just don't understand the 'our national team underperform' school of thought. We're about the level you'd expect. Our coaching isn't as good as Netherlands/Spain's, we dont have the population of Brazil, Germany use an awful lot of fellow Europeans etc and Italy use dull tactics to sneak past teams. What other nations are better? We came third in the Olympics on home soil, last time the Euros were here we came 3/4 and last time the world cup we came 1st.

Edited August 15, 2012 by CleeToonFan

[luckyluke 2]

 

 

Roy Hodgson said it.

 

People who say it about fans don't, but the footballers could definitely take a leaf out of the athlete's book. Particularly the perennially under performing national team who complain about how bored they are at World Cups.

 

If you're that fucking bored, here's an idea: practice some penalties, you cunts. Or finding a team mate with a pass.

 

Was listening to five live about an hour before the closing ceremony, as people were streaming in to take their seats the reporter spotted the Brownlee brothers on a training run.

[Tooj 17]

I just don't understand the 'our national team underperform' school of thought. We're about the level you'd expect. Our coaching isn't as good as Netherlands/Spain's, we dont have the population of Brazil, Germany use an awful lot of fellow Europeans etc and Italy use dull tactics to sneak past teams. What other nations are better? We came third in the Olympics on home soil, last time the Euros were here we came 3/4 and last time the world cup we came 1st.

 

Cliché bingo!

[CleeToonFan 1]

 

 

Cliché bingo!

Sorry I just have a burning hatred for Italian football, can't help it

[Howmanheyman 33823]

Sorry I just have a burning hatred for Italian football, can't help it

 

"Whadda you mean, you no a like-a Italian football!!??"

[ChezGiven 0]

 

 

This thread is about an Olympic legacy to Britain?

 

If Coe's vision (and 36% other people on a poll) was to have an Olympics in Britain that went off ok with no major fuck-ups, (we'll not mention the football queues/ticket balls ups early on) and also to win medals then his vision came true. I'd assume anyone running the event would have had that vision just maybe not the capability of pulling it off. When it comes to the legacy part what exactly is his vision? A part of London might be a bit better on the eye and what else? What will the legacy be to the rest of Britain who may or may not be gifted with superior intelligence?

 

I've a feeling their will always be scaremongering leading up to an event like this and London would've been no different to Athens for example and at the end of the day things tend to get sorted out.

 

So what is the 'strategic' plan for Britain that will come from these games? (because CEO's like politicians have a tendency to use many words where few would do and also to deliberately obscure their meaning. Some may even call bullshit when they blether on. Just an A will hopefully lead to B will do for us thickies!

Dear me. The statement about half the people in a random sample being below average intelligence is just a statistical fact. I think ewerk got the joke. Just because people think something doesnt mean it is true, to illustrate people polled thought the Olympics would be not be great. Not only were these the same people being asked before and after the games, they were also wrong. A lot of people said it wouldnt work and it would be shit, the whole country absolutely loved it. People said that ok, even though it worked and was good, there will be no long term benefits.....

 

I see long term economic benefits from increased tourism as we have just had two weeks of an intensely watched global marketing campaign. I define the short term in months and the long term in years, I see tourist decision making being influenced by this next year and the year after. There are other more complicated benefits and some simple ones like the regeneration of the area etc. For the record, hoping the games go off ok with no fuck ups and we win medals is not what I mean by vision. Seeing how it might inspire people is.

[Howmanheyman 33823]

Was just interested in the legacy bit to be honest.

 

Regeneration I mentioned, (don't know Stratford so have no idea if they've delivered but it is still localised to that area and not the rest of the country).

 

Tourism I didn't mention and is a good short term shout although I'd assume London will always be a popular City break for non-UK residents.

 

I was kind of taking the piss, (guess you never got the joke like I never got yours), as well suggesting Coe's vision was 'no fuck-ups' as I've no idea what his vision actually is and therefore would like to know how the Olympics is going inspire people?

 

I've not much interest in the Olympics, never thought it would be a disaster but don't think it's anything other than a sporting event.

[Park Life 71]

Chez has morphed into Cameron:"Team GB has done its job now it's upto GB"!

 

We're in a double dip recession ffs!!

 

BOE predicting miniscule growth for upto 5 years.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Park Life

[ChezGiven 0]

Indeed and cynical pessimism is not going to get us out of it, is it?

[Renton 21980]

What's the precedent here? Have any Olympics left a lasting legacy? A positive one I mean? I'm not sure.

[Park Life 71]

What's the precedent here? Have any Olympics left a lasting legacy? A positive one I mean? I'm not sure.

 

There is no precedent Chez is in la la land.

[ChezGiven 0]

You think predicting increased tourism is la la land? That was a side track anyway as ewerk posted the poll results about people's perceptions of long term benefits.

 

You're a fine one to talk about la la land anyway.

[ChezGiven 0]

No, i didnt write this...

 

I

 

So what do the Olympics tell us about modern Britain? Do they show the way we view ourselves, the way we think about success, and what we expect of the future?

 

The problem is that the Games tell us most about what we tell ourselves about ourselves. The subtlest element of Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony was the way he made a new vision of Britishness seem so familiar. It purported to be progressive, but with a reassuringly sepia tint. Where most opening ceremonies are ponderous, boring and predictable, London’s was a riot of fun and mischief. Boyle’s central narrative was necessarily simplistic – yet it provided a thread on which he could hang dozens of expressions of Britishness. Just about everyone got to watch something personally touching, whether it was the celebration of the National Health Service or a scene from a rural cricket match. By the same logic, there was something to irritate almost everyone, too.

 

There were a few dissenters who complained that it was propaganda for a left-liberal view of Englishness. “I feel like I’ve just watched a £27 million party political broadcast for the Labour Party,” tweeted the conservative journalist Toby Young. But most observers did not interpret the opening ceremony through a political lens. Perhaps that was part of its skill. The most seductive art persuades without you realising you are being persuaded.

Above all, Boyle’s vision of Britishness suggested mature self-confidence, a country too witty and well adjusted to need grandiose statements. “We aren’t China; we aren’t America,” it announced; “we can’t be and we don’t want to be.”

 

At times, that spirit, which captured the mood of the nation so well, went missing once the competitive programme began. Invariably the home country focuses on its athletes – but surely not to the extent of ignoring the rest of the field. Sometimes the BBC and newspaper coverage suffered from trying to turn every Olympic contest into a tribal battle between Team GB and the rest of the world. The Games have been most un-British, and most unattractive, when they have been most jingoistic.

 

II

 

These Games have shown how the image of “a sporting champion” has changed. Twenty-five years ago, in line with the worst strands of Thatcherism, the image of being a winner was aggressive individualism. It was assumed that John McEnroe-style outbursts would become the norm, because “nice guys finish last”. Not so long ago, a leading sportswriter chastised Colin Jackson for congratulating his friend and rival Mark McCoy for winning a gold medal.

 

That is absurd. These Games have proved that sportsmen do not gain any competitive advantage by losing their dignity or forgetting their friendships. Usain Bolt talks about Yohan Blake, his fellow Jamaican who won a silver medal behind Bolt in the 100 metres, like a younger brother, thanking him for pushing him hard. Farah was thrilled that his training partner, the American Galen Rupp, won silver. As we have learned from the rivalry of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the greatest rivalries are underpinned by respect.

 

The courteous respectfulness of the British athletes – whether it is the rowers at Eton Dorney, the sailors in Weymouth or the athletes in the Olympic Stadium – has been one of the inspiring features of these Games. Moments after his own triumph on Centre Court, Andy Murray described what he had felt watching Farah’s win. “I do repetitions in my training,” he said, “and when I’m completely fresh, I can run [a lap] in about 57 seconds. His last lap was 53 seconds. It’s just unbelievable fitness.”

 

The way we describe sporting success reveals new misinterpretations. “Talent” has often been used as a dirty word, replaced by nouns with a clear moral dimension – guts, determination, sacrifice. The message is clear: medals should be earned by an effort of willpower, preferably

a triumph over adversity. This subjugation of innate ability reached its apotheosis in the baffling backlash against Michael Phelps. The phenomenal American swimmer collected the 22nd Olympic medal of his career, making him the most decorated Olympian ever. Inevitably, the debate followed: was Phelps the greatest Olym­pian of all time?

 

Many pundits invoked the bizarre logic that Phelps’s physical talents give him an unfair advantage (his double-jointed ankle bones and huge feet create a “flipper” effect, it is said). Tyler Clary, his own team-mate, expressed a common view in a sharp phrase: “The fact that he doesn’t have to work as hard to get that done, it’s a real shame.”

 

Revealingly, the comment was interpreted as a shocking insult (Clary quickly apologised). For me, as an ex-professional sportsman, I think the idea of being a 22-time Olympic medallist without training that hard sounds pretty cool.

 

But increasingly only those skills earned the hard way qualify in measurement of achievement. And so, innate physical advantages must be held against sportsmen who achieve greatness. What a tangled way to think about success. Must the Indian cricketer Sachin Tendul­kar lose credit for having exceptional reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination? Sportsmen once hoped to appear effortless. Now they must follow a different ideal. If it isn’t about effort – about blood and guts, sweat and tears – then success doesn’t really count. However absurd, this is how we are told to view success, in sport and in life.

 

Yet the natural human instinct – what viewers feel before they are told what to think – is to thrill to raw talent whenever we see it. Usain Bolt cheerfully admits that Yohan Blake trains much harder than he does. “But I have a talent,” Bolt adds truthfully. And it is his talent that

is so wonderful. He is one of the world’s most popular sportsmen because he has not been dulled by the platitudes of professionalism. He doesn’t pretend that it is torturously difficult being Usain Bolt. At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, in the 100 metres final, he stopped trying at 70 metres. In London, he sprinted almost for the full 100 metres. But he has never lost his boyish incredulity at his own brilliance. Nor have we.

 

This narrative of just deserts has been overlaid with the story of “home-field advantage”. (Team GB has followed the usual trend of host nations by experiencing a bounce in performance.) At times during these Games, interviewing athletes became less about discovering things by talking to the participants and more a device for celebrating the crowd (and, by extension, the viewer). Hence the standard post-triumph interview went something like this: “How many seconds/inches/points did the home crowd give you as an advantage?”

 

What are the athletes supposed to say? “The crowd gave me an advantage of precisely 0.02 per cent”? But the testimony of athletes, for all their good intentions, cannot be trusted as revealed truth. Professional sportsmen intuitively understand how hard it is to resist “the media line” that has been decided on their behalf in advance. All athletes have to do in most interviews is acquiesce; usually the answers are built into the questions. It would be an unusually brave, perhaps reckless, British Olympian who denied that he or she was “inspired” by the crowd.

 

It would have been much more powerful if the athletes this year had been given the opportunity to thank the crowd – and the nation – unprompted.

 

III

 

For all the success of the London Olympics, one cannot deny that there have been unresolved tensions. The first is the underlying tension between London and the rest of the United Kingdom. No equivalent capital city so disproportionately dominates a nation. That London has shone so brightly may be good for Britain’s self-esteem; but will it reinforce the sense that London is almost another country, an isolated canton that houses the anglophone world’s financial and creative elite? “This is America up here in the Bronx,” Tom Wolfe once wrote. “Manhattan’s an offshore boutique!” Would the Games show London drifting away from the UK in the same way? For that reason, the success of the torch relay across the country was vitally important. No one knew if it would catch the collective imagination. The answer, we learned, was that these would be London’s Games, but not solely London’s Games.

 

And while the political parties jostle to claim the credit, an uncomfortable logic is left under-explored. Team GB could not have won many of its medals without the support of the state. Only a few sports can nurture elite athletes (and their coaches, equipment and nutritionists) in a free market; most require handouts from the taxpayer.

 

What of the Olympic legacy? Now that the 2012 Games have succeeded, the focus turns to whether the feeling can last. It is remarkable that, only a year ago, during the riots, London suffered such a severe and self-induced blow. Arguing that a sports tournament could heal the scars from then sounds quixotic, to say the least. The Olympics, however, is no longer really a sports tournament. Sport provides the surface and the pretext; the real point is the opportunity to reboot a city, perhaps even a country.

 

Olympics sceptics once used that fact as a criticism: look how detached the Games have become from sport, they complained. Yet if the Olympics aren’t about sport, the logic follows that Britain must have succeeded at something much more important. Perhaps we can’t yet be sure exactly what that is. But the prospect of finding out is thrilling.

[ewerk 31195]

Waffle.

[Brock Manson 0]

Waffle.

 

Aye, surprised whoever wrote that managed to do so with their head up their own arse...

[ChezGiven 0]

Someone with their head up their arse usually means they are blind, ignorant of other's point of view, single-mindedly incorrect. I dont think Ed Smith is any of those things, wasnt a bad cricketer either.

[PaddockLad 17643]

Its waffle in that its his opinion about the games....heres some facts in the "legacy" thread about what the true sporting legacy is likely to be:

• 
  
• 
  
  • 
    David Conn
    
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 August 2012 19.30 BST
    

 

Will London 2012 inspire a generation to do more sport? Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

 

It was the key pledge supporting London's bid to host the Olympics, made winningly by Lord Coe and the then-prime minister Tony Blair: that a British Games would "inspire a generation" to become more involved in sport. A nation still heady with the glories it has witnessed now expects greater sporting opportunities as a legacy of the Games and their £9.3bn cost, but the Olympic torch has not burned away the stubborn realities dragging people the other way. Modern life for most besides those few full-time athletes is increasingly sedentary; Britain's sports facilities are old, tired and seriously underfunded, and being further depleted by swingeing government cuts to local authority budgets.

The slashing of the £162m funding of school sport partnerships imposed by the education secretary, Michael Gove, in 2010, has received most criticism in the context of developing a genuine sporting legacy, but encouraging adults to be more active is a greater challenge. Critics say in the seven years since the Games were awarded to London, no sufficiently coherent plan, backed by will and resources, has been developed by the government to capitalise on the post-Olympic rush of enthusiasm. Hugh Robertson, the sports minister, while pointing to the £1bn which Sport England, the grant-giving agency, has to invest over four years from 2013-17, acknowledges that driving up participation is "very difficult," and a major advance is unlikely to come quickly.

"I think we will see an improvement," he said. "The Olympics have been marvellous, and generated huge interest. But none of the things that made this difficult have been lessened. We are talking about societal change. If participation increases, it is likely to be on a long-term, incremental basis."

Some say the prospect of even gradual improvement is being damaged by the government's cuts to local authorities, which own and run public sports facilities, but have no statutory duty to do so. In Sheffield, home of gold medal-winning heptathlete and "face of the Olympics" Jessica Ennis, the council is seeking a 20% reduction in its swimming pool, leisure centre and facilities budget, including that of the Don Valley Stadium, where Ennis trains, as it wrestles with a reduction to its government grant of at least £170m over three years. The council has already "drastically reduced" its maintenance of parks, including playing fields, according to its leader, Julie Dore.

"The chance of an Olympic legacy is being undermined," she said, "and the situation is only going to get worse. We believe in all the benefits of sport, and do not want to close any facilities, but when we are forced to cut on this scale, our statutory responsibilities mean that sport, leisure and parks become an easy target."

Councils are being forced to implement cuts of £6.25bn, 28% of their grants from the government, between 2010-11 and 2014-15, according to the Local Government Association. Playing fields, sports centres and swimming pools, and the staff to run them, are under threat and many budgets are being cut. The LGA warned earlier this year that by 2020 funding of discretionary services, including sport, faces a 66% reduction, and could disappear, due to the mounting cost of adult social care, which councils must provide. A survey of councils by the Chief Cultural and Leisure Officers Association (CLOA) earlier this year found that services, including arts and culture as well as sport, are suffering reductions of around 10% on average, with further cuts to come. So far, the CLOA estimated, 2,800 jobs have been lost in the sector.

"The sheer scale of ongoing cuts to local government funding represents the biggest single threat to a participation legacy for London 2012," said Andy Burnham, the shadow health minister.

The £1bn government and lottery funding of Sport England is the prime national vehicle now for encouraging participation, distributed to the governing sports bodies, which have targets to meet. A central aspect of the strategy is to link local sports clubs with schools, which often have an area's best facilities, and to staunch the huge drop in people taking part in sport after they leave education.

Jennie Price, Sport England's chief executive, is optimistic for a post-Olympics increase in participation, but acknowledged many governing bodies, whose role has traditionally been focused on running clubs and competitions, were not equipped for the new development drive. She cited hockey, netball and cycling as examples. "We have a reasonable chance," Price said. "Around half the governing bodies have a good understanding of what motivates participation and are evolving different models of their sports to make them attractive."

The challenge of helping people to be more active has grown into a major public health issue, although there remains limited co-operation across government departments responsible for different aspects of the problem. Sport England's survey in April 2012 found 15.3m people, 35.7% of the population, participated in at least 30 minutes of moderately intensive sport once a week, the recommended minimum. Department of Health guidelines for people to be active, which include brisk walking for at least half an hour five times a week, is met by only 37% of British adults, according to research published last month in the medical journal, the Lancet.

So, the nation still hugging itself with pride at the prowess of Team GB athletes has 64% of its adults not playing sport once a week, and 63% not even walking often enough to be physically healthy.

The mental and physical health consequences of inactivity are the subject of persistent official warnings; the latest NHS health survey for England found that in 2010 68% of adults were obese or overweight, a growing tendency in recent times, and 16% of children were obese. The economic cost of obesity is estimated at £50bn a year by 2050, £9.7bn to the NHS.

Yet despite the warnings, progress towards increasing participation has been slow, and several ambitious targets have been abandoned. Sport England's figures show there was a jump of almost 1m in 2007-08, but since then, only around 400,000 more people have been drawn into playing sport.

Given the stubborn factors pulling people to inactivity, it was always controversial for Coe and Blair to claim that hosting the Olympics would inspire a generation to do more. Surprising as it sounds, while inspirational feats still feature vividly in the national mind, no previous Games has led to a general increase. Blair made the claim even though his Downing St strategy unit had stated in a 2002 report, Game Plan, that the links are tenuous between watching top athletes perform and being motivated to do sport.

"There is little evidence that hosting events has a significant influence on participation," Game Plan concluded. It advised that hosting events such as the Olympics would produce surging national pride, but for a huge cost: "It would seem that hosting events is not an effective, value for money method of achieving a sustained increase in mass participation."

Nevertheless, three years later, Blair pledged to the International Olympic Committee in Singapore that a London Games would do exactly that. Coe later admitted the claim was not supported by research or a strategy for how participation would be increased. Then the £2.4bn budget presented by Coe's bid team, supported by the government, rocketed to £9.3bn, a golden pot of public money which was protected even as government funding was slashed around it.

That huge expense, vindicated by the sparkling and brilliantly-organised success of the Games, dwarfs the money available to build and maintain sports facilities, and run sport development programmes, across the country. Chris Gratton, professor of sport economics at Sheffield Hallam University, explains that Britain's limited public sporting stock dates from two phases: late Victorian and early 20th century philanthropy when swimming pools were built, then leisure centres, the fruits of sudden local authority financial surpluses, in the 1970s. "Our commercial facilities, such as private gyms, are relatively good," Gratton said, "but since the 1970s, comparatively few public facilities have been built."

Under the previous Conservative government, cuts to local authority budgets saw many facilities decline, and thousands of playing fields sold off. A review for Blair's government by Baron Carter of Coles in March 2005 found that rebuilding sports facilities to modern standards would cost around £4.5bn. Yet no major rebuilding programme has taken place, and just over twice that figure was spent building the Olympic facilities.

Gratton said all research into sports participation shows poverty and inequality lead to people being less active. Finland, which has Europe's highest rates of sports participation, thanks to a strong public health message and making facilities available locally, is a more equal society than Britain. "Poorer people suffer social exclusion," Gratton said, "which, by definition, applies to exclusion from sport, too."

Robertson agrees, and accepts the cuts to councils will not help. "I do recognise that poverty and inequality affect participation," he said. "And it would be dishonest not to recognise that local authorities cutting budgets will have an impact."

He pointed in compensation to changes in lottery distributions which he championed, increasing the proportion of the lottery total going to sport from 13.7%, to 20%, enabling Sport England's £1bn four-year funding. He identified too a specific Olympic legacy programme, Places People Play, targeted at making small grants to facilities in poorer areas – the initiative's budget is £135m over three years.

Robertson said that while the Games were a huge success, and had given sport "a tremendous boost," the afterglow is unlikely to translate into a great upsurge in participation.

"We have held an Olympics which surpassed expectations; it has produced an amazing stimulus, and a new generation of sporting heroes. However anybody who remotely pretends it will be easy to increase general participation in sport is kidding themselves."

So, the claim that a London Games would inspire a generation to do more sport, is in danger of being an over-promise. After the euphoria, the battle is against sedentary culture, junk food, haggard sports facilities, too few opportunities, local authority cuts, and, for young people, inequality between private and state schools. If this landscape undergoes no post-Olympic transformation, Britons who supported the Games so wholeheartedly may come to feel short-changed by its legacy

[ChezGiven 0]

Its waffle in that its his opinion about the games....

No, waffle means lacking in focus, meandering discussion, lacking structured thinking, perhaps even repetitive. Offering an opinion can be more accurately described as polemic, the term waffle may be applied to the format of anything whether polemical, factual or other.

 

Interesting article, Conn is an excellent journalist, one of our best. The point about getting more young people to do Sport is probably the most important. One off events cant do that, you need infrastructure at all levels to ensure it happens (teachers, parents, facilities etc) but they can provide a stimulation and a push in the right direction. Its up to people to seize that and get more kids interested in more sports. Its like an opportunity, not the ends in itself.

[Happy Face 29]

It has been just over a week now since the dead cat on the pavement outside the house was finally taken away, with no little ceremony, by Hackney Council Environmental Health and already talk in the coffee shops on Stoke Newington Church Street has turned from the emotional highs and lows of its daily decomposition to the likely benefits of its legacy. Though some maggots are still visible, crawling in the gutter near where the dead cat lay, it is too early to say if they will hatch out into flies and what kind of flies these flies, if indeed they be flies at all, will grow up to be. The brown, dead-cat-shaped stain on the pavement, however, is expected to remain partially visible for decades, providing inspiration for generations to come and transforming the economic fortunes of the entire district.

 

When the dead cat first appeared on the pavement outside the house just over three weeks ago, I admit I was one of those who was sceptical about its long-term value to the borough. After all, there had been dead rats, a dead pigeon, and even an inexplicable dead fish, in the street before and they had had very little positive impact on the area. "A dead cat on the pavement in Hackney?" I scoffed. "It will be a disaster. The lady who teaches t'ai chi will probably steal it to make a hat. The infrastructure will not be able to cope. And Hackney is not even on the underground so the transport links will be horrendous. And the nature of the dead cat's sponsors is so clearly in opposition to the ideals of putrefaction the dead cat itself embodies that the whole idea has already been undermined, surely."

 

How wrong I was. After some teething troubles, the 393 bus soon rose to the challenge, delivering crowds of morbid gawpers from all over north London to view the rotting pet via specially marked out Dead Cat lanes; and no one could have predicted what a great sponsor the taxidermist on Essex Road turned out to be, despite the fact that the shop is dedicated to the unnatural preservation of dead animals, while the dead cat itself visibly and robustly espoused the natural laws of decomposition ever more profoundly with each passing day.

 

Like many locals initially unconvinced by the idea of a dead cat, I soon became obsessed with it despite myself, running out into the road every few minutes to check the progress of its slow physical erosion. Everyone in the family had their own favourite aspect of the process. I became fascinated with the gradual recedence of its beautiful green eyes into its collapsing brown face, the children enjoyed the slow stiffening of the furry limbs, while my husband and his mates from the pub, typically, loved the bit when "its arse fell into the drain", an event disproportionately well attended by the sponsors and their clients!

 

There was something for everyone in the gradual decomposition of the dead cat and one could sense the sometimes divided community of east London – black, white, Muslim, Jew, Turk, Kurd, young, old, men, women, children, pensioners, lesbian, gay and transgender – being brought together by their shared bleak fascination with the inescapable fecundity of death, from whose icy clutches no mortal can ever wriggle free.

 

The variety of life forms contained within the rotting cat, in competition for the resources its bloated corpse offered, yet co-operating together as one, was a wonder to behold. Flies from many lands crawled over it laying their eggs in fertile patches of damp flesh and soon the carcass was alive with wriggling larvae. These tiny parasites' sportsmanlike efforts to eradicate the host body caused, apparently, questions to be asked at the Football Association as to why Premier League footballers could not behave more like these maggots, which had so inspired lawless young people watching the putrefaction of the cat carcass.

 

In our house, the cheese fly maggot, Piophila casei, has become something of a hero, despite being cruelly mocked by TV comedian Frankie Boyle on his Twitter account, for looking "like that midget c*** Hervé Villechaize from Fantasy f***ing Island with two tea strainers sellotaped over his f***ing face". Though only 8mm long Piophila regularly hopped 15cm around the cat's body, a feat that made Boyle's cruel and ill-judged jibes look to everyone sitting on our garden wall like a definite case of sour grapes.

 

The decomposing cat's spectacular opening ceremony turned out to be a vital strategy in winning over the doubters and the tolerance of the schoolkids who usually sit on the wall by where it was, selling small parcels of crack for pocket money prices. Unrehearsed gaggles of infants dressed as Swedish detective Wallander sang a Blakean eulogy to the now abandoned Bookstart scheme, while veteran ska band Bad Manners, who had met at Woodberry Down school, performed their 1980 pro-hard liquor hit Special Brew. Then Lady P, the Hackney grandmother who swore at rioters last August, jumped from a nearby window using a Happy Shopper bag as a parachute, the climax of an ill-disciplined but exuberant event that avoided all the usual opening ceremony cliches in favour of opaque nostalgia and endearing have-a-go theatrics.

 

The closing ceremony was no less impressive, featuring, as it did, TV comedian Russell Brand, who used to buy drugs in the area. "I got all me smack round here," he chirped, "and now look. A dead cat. This place has gone up in the world and no bleedin' mistake, your lordships. Citius, altius, fortius and such like!"

 

Who can forget the hilarious song that Brand then improvised himself on the spot? "Dead catty-watty. Catty-watty woo. Catty-wat, Wittgenstein, big stinky poo!" After Brand's wilderness years in America, and the whole Sachsgate scandal, we all realised finally, that he was a national treasure, and forgave him as one. Indeed, the very public rehabilitation of Russell Brand may yet prove to be the most enduring and valuable legacy of the whole decomposing cat.

 

But now the cat is gone and the spontaneous street party that has been raging in the road this month has abated. One of the students five doors down stumbled out the morning after the final night of celebration, in a dirty nightie emblazoned with an image of the decomposing cat. "Jesus!" she shouted, to no one in particular, "the decomposing cat is gone. But everything's still broken, all the butterflies are dead, I'll never own my own home and they just closed the library. Bastards."