Comments on: London's dystopian Olympics: criminal sanctions for violating the exclusivity of sponsors' brands

By: Jason Villamil

Jason Villamil — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:15:00 +0000

See this is what happens when your city gets the Olympic Games by wishing on a Monkey Paw.

By: robdobbs

robdobbs — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:47:00 +0000

They did all this in Vancouver too. It’ll pass and in return you will have an even better CCTV system to be watched on.

By: EvilTerran

EvilTerran — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:41:00 +0000

Ah, I see you like using the word “constitution” when anyone who actually knew what they were talking about would say “codified constitution”. Good for you.

By: eerd

eerd — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:53:00 +0000

I’m holding out for mumblety-peg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumblety-peg

By: Symbiote

Symbiote — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:18:00 +0000

According to my mum, who heard it on a phone-in on BBC Radio 4, part of the reason so many people in the UK don’t care (or dislike) the Olympics is because they can’t see where the money is being spent. Small businesses all over the country are doing work for the games, but because they’re not the multinational sponsors, none of them are allowed to say so.
The antipathy might be countered if Independent-Printing-Company in Hull were allowed to put a small Olympic logo on their vans and letterhead, and show they are employing 10 extra people for a year or two.

(Also, I found out about the first people I know who got tickets. They’re McDonald’s executives.)

By: Substance McGravitas

Substance McGravitas — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Please enjoy and employ the many forms of FUCK THE OLYMPICS imagery there are to be had.

By: Substance McGravitas

Substance McGravitas — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:55:00 +0000

The winter Olympics in Vancouver cost billions and required a lot of building. Meanwhile the public school my child goes to tries to raise funds with bake sales.

By: Substance McGravitas

Substance McGravitas — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:52:00 +0000

Of course the irony here is that the Olympics want to put blinders on YOU so you can’t see anything Olympic-related that hasn’t given a kickback.

ignoring anything that is mildly unpalatable or different

Wrong website.

By: teapot

teapot — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:10:00 +0000

I went to the Sydney Olympics and it was amazing.. I suppose I'm lucky it was before 9/11 but it's shocking how crappy the Olympics have become. Remember when the London 2012 countdown clock failed on the first day? Hope that isn't a sign of what a roaring success the games will be.

By: M Henri Day

M Henri Day — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:48:00 +0000

I have a yellowed copy of Frederik Pohl and C M Kornbluth’s «The Space Merchants» (3rd printing, March 1960) on my bookshelf. Who says the future cannot be reliably predicted ? Pity we don’t have a Venus rocket on which to escape….

Henri

By: V10_Rob

V10_Rob — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Which is also how they try to sneak SOPA and the like through. Don’t worry about it, it’s foreign relations stuff, go back to watching American Idol, it doesn’t affect you.

It overrides domestic rights and laws and can never be changed no matter who you elect to your congress, senate, parliament, whatever. No, you can’t read it, but don’t worry, it doesn’t affect you. Trust us.

By: Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Unfortunately, it is entirely possible to have both.

By: EH

EH — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:17:00 +0000

I’d like to see a resurgence of the Billboard Liberation Front move to London for the next 6mos. Maybe a Kickstarter campaign could do it!

By: EH

EH — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:15:00 +0000

And if they don’t find one, they invent one.

By: EH

EH — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:11:00 +0000

In the Tour de France they call it the lantern rouge, “red light,” referring to the red light on the caboose of a train, to denote the person who finishes in last place.

By: Just_Ok

Just_Ok — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:40:00 +0000

synchronized swimming versus total nuclear destruction…tough call

By: anharmyenone

anharmyenone — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:37:00 +0000

To push back against this sort of thing, print out this article and mail it to Olympic sponsors along with a note saying that you’re boycotting them because of this heavy-handedness.

By: Just_Ok

Just_Ok — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:36:00 +0000

Spring and Fall (Autumn) Olympics will enable one each year soon.

By: rtb61

rtb61 — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 15:01:00 +0000

The Olympics has just become so offensive. Whiny lawyered up athletes they like to strut about calling themselves heroes, it’s all so disgustingly over marketed.
What’s pathetic is that gold medal winners are now peddling some of the lamest crap because they have become c grade marketing tools, it’s no lying it’s acting.

By: darkjayson

darkjayson — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:50:00 +0000

The Olympics should be hosted at Olympia in Greece or as close to it so not to spoil the original runes there, its got the nice weather and its the home of the Olympics and it would be a massive boost to the Greece economy even when the games are not on with tourists.

All countries joining in should chip in a bit of the cost of keeping and updating the games there that way one country does not suffer the massive cost of games and using existing facilities that would be built then maintained/upgraded it would cost much less. With everyone one splitting the cost there would be no need for sponsors of any kind keeping the games pure and free not spoiled like they are now.

No country that has hosted the games can claim that it has help in the long run, every place that has hosted it is worse off now than before the games even years later.

Sadly with so much corruption and ego boosting for politicians wanting to be the one who got the games to there country the above will never happen.

By: Little John

Little John — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:40:00 +0000

You’re out of date. Now it’s every two years.

By: Roxanne

Roxanne — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:15:00 +0000

exploitation of whom, exactly? I was referring to the general apathy in society today, in which we seem to no longer have pride in things that matter as a human race, but are more intent on sitting in our own homes with our blinders on, ignoring anything that is mildly unpalatable or different.

By: Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:13:00 +0000

The point is to, for a few months every few years, make an effort to act as one human race in friendly, competitive sports.

Like the 1936 Olympics, where the Olympics were used as a stage to try and demonstrate Aryan superiority? Or the cold war games when they were used a geopolitical tool by the east and west as demonstrations of which side was “better” by athletic competition?

I long for the good old days that never existed, when they really were about individual athletic prowess, and not a tool for political theater or an advertising meme to sell more soda pop. May those good old days actually exist someday.

Blaming all of society for not buying into the “purity of athletics” nonsense that those who stand to make fortunes off of the games try to sell us as “prideful narcissistic bloat and apathy” makes me think you may not have considered the totality of what the modern Olympics games have become.

If it looks like a manipulative, exploitative scam and walks like a manipulative, exploitative scam………

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:56:00 +0000

In Soviet Union, Olympics boycott you!

By: Stickarm

Stickarm — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:11:00 +0000

What if Boing Boing found companies that aren’t official sponsors of the Olympics and got them to sponsor the website to *not* post news about the Olympics? Would Boing Boing be legally justified in using the word “Olympics” in their promotion of this sponsorship? “We have nothing to do with the Olympics! (Sponsored by Kickstarter.)”

Could a bar in London do this? “We don’t have anything to do with the Olympics, come here to watch football and cricket. (Sponsored by Boing Boing.)”

By: manicbassman

manicbassman — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 09:10:00 +0000

If you want to see stupid… they’re building a massive wall along the cost so that you can’t sit on the hillsides and watch the sailing events for free… we’re getting Zill lanes in London so members of the Olympic Family can be swept through the jams to the events in the official BMW cars… another thing that is rankling an awfull lot of us over here is how many foreign brands are doing the sponsoring… BMW? Come on… it should have been Jaguar or Range Rover at the very least… oh and apparently, it’s just been revealed that all the drivers of this fleet of BMWs are volunteers… doing it for free…

By: Dlo Burns

Dlo Burns — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:21:00 +0000

It’s funnier to imagine the Greeks being nude all the time and then Romans being such super prudes and rewriting history to say otherwise.

By: Dlo Burns

Dlo Burns — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:18:00 +0000

At least it was a good push for them to build Trax

By: Dlo Burns

Dlo Burns — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:17:00 +0000

Every leap year.

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 08:16:00 +0000

No, Winter Olympics require massive construction of facilities that will soon become crumbling, under-used, liabilities – just like the Summer ones.