The Olympic Games haven’t even started yet but the restrictions on movement around London are already in full effect. Today I was at Kings X railway station and an announcement boomed out saying something like: ‘this is your mayor Boris Johnson and public transport will be more crowded this summer so your journeys may take long…..’ We don’t need the banker loving Boris Johnson to tell us this. If we have to have announcements of this type then the usual anonymous announcer will do fine. One just gets the impression that Johnson wants to bore those that live in London out of the city during the Olympics.
And while we’re on this subject, the Olympic traffic lanes in central London are just as much of a wind-up as Boris Johnson’s announcements…. Yesterday I cycled along the Embankment from Blackfriars to Pimlico and you only have to look at the Olympic lanes there to see that they’re stupid. Rather than staying in central London, all the so-called dignitaries visiting the games should have been accommodated in Nissen huts on Canvey Island. If the ‘dignitaries’ were going to Stratford from the east rather than the west it would be far less disruptive! And if they were staying on Canvey Island they’d see a totally different slice of English life!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by Crates of Thebes on 2012-07-05 00:21:24 +0000
You can complain all you like about the disruption but I bet that won’t stop you wathcing the female gymnastics, nor indeed the boxing!
Comment by Lucy Johnson on 2012-07-05 08:12:09 +0000
These Limpics-they frighten me! (Munich Massacre etc etc). Why the sodding ‘dignitaries’ have to stay in the Park Lane Hilton or where ever is beyond me too.
I took a cab yesterday-used to cycle but equally fear of being taken out by ironically enough an aggressive taxi driver has put me off in recent years-and it was faster and cheaper as apparently they have stopped all the road works! My plan to flee the city for the duration seems to have failed as tickets have been sourced by a rich benefactor and it looks like I will see some of this jamboree.
Comment by Lympic Opec on 2012-07-05 09:27:16 +0000
Yeah, like a slice of the Thames Delta blues for example.
Comment by The Man in the Iron Mask on 2012-07-05 09:29:18 +0000
Let the dignitaries stay on Park Lane and let the Games commence over the road in Hyde Pk – so swimming in the Serpentine, high jump in Marble Arch, sex Olympics in Green Pk etc etc. Heathcote Williams has offered to umpire the clay-pigeon shooting at Speakers’ Corner. The traffic congestion will certainly be eased and the population might even go down. Not that I care as I will be holidaying in Cathar Country.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-07-05 13:03:42 +0000
Hyde Park might work and while they were at it Green Park someone could do a remake of The Year Of The Sex Olympics….
@ Lucy Johnson – the taxi drivers will cut you up as a cyclist but they’re not as bad as they used to be. I had several black cabs deliberately go into me in the eighties/nineties. They’d do it at lights when you been held up on the red and it was changing through amber to green and deliberately mush up my back tire then blame me for being in their way. Total scum. But I suspect they must get some road rage and cyclist training now coz one of those deliberate slow hits hasn’t happened in years. It is the bendy buses and lorries you really have to watch out for…
@ Lympic Opec – and in any Thames delta battle of the bands the likes of the Feelgoods, Eddie & The Hot Rods and Kursal Flyers would slaughter The Stones!
@ Crates of Thebes – yes the female gymnastics and boxing in that order… and maybe some women’s track and field events… You may be correct in your assessment of my interests but you’re still a cynic!
Comment by Robert Higgs on 2012-07-05 13:34:01 +0000
The Olympic Games haven’t even started yet and I’m bored already!
Comment by The Man in the Iron Mask on 2012-07-05 17:53:33 +0000
We are all bored and re-making THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS would make us more so. I am being completely ad hominem here as I blame Nigel Kneale the writer for the affliction I have to wear. The rot set in and the iron got moulded after he sued me for using clips from QUATERMASS. How about a new play set during World War 1 when Green Park was where thousands of troops were billeted and where they were serviced by a battalion of prostitutes and Dope Girls (cocaine, heroin and opium users).
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-07-05 20:06:01 +0000
I certainly enjoyed Marek Kohn’s Dope Girls – and maybe some kinky public sex in gas masks is the perfect for today’s jaded mummy porn readers. But catering to their tastes would rule out making anything decent…. The Stone Tape is a little better than The Year Of The Sex Olympics but still about as exciting as watching The Onedin Line. Still boredom is very postmodern….
Comment by Clive Shutes on 2012-07-05 23:11:46 +0000
I thought a Boris Johnson (BJ) was a form of oral sex that entailed a lot of biting until I read this blog.
Comment by Lee Brilleaux on 2012-07-06 00:46:03 +0000
You haven’t lived till you’ve had sex in a Nissen hut on Canvey Island.
Comment by The Man in the Iron Mask on 2012-07-06 07:53:58 +0000
But, Lee, sadly you’ve been dead for years.
Comment by Lee Brilleaux on 2012-07-06 17:24:19 +0000
Yes but necrophilia rocks and there are those that prefer mouldy oldies like me!
Comment by The Man in the Iron Mask on 2012-07-06 17:38:40 +0000
Point taken but you are not exactly an ‘elegant corpse’, you lanky streak with big feet.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-07-06 18:12:52 +0000
And I’d have thought the number of living people who’ve had sex in a Nissen hut on Canvey Island must number in the hundred (maybe low thousands) rather than the billions alive on earth right now…..
Comment by Cheeky London Cabbie on 2012-07-06 18:49:30 +0000
I can’t wait for the Olympics and even more traffic jams coz I clock up more money for less work in a jam! And I love bankers and lawyers too coz they give bigger tips.
Comment by A Pundit on 2012-07-06 20:26:35 +0000
Boris Johnson is the Edward D. Wood Junior of British politics.
Comment by Alex Dipple on 2012-07-06 21:01:35 +0000
I experienced the same thing at Euston yesterday. A traumatic development that injected all the forgetablility of a mayoral election broadcast into the suicidal emptiness of the transit terminal. I switched off to what he actually said but these things may surface in murderous dreams. People laughed warmly along with the broadcast which freaked me out. Cuddly Boris???
Comment by The Eternal Optimist on 2012-07-06 23:58:22 +0000
It isn’t too late to cancel the 2012 Olympics!
Comment by Douglas Park on 2012-07-07 00:41:25 +0000
if disruption is a sport et divertissement, whats the rules and aims, then who’ll win?
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-07-07 01:17:31 +0000
The rules are by any means necessary, the aim is to overthrow capitalism and obviously the proletariat has a world to win!
Comment by Douglas Park on 2012-07-07 13:03:45 +0000
but without any competitiveness, onania and other such “more of the same as before / no difference” kokbollox!
Comment by Michael Roth on 2012-07-09 04:50:16 +0000
@ Clive Shutes – I had a Boris Johnson in the Kings X railway station just the other day.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2012-07-12 16:36:25 +0000
Nice!