heh heh...Letter From London
When Olympic Rings Led to Suffering
Sudeshna Sen
We’re into the last lap of the excruciating, painful long preparations for the Olympics, which is finally on our heads now with less than a week to ignition date. Mostly, us Londoners are just waiting for the state of siege in the city to pass — I can’t express it better than a random tweeter, who said it felt like someone else is throwing a party in our house, at big entry fees, and we’re all locked in the basement.
The next two weeks may be grim, but so far, the pre-event national mood is rather funny. The British are world famous for their national pastime of whingeing; moaning about the Olympics has been de rigueur for more than two years now. This time, events have gone beyond the whingeing stage, exhibiting signs of a tragicomedy with distinct overtones of farce. It’s a bit like those children’s books, a series of unfortunate events.
The headline shambles is G4S, the private security company that was to provide the thousands of security personnel at the event, suddenly threw up its hands two weeks ago, and said they hadn’t managed to rustle up enough staff — so the armed forces had to overnight commit thousands of extra soldiers, some just back from tours in Afghanistan, to frisk bags of visitors at the gates. Never mind the red faces, the massive cost will now be picked up by, of course, taxpayers. Current estimates for time taken to get into the venue is about two hours, so if you do have tickets, please be early.
After months and months of debate, discussions, parliamentary questions and so on about whether the Home Office would be able to manage serpentine queues at airport immigration, we now hear that the border staff are planning to go on strike a day before the Olympics. Which might mean, unless they cancel, you could be waiting for half a day instead of the usual two hours to clear passport control.
Last week, us poor Londoners were suddenly accosted at tube stations with a message from London’s colourful mayor Boris Johnson, telling commuters to, well, basically try and not use the tube during Olympics. We’re hearing mutters from tabloids that train drivers may go on strike during the games, but we don’t know how credible that is. Despite all the desperate planning, everyone expects traffic to be gridlocked, with almost all arterial roads closed for something or other. Oh, and the first batch of arriving athletes got a taste of London gridlock when their bus driver lost his way and took over four hours to deliver them from the airport in west London, to the stadium in east London, a two-hour journey at the best of times. The Olympic lanes, the special lanes for dignitaries to whizz by in their limos, aren’t open yet, you see.
Meanwhile, the latest is that Danny Boyle, director of Slumdog Millionaire, who’s the creative director of the opening ceremony, is locked in artistic battle with the official Olympic broadcasters over camera angles. And, at the last minute, has been forced to chop 30 minutes of his programme — because, if it goes on for much past midnight, London’s public transport will shut down, and nobody will be able to get home. Odd nobody realised, London’s trains have always been a bit like Cinderella and shut down on the dot of midnight. Oh, and tickets. After a major palaver sometime last year about tickets — which were sold on some complicated ballot system and nobody really got anything they want, or ended up with tickets to Taekwondo — it seems thousands of tickets are still unsold. And they’re available from anything to 20 quid for stuff nobody wants to see, to £2,000 for the wanted events.
The biggest sore point, of course, is Locog’s — the Olympic organising committee’s — police state enforcement of sponsorship rights. You won’t, in a country that went wild with buntings and flags during the Queen’s diamond jubilee, see any signs of a party mood. That’s because nobody is allowed to use the word Olympics or medals or 2012, or any such word or image or logo that might infringe on the rights of the sponsors: Coke, McDonald’s, Visa, etc. It’s created some howlarious incidents, like florists being asked to remove decorations shaped like rings, or small cafés asked to remove flaming-torch breakfasts from menus.
The funniest was when workers at the site objected to not being able to buy their favourite British chips anywhere. Since McDonald’s is a sponsor, you can’t get the trademark British chip in the venue, except with fish and chips. The latest salvo was when Sebastian Coe, head of the committee, told a TV channel that you can’t wear a Pepsi T-shirt or Nike shoes to the Olympics. Locog clarified: it seems individuals can, but groups can’t wear anything branded by non-sponsors. You won’t be able to use the ATMs around the area with any card other than a Visa, so be warned. Carry lots of cash.
Personally, since I have no intention of getting into the Olympic spirit, I don’t much mind the lack of merchandise. I’m pretty sure, though, that despite the last week’s alarums and excursions, the British will be able to pull off a pretty impressive spectacular, and at least the kids will have fun. Since I’m paying a weekly Olympic levy for the last five years, and will keep paying till 2016 or even after, I intend to squeeze what little joy I can get out of it.
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) are nice on TV, but, I really wish they had a professionally run force like our CISF boys manning security!
