woot
not too fussed about the olympics but to beat the french is always good ;)
Yeah it seemed every channel was covering it. But good for us brits, maybe i'll take the wife to go see them in 2012 ._.
Wow, if British cooking was better, Chiraq wouldn't have been able to insult it and lose Paris' bid as a result.
But anyway, from my meagre knowledge of the bids, it probably was the right decision.
Now all hope of the scrapping of the EU Common Agricultural Subsidy Policy is lost as Chirac will be intent on scuppering everything at the G8.
It's the Finnish I feel sorry for: Chirac said that they were worse than the UK at food!
Wasn't there a lot of controversy about London supposedly buttering up the judges with gifts and money?
Quote from: SSH on Wed 06/07/2005 14:42:24
It's the Finnish I feel sorry for: Chirac said that they were worse than the UK at food!
It's because we don't put snails and frogs in our foods.
Ah, a thread about British Cooking...
Mmmh, well maye French have better food but you don't get anything eatable in Paris for the price of a yummy Fish&Chips in the UK. Aaa, gotta go there again, did not visit it for more than ten years now.
Anyway, Congratulation London :D
Chirac said that too? I thought only Berlusconi insulted our noble cuisine.
i like how 200 years after Trafalgar, we beat the french again (:P) and celebrate under nelsons column in Trafalgar Square ;)
Oh fantastic, so we get to waste huge sums of taxpayer's money building giant stadiums that will stand empty for years afterwards. I'm so excited.
Who watches the Olympics anyway?
It's such a waste of money. I love how politicians talk about how it will be a boon for the economy, but the opposite is inevitably true. I remember flying over Salt Lake City and seeing a bunch of empty stadiums. What a waste!
It's true that it's usually like that (certainly for Greece) but here In Australia we still make constant use of our facilities. In fact, "Olympic stadium" is used all the time for all sorts of games.
The Superdome and the rest of the Olympic Park complex is a large white elephant though. It probably isn't visible in the QLD media, but the fact that most of it is idle and not used [including the Olympic Stadium itself since club games are crappy there. You get a robust 30,000 crowd and 2/3 seats are empty, doesn't look very good].
It still is a nice complex, but there isn't a huge continuation of use.
Congrats London, the best thing about the Olympics is the partying that goes along with it, The streets and pubs are completely packed 24 hrs and heeps of other free outdoor events go on. There's big TV screens everywhere, and there is just a buzz in the air. You'll probably never experience it again (unless you travel following it)
You'll never see as many people in your city either.
As far as Sydney's Olympic Park goes, it does get used for all sorts of club, national and international sports. Eg. Basketball, Hockey, League, Union, Soccer, Aussie Rules, Baseball etc
The stadium isn't filled that often, and I agree with Las that when there's 30,000 people there it still looks empty.
But when it comes to Grand Finals, Origin, Bledisloe cup etc, it allows most people if they want a ticket, to get it before it sells out. It's hard to beat 80,000 - 90,000 people cheering, although it did used to hold 110,000 temporarily for the Olympics There aren't many stadiums in the world with that sort of capacity.
Here it is on google maps.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=sydney&ll=-33.847203,151.063192&spn=0.009683,0.015044=k&hl=en
Yeah I got a couple of friends who work at the Superdome. They get a fair few concerts there, but I guess not heaps. It's nice that we have the facilities here now, as it caters to many events, and it's also a nice place.
I agree with what you said Timosity about the atmosphere during the olympics in Sydney. When we went up there there was just so much activity and so much to do, and cheaply too. It was a great time.
(http://custardsclutter.com/halfPrice.jpg)
dunno if it's real but it made my laugh :D
At least the text on the cardboard is fake. Why would it be in English anyway?
I think there is no doubt that has been added, but the fact (if the shirts are real) that the french were selling paris 2012 shirts is good enough for me ;)
Quote from: Privateer Puddin' on Sat 09/07/2005 12:34:51
I think there is no doubt that has been added, but the fact (if the shirts are real) that the french were selling paris 2012 shirts is good enough for me ;)
Most Committees (or companies)have this kind of material ready , just in case they win. It's like in Championships, the Champion team always has drinks andÃ, T-shirts with their logo and the achievement ready. Did they know they'll win??? I'm not sure, all I know is that it is considered good managment and public relations. In case they lose, they just get rid of them, I suppose.
Oh, and why was the Euro sign next to an english "for sale"?
One can assume the cardboard sign had a price in euros and someone photoshopped it out and put the english text there
Oh, come on. That 'Paris 012' writing has obviously been added.
Quote from: Chicky on Sat 09/07/2005 13:16:29
Oh, come on. That 'Paris 012' writing has obviously been added.
Probably, but having promotional material ready is still a company policy for many.
Quote from: cp on Sat 09/07/2005 12:45:18
Most Committees (or companies)have this kind of material ready , just in case they win. It's like in Championships, the Champion team always has drinks andÃ, T-shirts with their logo and the achievement ready.
Yeah, everyone would prepare everything before the announcement anyway, so they can react as quickly as possible when the result's out.
Take Hong Kong here for example, just after they announced that all the horse race related olympic events will be held here in 2008 (just after they announced London won 2012), some of they government sports centres had their names changed immediately to like "Olympic Centre" and the like the next day, they sure had everything ready long ago, otherwaise how can they make all these billboards, logos so fast?
I think if you look closely you'll notice the words on the shirt are fake too. This was originally just a picture of some woman selling crap. :)
I'm not fussed either way about London hosting the Olympics. It will probably cripple the transport network, and annoy commuters to no end, but it'll just be another notch on the list of "Things Britain Does To Appeal To The International Community". On the other hand, it's a whole seven years away, and by then I probably won't be hanging around near London and the Olympyics will have a whole different political backdrop.
I didn't bother to look at more than the cardboard, but you are indeed right Kinoko.
Can't you people stop picking apart the photo and just enjoy the joke :P
i'm saddened, no, ashamed that even brits decided to find flaws in it rather than laugh at the french ¬¬
That photo was in the newspaper when I was in London the other day, along with several other "funny" fake pictures of that sort... seems so childish to me... but what do you expect from English tabloids.
I don't think I know enough about the economics to say if the olympics being here is a good thing or not... I know personally it'll be irritating when it's actually happening, it's bad enough when it's happening over the other side of the world, people are just not going to shut up about it this time.
At least it's 7 years away.
Of course hosting the Olympics is a good thing economically - why else would everyone bid for it?
It brings in a shedload of tourist money.
It's going to cost London a lot of money to get the infrastructure, and they're definitely expecting to recoup it.
Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Sun 10/07/2005 20:03:50
Of course hosting the Olympics is a good thing economically - why else would everyone bid for it?
It brings in a shedload of tourist money.
Actually, the vast majority of people who go to the olympics are from the host country, so it just displaces tourist money rather than generating it. And overall it's reckoned that hosting the games is economically neutral or slightly dis-beneficial. But the political prestige of being the host is what leads countries to want to bid.
If I may quote:
In Sydney, underused venues are costing taxpayers A$46m (£18m) a year to keep afloat and will lose money for at least another decade. The Super Dome, where the closing ceremony was held, recently went into receivership. After the Athens Games, the Greeks face a £6.25bn debt and £60m a year for the upkeep of its unused facilities.
Well, that's just stupid.
More info here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3739498.stm
So apparently, the taxpayer will foot the bill, and various London businesses make out like bandits. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Since the Sydney media has dug up every cost-benefit study on hosting the olympics ever made, we've probably read most of them in NSW.
I remember several mentioning that Montreal is still paying of it's debt.
Sydney, like many cities, built most of the facilities in a former industrial area in order to "revitalise" it [as well as the land being cheaper].
problem is, when you've still got facilities there after the athletes have gone home, you realise why the place needed revitalisation. Maybe this would be less pronounced in London since it's geographically smaller than Sydney [every city in the world is really. Sydney is a endless rolling plain of suburbs].
There's also a good seven years of bureaucratic fuck ups to distract the media facing you.
Ironically, the best thing the olympics did for the Australian economy was to nealy send it into recession. Most economies around then were teetering at the edge of the trough, and just needed something to push it in. In Australia, it was a post olympics hangover [along with a new tax], and that essentially saved us from the bigger fall in septemeber the next year.
[and I just described that in really horrible layman's terms]