Proud to be English!

I can't often admit that - but today, as I watch the Olympic torch fight its way through the streets of London, I shout it from the Roof-tops!

It's a beautiful example of the British being 'Mad as March Hares' - Snow this morning, so the weather didn't help - and protesters 'alla the suffragettes' throwing themselves in front of the horses running the flame.

A few idiots went too far - fire-extinguishers could have been dangerous - but the photo-opportunities, the world-wide TV coverage, the chattering commentators swarming around the event can do nothing but highlight the human-rights issues China refuses to budge on.

Interesting no one is mentioning the first time the flame was carried - For the Nazi Games of 1936.


Technorati Tags: Olympics, China, Human Rights

Un-British

Improve your Britishness by doing something very un-British?

I've lived and worked in several countries where they do this sort of thing - mostly former Eastern-Block and former communist - and can assure you, as a Brit, it really is the last thing to do.

The casual assurance of one's Englishness (in my case) and commitment to 'standards', could never have developed through formal means - you need bread in sausages, Ice Cream made from hydrogenated pig fat and bitter to do that.

(More BBC)

And one they've not published:

What is China's game?

But surely - the Olympics is totally unpolitical which is why the athletes are asked to give up their right to free speech in order to not upset the hosts?

Why does any country participate and spend a lot of money on training competitors etc but for the love of sport and individual triumph?

And surely London bid for the Olympics purely for humanitarian reasons - the chance for those poor athletes to see a free and beautiful city?

China is just participating in the 'norm'..