The end of the Olympics

We are at the end of the London 2012 Olympics, and it seems like a good time to review them, look back and see whether they are as good as the seem to have been.

 I did express, in various places, concerns with the commercialisation of them. I also expressed concern that the games lanes and other traffic issues would cause more problems and give the main event a bad feeling. I think these fears were valid and reasonable, but not as significant as I had dreaded.

Team GB did get 29 gold medals, and a total of 65 medals. We also had a large number of competitors who did not achieve medals, but who gave of their best and did us proud.

We had an opening ceremony that was stunning - brilliantly put together, brilliantly executed. the closing ceremony was less spectacular, with a few oddities, but it was still a party to finish the greatest 2 weeks of sporting achieving.

The venues we provided were fabulous - including the ones for the "roaming" events like the marathon. The volunteers were out of this world, and thoroughly deserved their standing ovation in the closing ceremony. The sports were clean and largely uncontentious - with a few exceptions there were no challenging or problematic umpiring decisions, no disqualifications to take issue with.

We saw some magical sporting moments - Usain Bolt winning the 100M against some strong competition; Rudisha running a spectacular 800M to break the record, and bring all of the other runners with him to all achieve significant times. I have read that Andrew Osagie, the British runner who managed 8th place in the final, would have won the Gold in the last few Olympics.

All in all, I think we can look back on London 2012 and be immensely proud of what we as a nation have achieved.

But what will the real legacy of these games be? I can hope that we can appreciate some of our less well supported sports, and acknowledge that our footballers, who are some of the most highly paid sportsmen in the country, but who failed to perform, can get less money and less investment. We need to put the money into the areas that need investment and to reward performance. We have shown that we have very skilled and talented sportspeople, and we should invest to develop more in the areas that we can - not just to win medals, but to be the best that we can.

Sporting achievement is not the most important thing, the most important achievement, but it is an achievement. It is a celebration of what we are capable of as people. It is a glorious celebration of humans as beings created in Gods image, reveling and celebrating what we are capable of.

London 2012 - something we can be extremely proud of.

Olympics

I have read a whole lot of positive and negative stuff about the London 2012 Olympics. So I thought that I would put my own thoughts down.

I am a great supporter of the Olympics, and I think, in principle, it is a great thing for London to have them this year. They are the premier sporting competition globally, and it is a wonderful that we can show that we are able to put this event on. What is more, I think that in this difficult time of economic recession, we have done a fantastic job putting this together. I can only hope that the sporting aspects are as good.

However there is an issue that keeps raising its head, and that is the Brand Nazis, LOGOC, who are taking a very negative attitude to anyone using the logo or name. What is more, the sponsors are taking a similarly drastic approach to any competition. I think this is all very unfortunate.

The was a chance here, it seems, to bring a lot of money into the UK economy, and bringing money to a range of businesses across the country. As it is, a lot of the tourist money will end up being taken by the big corporate sponsors. That is wrong. This money will largely go out of the country and out of the economy here. If it was more spent locally, spent with businesses who have the imagination to make something of the Olympics, and sell to the visitors. That would be very British - we are a nation of shopkeepers, surely. There is a danger, it seems to me, that most of the people who come here will only ever experience the Olympics, and never experience Britain.

I am very proud of my country. I think we have a lot to offer people who come to visit. I worry that the corporate nature of the games means that many of the visitors only ever get the corporate image, the corporate British experience, and never get the real, authentic experience. I think they miss out on what we are really about. If every Olympics is the same, with the same corporate sponsors, the same brand enforcement, then I would ask why it matters where the event is - it will be the same anywhere. And we lose the uniqueness of having a games in this country rather than anywhere else.