Eternal Flame

It's only a little over a month now, before the Olympic torch comes through Crapchester. What local luminaries will be given the honour of carrying the flame proudly through the town's crumbling streets, you are no doubt asking? The answer is: none. Despite offering my services, the task of bearing the torch has been allocated to some American guy with no connections to the town, but with connections to Coca Cola (coincidentally an official sponsor of the 2012 London Olympics) instead. Which is pretty much par for the course - we've seen a parade of celebrities and corporate stooges carrying the torch through various communities they have no connection with over the past few weeks. But how can we protest at this crass commercialisation of the Olympics? Well. my friends, I'd urge to get out there and line torch's route, making out sure that you are in full view of the TV cameras, then conspicuously eat a Burger King flame grilled Whopper, or drink from a large bottle of Pepsi Cola. Yes, I know that those two brands are also evil corporate giants, but they don't have exclusive contracts with the London Olympics, which means that their appearances on the torch route will really piss off the likes of Olympic sponsors Coca Cola and McDonald's. (If your house is on the route, I would also suggest putting up conspicuous banners saying things like 'Remember Bhopal', or flying Palestinian flags, in your front garden).

Trust me, this is the way to defeat these corporate bastards - set them against each other, just like SPECTRE were always trying to set the superpowers against each other in the Bond movies. (Most of my knowledge of strategies for world domination comes from watching Bond films). Once they've wiped each other out, we can move in and steal their market share with our ethical burgers and soft drinks. Of course, the Olympic Committee would tell you that it would be impossible to stage such an event as the Olympic Games without corporate sponsorship. I beg to differ. Sure, in order to stage something as overblown as the Games have become requires that kind of cash (not to mention the massive taxpayer subsidy from the hosting nation in the form of the facilities they build for the event). But isn't that part of the problem/ The Olympics seem to be less and less about sport, and more about spectacle. Only today, we got our first glimpse of the opening ceremony for the London games - who on earth needs that kind of bizarre bollocks, recreating the English countryside in an athletics stadium? Is it any wonder they're allegedly having difficulty in selling tickets for all the events? People just don't feel that the games are 'theirs', it just looks like some corporate jamboree. Like many other global sporting events, the Olympics really need to get back to basics and focus on what it is really about - the sport - if they are to have any hope of reconnecting with the public.

(A quick electricity supply update: it looks like we'll be reliant on the generator truck until at least Friday, when Southern Electric are going to attempt to reconnect the sub-station to the mains. Which means that after twenty hours without any electricity supply between Friday and Saturday last week, we'll have had a week of being supplied from a mobile generator. Not that we live in a third world country, of course).