London Olympics shop in Union Jack outrage We suspect that whoever is responsible for outsourcing this particular London Olympics commemorative keyring to a Chinese manufacturer may shortly be dancing the Tyburn jig, once Her Maj Liz II gets wind of just what has happened to the Union Jack*: The keyring with union flag colours reversed Mercifully, this trio of " …
"what else have we "fucked up" then? fucking idiot."
What about the destruction of a plethora of community centres, churches and the like with no replacements being built, planned to be built or being given the planning permission to be built?
Or that the building sites split the areas?
Or that where say in Barcelona, the olympic site was built on the outskirts of the city on a largely derelict site just outside the city centre and part of the money was spent on improving the travel links all around the city, whereas the London site is slap bang in the middle with the travel improvements being put in between the site and the nearest tube stations. How people are supposed to get to those tube stations when the rest of the infrastructure hasn't been improved has been answered with a resounding silence.
Or that the IOC were only bought over and toured round when the kids were off school as this reduces traffic by a significant amount. As the schools will be in for olympic fortnight, no-one will be able to move.
Let's not forget the Olympic clock.
Or the ticketing controversies that are still going on.
Or some people don't like what happens to the stadium after the event.
And the logos/mascots were a bit of a disaster too (hinted at in the article itself).
And several other little niggles that just don't sit right with a well-planned, well-financed, well-managed, well-thought-through project that it should be for that amount.
I'll be steering clear of Stratford station and all adjoining stations for the entirety of the Olympics. What idiot honestly thought that was the best place to hold it?
Correction: London pays, the 'VIPs' enjoy.
I've spent years paying extra council tax to fund the games, and I couldn't even get any tickets.
Then I'll have to endure the snarled up traffic when half the roads get reserved, and public transport full non-Londoners who think the best place to stand stationary is on the left-hand of escalators and in front of tube and bus doorways.
I was in a business meeting in Paris the next morning. While waiting for it to start the 8 of us present started talking about the previous day's event and we found that the only people in the room happy with London winning the bid were the Parisians. Turned out that none of the 8 of us had wanted our own country to win ...
On the tube side - the day the IOC officials were taken round, all tube trains carried an engineer for safety. As some one else has pointed out, it was also a holiday period so it was quieter. With supposed new facilities being put in place I'm still not sure how they will work. Jubilee, Metropolitan and Northern lines are already over capacity during rush hour, so how they're meant to take all the extra people I'm not sure even the Lord knows.
Need to sprint up escalators in order to get to work on time but find your way blocked by people standing in ignorance of the (unwritten) (non) law about not doing that on the left?
Simply get up earlier to arrive at work in a timely fashion.
Tired of arriving at work all sweaty during the summer months?
Simply stop running up escalators. They (usually) move for a reason.
You're kidding, right? No one noticed the colours are wrong?
The only Blue should be the background of white diagonal St. Andrews Cross (Saltire)
It's an abomination, up there with the Kate and Harry wedding plate.
Really go read a book called "Poorly Made in China" if you want to know why
When I first saw the flag, I wondered whether Norway had joined the Union.
I mean, when you consider the colours of the Norwegian flag, doing the colour reversal but keeping the various crosses would allow Norway to become part of the Union, whilst retaining the flavour of both flags.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Norway
Maybe the Chinese know something to which rest of the world is not (yet) privy?
Of course, this is really going to bollix up some other flags around the world (eg Australia, New Zealand & Fiji to name but three).
10....9....8....7....6....5....4....3....2.....1.....0 - Troll Baits are go.....!
The OED defines the Union Jack as "Originally and properly, a small British Union Flag flown as the jack of a ship"
However, an Admiralty Circular of 1902 noted that the two names were interchangeable, and Parliament confirmed the terminology in 1908 by declaring 'the Union Jack should be regarded as the national flag.
With acknowledgment to "The Union Jack, the story of the British Flag" by Nick Groom
... here's another
BA originally only charged a small % increase for "Concorde Class" over First Class tickets. They realised that the service was tanking, so they did a poll of passengers to find out how much they thought they would have to pay for a Concorde ticket - the answer came back far higher than the roughly "First+10%", so BA obligingly charged what people thought and the service went profitable.
If I might enquire, Sir, how much do you think tickets to see the Men's 100m Final should cost...?
;-)
I thought a country hosting the Olympics was suppose to be a thing of pride and joy. Based on what I'm reading looks like it's a fubar contest . They are not even trying to hide the fact that they are milking this for every thing they can get . Not even trying to hide this 2 ring circus of fuck ups.
Or did I miss some thing ? But hey the UK still has longways to show up Greece .
The Official Logo is absolutely awful
The Official Characters are terrible and probably scary to kids
So why not cock-up the flag too and get a triple-whammy on one keyring!?
I bet every build up to the Olympics is a total mess but some are more open than others about how badly it's going. We Brits pretty much only celebrate failure and resent success so this slow-moving train-wreck is perfect for us!
To maximise throughput on escalators, everybody should stand still using the whole width of the thing. The traditional London arrangement means that you can get up it faster by walking, but when you have rush hour or Olympic crowds, you won't save as much time as the extra time you spent queuing to get on it in the first place. These foreigners know a thing or two, see.
Paris because I prefer the metro, obviously.
The colors have been inverted. I know this seems to be somewhat ridiculous to point out, but I had to consult Wikipedia to contrast the image of the proper UK flag in their article on the UK with the keychain image to figure this out.
You see, I'm an American. (I'll get my coat when I'm done saying my thing.)
I couldn't figure that out from the article, because it is not mentioned at all, in the article text, nor by means of a comparison image, because none were provided. To my eyes, the shape of the flag looked correct, and I could not immediately identify what the outrage was, as the article no doubt expected.
It was a bit of a disservice, honestly - foreign readers may not be intimately familiar enough with the Union Jack to discern whether the colors have been swapped (how many of you would immediately recognize if the blue and red were swapped on the Stars and Bars,) but also the article would seem to confound those with color perception impairments unable to tell the difference between red and blue, to say nothing of those with no sight whatsoever who have the article read to them by their computers, or those who browse without images.
It's only important to make the difference between Union Jack and Union Flag when hanging out in the Senior Service. It's important there as the two are threated differently and can lead to diplomatic incidents. (i.e. it can be used to announce intentions depending on where it's flown)
The rest of the world quite rightly doesn't give a monkey's.
I'll ge my coat, it's the one with the slightly wider stripes on the collar....
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