
Really!
Do Cisco believe this guff or did an Agency write Fry's script?
Cisco has thrown open its Olympics hospitality suite, giving partners and customers both a panoramic view of the Olympic Park and an up-close, 3D view of Stephen Fry loitering on a London Underground platform. The 2012 Olympics logo The networking giant is the London 2012 Network Infrastructure Supporter, meaning it is the …
Oh yeah?! My family and I, born and bred in the old smoke, applied and got bugger all. Meanwhile some work colleagues who I'll admit were quicker off the mark but live down on the south coast, manged to wangle some tickets to the slightly less well known events, so don't come it with the sob story!
So the intarwebs IS a series of tubes!
And all you "smart guys" got on to Ted Stevens and berated the kindly old gent for saying so.
Well now that no less estimable a figure as the enlightened STEPHEN FRY says it is so the "science is settled", is it not?
Anyone questioning his conclusions is simply not clever enough to appreciate his wonderousness and should go and sit at the childrens table.
In fairness, being a londoner, you'll see some of the indirect benefits from the event. Your local economy is paying no more then the rest of the country, but will be one of the few areas to benefit from the income it generates. I have no interest in sport and will see zero gain from the event, while also paying for it.
Don't be looking for sympathy.
The saddest thing about all of this, apart from the indiscriminate use of the CAPS button, is that the Cisco people really do believe this. am sure they will find a way to claim that their kit enabled Usain Bolt to break another world record. What is not so well known is that for a lot of the Olympic IT, most of the core is not Cisco so their claims to be powering the Olympics are somewhat inaccurate.............
... the Olympics are an epic fail. I hope we are never ever ever fucking never in the history of the whole universe ever again shortlisted for this kind of shit!
Every time we get to 'proudly host' these events, I end up paying for it. And I resent that wholeheartedly. Nobody asked me if I wanted to pay. I wouldn't mind, but its not like I care for.sport, even if I did I wouldn't be able to afford tickets, even if I could I couldn't afford transport there.
I also think the country would be better off investing the money its stealing off people... er... taxing off people to pay for this, into long term projects. Education in school, the NHS, Housing initiatives. But no... we need an Olympic park to be used for our sportsmen and women to try and one up everyone else. Cos that's really what matters when we have unemployment going up daily, and investment in public services drying up with lack of funding. Isn't it..?
What bollocks. Get this horse manure Olympics out the way and put it behind us. Then next time London gets to host it, they can pay for it. </rant>
OK, so what's your idea, bright spark?
In context, I'd say that the net cost has been around £1B per year (remember this has been going since 2005) and that by the time that the economy started circling the drain a good portion of that cash had been spent or committed. And as others have pointed out, Londoners have paid an extra share without any preference in getting tickets.
At the end of the day, an industrial wasteland with great pylons running over it has been transformed into an Olympic Park that will gradually grow to house 40000 people, which is the same as Milton Keynes started out at.
So for the same sort of cash as HRMC wasted in negotiating away Vodafone's and GSK's taxes to Luxembourg, we have a sporting legacy, a new town and the chance to show the world we're not the parochial f***wits that they thing we are!