A Preview of an Olympic-Sized Fiasco

[marmar]

from Der Spiegel:





London and the Olympic Games are clearly not made for each other. Visitors will need determination and, most of all, patience to reach the venues at all. And, for the locals, it all can't end soon enough.

It's never easy to be a Londoner, not even on a perfectly normal workday in an English summer.

Everyone, whether rich or poor, experiences the same hardships of big-city life in London. For Londoners, the day begins with aircraft noise -- which some never get used to -- partly because double- or triple-paned windows are in short supply, even in Europe's most expensive city.



In London, cars, cabs and buses are inefficient forms of transportation for medium- and long-distant trips. As a result, day after day, millions squeeze into the clattering London Underground, the oldest, probably hottest and often fullest subway system in the world. Then, after prolonged inhalation of the melded odors of perspiration and perfume, the crowds pour into downtown London's too-narrow sidewalks before disappearing into their offices. There, they can finally do what some still do very well in this massive, sometimes magnificent but often excessively wound-up city: make money. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/london-and-the-2012-olympic-games-a-match-made-in-hell-a-844599.html

[earthside]

1. Time for a viewer boycott.

The Olympics has gotten so commercial and corporatized.

It is run by a small group of supreme elitists.

This moving the site of the games around every four years is just plain wasteful and silly.

And, they need to get the games back to a more 'amateur' type event.

There are also too many events and too many that are barely sport and are more dance, art, pastimes, etc.

[Marooned]

2. Time to move the games back to their real home

Olympia, Greece. The Olympic committee could fund the building and the Olympics could be played at their ancient home every four years. And the world's countries could save billions and billions of dollars every four years.

[monmouth]

6. + a gazillion. Great idea and welcome to DU...n/t

[tularetom]

3. Every four years I read stories about how effed up the Olympics are going to be

And yet everybody wants to hold them in their city.

Like anything else, the Olympics have been oversold and hyped to the point where we're all sick of hearing about the games before they even start. And I'm almost sure hosting the Olympics has been a big financial loser for almost every venue.

For all the boasting Romney did about "saving the Olympics", what saved them was a massive federal bailout - basically a ginormous influx of taxpayer dollars. I suspect this is the norm.

It always seems the Olympics are on the verge of a massive disaster and yet they manage to survive. I don't get it.

[dballance]

4. They should have skinned Blair alive for this

All I see is an unmitigated disaster about to happen. I've been to London. It's narrow streets and the tube will implode.

Hell, when I went to the Stewert/Colbert rally in DC it was impossible to get around and that was only 100,000 people on wider streets and a better subway.

[HughBeaumont]

5. You ought to see it during the DC Fireworks or a major protest.

That Metro is packed to the brim like a sardine. I tend to jaywalk a lot when I'm down there during those times

[marmar]

7. "and a better subway."

It might be better in that it's newer.......but as far as the extent of the system and the frequency of trains, the Metro doesn't come close.