That is all.
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I can’t say that I’m particularly interested in the bloated sportsday that’s known as the Olympics, though I did see a few bits of the opening ceremony. Danny Boyle was undoubtedly the right man to create the spectacle – after all, his most famous movie, Trainspotting, shared the same theme as the Olympics: tracksuit-clad young adults pumped full of illegal drugs.
I did stumble across a comment that Britain had won 12 gold medals to date on a blog I follow. Apparently, this was rather unexpected at this stage of the jamboree. I therefore thought it would be interesting to compare Britain’s medal count with countries of similar population sizes. The following table shows the current medal tallies for Britain and the three immediately larger and smaller countries.
| Country | Population | Gold Medals | Silver Medals | Bronze Medals | Total Medals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic Republic of the Congo | 69,575,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Thailand | 65.479.453 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| France | 65,350,000 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 25 |
| Great Britain | 62,262,000 | 16 | 11 | 10 | 37 |
| Italy | 60,813,326 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 14 |
| South Africa | 50,586,757 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Myanmar | 48,724,000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
So, they you have it: Britain has won significantly more medals than any other country of similar size – conclusive evidence that far too much money is being wasted on sport in the UK in the pursuit of meaningless gewgaws. What a national disgrace! And particularly so in these difficult economic times.
Whilst I rarely agree with the policies of the UK Conservative party, it is at least gratifying that they are designed to combat the harm that sport is doing to the country – policies such as selling off school playing fields to developers and closing down local sports facilities and swimming pools. In time these policies will have the positive effect of reducing wasteful expenditure on sports in the UK, and will also have the added benefit, one hopes, of putting out of work the psychopathic bullies who work in so many schools in the UK under the label “sports master”.
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In the newspapers today was an horrific account of how a group of people had been bussed hundreds of miles from their home, forced to work for no pay, starved, and made to sleep under a bridge in the cold and wet. This is the sort of story one expects to hear from despotic regimes such as Burma or North Korea. It was therefore somewhat shocking to hear that this happened in the United Kingdom as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. So, congratulations, Queen Brenda. You can now hold your head high alongside the likes of Thein Sein and Kim Jong-Un.
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So, the United States thinks it’s OK to fly a bunch of helicopters laden with trained assassins into another, sovereign nation, attack a private home and in cold blood murder the householder and his son? They then steal the householder’s body and dump it in the sea. They also take all his computers. Who died and made Uncle Sam King of Everything?
Osama Bin Laden was a sick man, unarmed, living a life of quiet seclusion. If he had done wrong (and in all probability he had), then why wasn’t he captured and brought to trial – preferably in Pakistan. After all, Pakistan is an ally of America. In fact, it’s so popular that it receives billions of dollars each year from the USA for … well, I’m not quite sure for what.
[Cartoon by Peter Till, from The Independent.]
Suppose the tables were turned. Suppose that Pakistan decided to go after the American contractor who earlier this year for his jollies decided to shoot and murder a couple of Pakistanis. What would be the American reaction if Pakistan sent in its elite troops to dispense with Raymond Allen David – or even capture him and bring him to trial in Pakistan?
Double standards, methinks.
As for who is the greater Satan, that’s for others to decide.
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