Tuesday 31st July 2012

And welcome to another Olympic day here in England.

Looking at the BBC website you would be forgiven to think there is only one story in town. All other news, such as genocide on Syria, economic meltdown in the Eurozone, Romneyshambles, failure of the Indian power grid, volcanoes, wars, pestilence and everything else is now just a mere footnote to the British male gymnastics team winning bronze. Not that I begrudge them that bronze, it’s just not the most important story right now. It’s not even the most important Olympic story right now, that should be the fact the police (probably) lost the keys to Wembley Stadium. Yes, the keys, and all the locks are having to be replaced. As it costs £200 for one Yale lock in a front door one can only imagine what it will cost for a whole stadium. But it is good to see security being taken so seriously.

And in more bad news, viewers and British taxpayers who did watch events saw blocks and blocks of empty seats, seats that had been reserved and then not used for members of the ‘Olympic family’. This is being addressed, but it doesn’t look good on TV to see apparently apathy by British sports fans who we all thought had bought all tickets some 16 months ago.

I haven’t watched much of the games, nothing last night; instead I was tempted by some Portillo train porn as he went up Snowdon on the steam railway and went over to Anglesey to visit Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch and then onto Holyhead. Information for the village with the longest name in Britain can be found at the longest valid URL on the web: llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochuchaf.org.uk

Oh yes.

Anyway, so with some more places to add to our list of places we want to visit were added, despite me saying after my last visit to North Wales after the bigoted welcome I and a friend received when we went to ride the Ffestiniog a decade ago. Maybe it’s better these days….

As far as real negative stuff about the games, that has come from Republican Presidential nominee Mit Romney who made some rather disparaging remarks about the game only to get bitch-slapped by socialists, David Cameron and Boris Johnson. Of course they are not socialist, but conservative with a huge capital C, but even they seemed to enjoy the ‘I love the NHS’ section of the opening ceremony and probably will announce that the plans to sell off parts of the NHS to their friends is to be abandoned at the soonest.

Or not.

So day four has:

09:54 11:27 Swimming Heats

08:55 13:05 Archery Elimination rounds

10:25 16:25 Equestrian Three-day Eventing

09:25 13:10 Rowing Heats

11:45 18:10 Sailing Opening Series

13:25 16:10 Canoe Slalom Men's C1 final

13:35 17:40 Hockey Women's BEL v CHN/GBR v KOR

16:25 18:55 Gymnastics - Artistic Women's Team final

19:25 21:30 Swimming Finals

19:35 21:55 Football

Phew

In other sports news, and I only am writing this because it is so unusual, but Rangers have no further fixtures at the moment. I won’t go into all the details, but after a decade of tax evasion and generally spending more than they earn, the club was liquidated, or not, and a new company formed and refused entry back into the Scottish Premier League and the First Division of the Scottish Football League. They have been accepted into the Third Division but arguments abound over TV rights and possible further sanctions over other transgressions. That Rangers were one of the biggest two clubs in Scotland, and the most successful and are now in such trouble is incredible. That fans are seeing this not as punishment but as victimisation is possibly true, as after years of bullying the rest of Scottish Football around, the rump of Scottish Football has voted for legitimacy in the game rather than chasing TV money in punishing rangers, and this will probably nullify TV deals, bankrupt other clubs too. But what the heck.

And on the south coast of England, the other football sick man, Portsmouth are 15 days away from liquidation too. As I write they have three players, and are trying to offload more so they have a chance in ‘honouring’ the previous creditor’s agreement of 3p in the pound. That the new season is just 10 days away and they have to get all professional players off their books does raise questions about their ability to take on a season in the Football League. But no, no one seems to be questioning that. Pompy owe many tens of millions of pounds, and have been owned by a series of dodgy James Bond-style villains ranging from the son of a Russian Arms dealer, a tax evader and best of all a person who probably didn’t even exist; which shows how good the League’s ‘fit and proper persons’ test is! After nearly a decade of being in the world’s richest league, Portsmouth still play in the same dilapidated stadium which has not seen any improvement in decades, have no training facilities, and do not own the land their ground stands on. And now have three players, none of which they can afford to pay. Brilliant.

And a month after the end of the European Championships the new football season is about to begin, and in truth, I cannot begin to raise any enthusiasm for it. Another nine months of football, petty squabbles, players getting to grips with Twitter and getting charged by the FA. I’m sure when I get my mojo back it will still be there waiting to suck me in. Sky have taken their sports channels away from me, but I did ask them to. And so they have increased all their packages by £1.50 to make up those who, like me, can’t afford, or just don’t want to pay THAT MUCH for sport.

Anyway, normal service will be resumed as soon as we can work what ‘normal’ is. We appreciate your patience and value your custom.

Exit through the gift shop. And mind your head on the way out.