Bits and Pieces
What Britain will look like in 2012 - when we welcome the world to the Olympics
By Martin "My name's Ben Elton" Kelner on May 28, 2010 - 2:21:17 PM
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A number of African nations are
already considering their options after Prime Minister Boris Johnson's
unguarded
off-the-cuff remarks
about fuzzy wuzzies turned up on U-Tube.
His apology: "Cripes, sorry fellahs, this new internet thingy'll catch
you every time.
But, I mean,
crikey, lighten up chaps" is thought not to have gone far enough to satisfy
critics…
New sports introduced for the 2012
games have also been criticized, with respected Olympians worldwide saying the
Olympic programme has been expanded purely to give Britain a chance of a more
impressive medal haul.
Britain's newly appointed sports
supremo, though, Russell Brand, says the new events - snooker, darts, knockout
whist,
and happy slapping - would
stay, adding: "Forsooth, tis just for to bring a smile to the huddled masses,
and make their winkies quiver with delight."
The former Eastern bloc countries,
the United States, and pretty well every other competing country, meanwhile,
say Britain's draconian drug testing procedure is a thinly veiled attack on
their narcotics development programme, saying the host country has an unfair
advantage, when the only permitted drug is lager.
Director Martin Scorsese, chosen to
make the official film of the Games, has now withdrawn from the project as a
protest against the London government's failure to act to alleviate poverty in
areas of the Third World, such as Humberside and Wales, where vast numbers of
people are said to be homeless and on the streets, either flooded out of their
houses, or thrown out by unfeeling British banks.
Culture minister Sir Christopher
Moyles said the film of the games would still go ahead, though, and in fact
would benefit from having a British director with extensive experience of
shooting in this country, gained on his last film, Sex Lives of the Potato Men.
Despite the problems, the People's
Games, as the Government is calling them - or the Tesco-Orange-Eon-W H Smith
Do-It-All People's Games, to give them their full title, are predicted to be
one of the most successful Olympics of recent years, with thousands of people
from all over the world making their way to East London, as soon as the tube
strike is settled.
The Prime Minister urged the
country to get behind the games, saying they showed Britain to be "a vibrant
forward-looking nation with one of the fastest growing economies in the western
world."
Britain's expected record
medal haul would, he said, be a tribute to the hard work put in by health
minister Dr Gillian McKeith behind the scenes - in the bathroom - which he
hoped people would remember at election time.
Critics of the games, he added, should keep politics out of
sport.
