When is the sports thing over?

[sabotabby]

Almost everyone has some reason to care about the Olympics. Whether it's the one event that they watch or some record-breaking something or that picture of the Black Power salute in 1968 or they just think some famous athlete is hot. Or they think the opening ceremony was cool/awful/loltastic. Even I am contributing by making this post. I can't avoid it, even with my Olympic content blocker (for some reason it also blocks references to disco).

Non-sports people are frequently apologetic when I bring up the fact that I feel like an alien during times like this. "I'm not interested, except...” It's like the Scumsucking Parasite Wedding, except in that case I at least had the rest of the extreme left on my side. But not so here. Even those who object to the totalitarian measures required for the Olympics to happen get misty-eyed over its ideals.

Fuck that.

Things that make me care about the Olympics:

• The purging of the poor and mentally ill from London.
• Surveillance cameras everywhere.
• The godawful branding (seriously hilarious).
• Rocket launchers on the roofs of apartment buildings.
• Banksy doing Banksy things.

Of course, even if these things were not an issue, I would still be apathetic at best, as the Olympics involves two things I could not possibly give a less of a shit about: sports and nationalism. It's not that I hate sports—I would be loathe to fall into the nerd-vs-jock dichotomy–I just don't care. It's probably how some of my fandom friends feel when I start going on about politics, or vice versa. Or any of you when I talk about home decor. (Or how the people at work feel when I start spouting off about any of my interests.) You just skim over those posts, right? Which is cool. There's always something that someone is Just. Not. Interested. In. It's fine if you're into these things but it's about as interesting as someone reading a calculus textbook out loud.

Nationalism is a different matter. I resent the implication that I'm supposed to "support Team Canada." What, by praying to the Sports God? With my tax dollars? Is this how ordinary Tim Hortons-swilling hosers felt about $1.8 million to buy "Voice of Fire" for the National Art Gallery? Borders are arbitrary and demarcated by violence. I have an opinion on nationalism and it generally involves me making angry faces.

Anyway, it is irritating me profusely that I can no longer easily read the news, or even be in a public space and avoid this stuff. You can't even sit down in a pub these days and not have the TV blasting or people talking loudly about some 'roided out athlete. It's a low-level but persistant irritation that gets worse when I think about how ordinary people's lives are shat-upon to turn London into a playground for rich fucks.

So. How much longer am I going to have to be pissy about this?

Comments

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Have they really been purging the poor and mentally ill from London? We're still here! Haven't heard anything about it here in London.
There were very few homeless people about anyway, and I am not near enough the Olympics to know whether there were many around there. I live in the middle of the "media hub," so you would expect that if they were moving homeless and mentally ill people out of sight there would be some sign of it here, but I have actually notcied quite a few people from local hostels taking advantage of the fact the usual crowds and traffic have all but vanished to sit around in the streets drinking and chatting more.

I will check tomorrow, though - I see if there are any homeless people around the tube station area, and if not I can ask the official Olympic guides what has happened. There are quite a lot of official guides in purple or yellow jackets looking extremely bored because there really is no one about. It is so cool! Sausage was so happy having the whole of Russell Square to himself yesterday. usually it is full of tourists and local workers having lunch.

The purging of the poor they have definitely done some of was a few years ago when they destroyed people's allotments to make the Olympic Park. They remade them elsewhere, but it must have been very upsetting still. I don't know whether they destroyed people's homes to build the awful shopping centre and sporty park too. They will have had to rehouse them, by law, and all new housing built in what is the sporty place will have to have a percentage of "affordable" housing, but of course the Tories have taken over since that rule was made and they have redefined "affordable" to mean completely insanely unaffordable.

I haven't actually looked into the subject, though, so would be interested (and furious) to hear what has actually happened in terms of removing poor people. Are you sure that isn't just the current Torydem policy of trying to force all poor people out of London, anyway? That is going on and is a huge issue, but is not to do with the bloody Olympics.

[sabotabby]

Admittedly, I've been dodging most coverage, even negative coverage. But it is a pattern; whenever the Olympics comes to a city, the tourist parts of the city get purged of undesirables. And I've heard anecdotal reports.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

A lot of street-based and brothel-based sex workers have been cleared out of Newham and other Olympic boroughs recently, explicitly to 'clean' the area before the games. I don't think Voldesport can be blamed directly for the massive uptick in homelessness, I think that's more general Tory fuckwittery and landlord greed.