DON'T CONDEMN 2012 BEFORE IT'S EVEN BEGUN
BE PROUD: Team GB at Heathrow
By Ann Widdecombe
THE question on everyone’s lips last weekend was “How do we follow China?” referring to Beijing’s spectacular staging of the Olympics.
The answer is really very simple: we don’t. Comparisons are often odious but, in this case, they would be farcical and wrong-headed.
China spent an estimated £22billion on hosting the Games. That is about the equivalent of four years of Gordon Brown’s proceeds from his great pensions robbery and I would rather such sums went back into pensions than into pretentious displays.
That does not mean I am a killjoy. I love pageantry and fun and spectacles but I also like them to be proportionate.
China is a communist state that permits little scrutiny and even less public comment. I would wager my last penny that there were blunders, recriminations and U-turns aplenty during the four-year preparation period but the average Chinese citizen would know nothing about any of it.
|
We do little to counter the worldwide perception of Britain as a country of knife-wielders and lager louts.
|
|
|
Here we have a press which knows every time a minister changes his socks and media forces which crave drama as a child craves sweets.
Already we have the unfortunate incident of some lunatic thinking that a portrait of a serial child killer is a good way to promote the image of Britain and we have been in charge of the Games for only five minutes. It is almost certainly a sign of things to come.
China is proud of its country and seeks to portray itself as a formidable player on the world stage. We talk ourselves down and do little to counter the worldwide perception of Britain as a country of knife-wielders and lager louts.
Already the suggestion is that we shall fail in our preparations – and that is being predicted most loudly not by others but by British commentators.
China is a dictatorship which compels its citizens to do as they are told. Britain is not only a democracy (good) but riddled with petty bureaucracy (bad), political correctness and the rights culture. Any road we want to build will take years to come to fruition. We shall spend as much of the next four years fighting regulation as we will getting ready to receive millions of visitors.
So we should not try to compete with the Chinese spectacle as if the Olympics were some latter-day field of the cloth of gold. There is no responsible Western democracy which can.
Instead, we should bend all our efforts into getting the essentials right: the infrastructure; the facilities; the accommodation. And, because we are so unmatchable when it comes to pageantry, we should offer that instead of cool Britannia trashy nonsense.
It would be respectful towards our excellent medallists and those seeking to emulate them if we did not spend the next four years suggesting they are doomed to be participating in something second rate.
What matters is the Games themselves, not the show surrounding them and it is the athletics competition on which Britain should concentrate.
If our country can get through 2012 without organisational disasters, if the facilities are all they should be for the cream of the world’s athletes, if the opening and closing ceremonies are well-run and dignified, if the logistics work faultlessly, then we will have all there is to be proud of and it will be more than sufficient.
It might even frighten the next host country into wondering if it can live up to the standard we have set.
Video 
THE EVER-WISE HEAD
29.08.08, 11:56am
You are right again, Ann. There is just one aspect of the olympicssaga that should be addressed, and that is that this was the first time in modern history that China could show the world that it had a human face, and would share it's blossoming feeling of fulfillment with the world. So it went over the top in a big way. We have nothing to prove other than how stupid we are politically. If we are able to carry on with the games in 2012, and not writhing about in a deep depression then all we have to do is put on a normal, interesting show, NOT indulge in, or encourage a world wide competition of childish bigger and better.
• Posted by: bluenote • Report Comment
HOW DO WE FOLLOW CHINA?
27.08.08, 8:38pm
Never was one for keeping up with the Jones's.
So I don't see why we should be bothered about keeping up with the: Ding, Dong or Dangs, Wee, Wang Wongs, or indeed the Ying, Yang, Yongs of this world.
Apart from that the Chinese do'nt seem to have a sense of humour. the least they could have done was laugh at Boris even if they did'nt want to laugh with him.
Yeah difficult to fathom these Chinese I suppose that why they are referred to as inscrutable.
• Posted by: G0LDENARR0W • Report Comment
2012 OLIMPICS
27.08.08, 7:41pm
Well Anne four IF'S sums it up and "if" it's anything like the mickey mouse handover ceremony best knock it on the head now.
I wonder about the olimpic flame compared to the size of the Chinese...methinks we will have one bunsen burner size,that if the Russians let us have the gas for it???
• Posted by: negra • Report Comment
FOR GOODNESS SAKE....
27.08.08, 1:14pm
...stand for the post of Prime Minister, the people of Britain need a sensible down to earth person like you to vote for, you would win by a land slide and put the Great into Britain again.
• Posted by: Disgruntled • Report Comment
To view all 'Have Your Say' comments, click this button...