Britons play silly buggers with the Olympic Brand Police


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Rant part two (or rather, another interesting example of the power of The Brand....)

Solid fact.

Chatting two a couple of friends who live in Helsinki, where we currently are.

One works at a London hospital, an ambulance driver.

There are currently olympic lanes in London, to facilitate the easy access for sportspeople and their hangers on etc.....

The ambulances they use are Mercedes....however, the "official vehicles of the London 2012 olympics" (wtf)?

are BMW.

BMW will not allow the ambulances to use the olympic lane, as they are Mercedes. Stunning eh.

So, if you've had a big meal, and your heart packs up, don't expect to go in the quick olympic lane to the hospital, as BMW wouldn't like it.

When did a sporting event become purely an advertisement, and when did the brands gain enough power to make such demands?

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Hmm, Yummy.....are there chocolate chunks in it?

Anyway...here in Finland, my wife said the other day "I would love to catch the opening ceremony"

Hmmm, not on my top things to see list, but why not.

It starts at 9pm GMT, so in Europe it's a 10pm start, and in Finland an 11pm start. Bonkers.So the most of Europe has to wait till 10 pm to see the opening ceremony, while it is held on the continent of Europe.

Why? Because the aforementioned retailers of shite fizzy stuff and burgers are demanding that it is prime time back home in their county of origin. So these sponsors are also governing the schedule.

Also, the constructed buildings are also a stitch up.

They were built with the tax payers money, but the clever sods have allowed their use afterwards to be in private hands, so therefore they will be let and profited from by private companies, while built with public money. Fact.

The IOC is similar to FIFA in my book, sadly rotten.

Anyway, I'm just bitter cos I'll miss the synchronised swimming.

The worst part is, while they may have succumbed to American companies and their money, it wasn't even shown LIVE in America. NBC (the company with broadcast rights) delayed it for a few hours so they could air it in primetime and charge more money for ads to be shown during their commercial interruptions to the opening ceremony.

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The Olympics are just a corporate-controlled cash grab.

McDonalds is the 'official' restaurant of the Olympics!!! I don't think many athletes in the games came to be where they are by eating McDonalds!! Maybe before a heat - how else can you put 2000 calories into your system in 5mins.

But I know the Olympics are absolutely NAZIS when it comes to anything to do with them. Any video posted on YouTube containing any sort of Olympic material will result in a DCMA Copyright Infringement notice/thread and immediate deletion of material. Whatever happened to Fair Use/Fair Dealings in using copyrighted material for the purpose of non-commercial discussion and critique?

Nazis man... they're taking over the world again. Just under different names.

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The Olympics of my youth (I'm 31) do not exist anymore.

The scoring in scared Olympic events like Gymnastics has ruined the beauty of the games. Once the "Perfect 10" was all anyone could hope for and now it has been replaced by yellow squares, green circles and God knows what other types of bastardized standardizing meant to make judging "more fair." How is it possible that a Gymnast who makes errors in the routine can beat a flawless routine, only because the starting value was higher and they didn't make enough mistakes to lose?

No one likes watching 4'11" Mighty Mouses show us how many tricks they can pack into a 70 second floor routine. I also don't even watch the TV broadcasts anymore because NBC ruins it's own programming by reporting on the results of races they won't show us for another 6 hours or more. Or even better give us 7 minutes of programming followed by 15 minutes of commercials, then 15 minutes of worthless analysis.

And how is it at all "fair" that some countries like China take children from their parents at 5 and put them into athletic training schools just to create Olympic athletes to win medals? Is there even any feeling left in the world or is it solely about the medal count? All of these things have created the cold, stale feeling I get when watching the Olympics now. I'm excited for our athletes that have trained for years to get this opportunity, but then I read things athletes like Hope Solo write and I just shake my head and turn the channel again . . .

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