Brian Micklethwait's Blog
In which I continue to seek part time employment as the ruler of the world.
Homewww.google.co.uk
Recent Comments
-
Brian Micklethwait on Jamie Hannah's new video
-
6000 on Jamie Hannah's new video
-
Michael Jennings on Four Channel Islands and a fifth Channel Island
-
Brian Micklethwait on Tulip approved
-
Michael Jennings on Tulip approved
-
Brian Micklethwait on A new (remote) control tower for City Airport
-
Michael Jennings on A new (remote) control tower for City Airport
-
jack whiteley on Food photo
-
Cynthia Coleman on Spring in the air
-
Brian Micklethwait on New Big Thin Things in New York
Monthly Archives
-
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
Most recent entries
- Brian Micklethwait’s New Blog starts now
- Now you see it now you don’t – then you do again
- Quimper Cathedral photos from a year ago
- Another symptom of getting old
- Quota photo of a signpost
- Three professional Japanese footballers play against one hundred children
- Sculptures and scaffolding
- There is no day that can’t be improved by seeing pictures of how they weigh an owl
- Meeting Oscar again
- A musical metaphor is developed
- Mobile phone photoing in 2004
- France is big
- Pink windscreen
- Just kidding
- Capitalism and socialism in tweets
Other Blogs I write for
Brian Micklethwait's Education Blog
CNE Competition
CNE Intellectual Property
Samizdata
Transport Blog
Blogroll
2 Blowhards
6000 Miles from Civilisation
A Decent Muesli
Adloyada
Adventures in Capitalism
Alan Little
Albion's Seedling
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
Alex Singleton
AngloAustria
Another Food Blog
Antoine Clarke
Antoine Clarke's Election Watch
Armed and Dangerous
Art Of The State Blog
Biased BBC
Bishop Hill
BLDG BLOG
Bloggers Blog
Blognor Regis
Blowing Smoke
Boatang & Demetriou
Boing Boing
Boris Johnson
Brazen Careerist
Bryan Appleyard
Burning Our Money
Cafe Hayek
Cato@Liberty
Charlie's Diary
Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry
Chicago Boyz
China Law Blog
Cicero's Songs
City Comforts
Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
Clay Shirky
Climate Resistance
Climate Skeptic
Coffee & Complexity
Coffee House
Communities Dominate Brands
Confused of Calcutta
Conservative Party Reptile
Contra Niche
Contrary Brin
Counting Cats in Zanzibar
Скрипучая беседка
CrozierVision
Dave Barry
Davids Medienkritik
David Thompson
Deleted by tomorrow
deputydog
diamond geezer
Dilbert.Blog
Dizzy Thinks
Dodgeblogium
Don't Hold Your Breath
Douglas Carswell Blog
dropsafe
Dr Robert Lefever
Dr. Weevil
ecomyths
engadget
Englands Freedome, Souldiers Rights
English Cut
English Russia
EU Referendum
Ezra Levant
Everything I Say is Right
Fat Man on a Keyboard
Ferraris for all
Flickr blog
Freeborn John
Freedom and Whisky
From The Barrel of a Gun
ft.com/maverecon
Fugitive Ink
Future Perfect
FuturePundit
Gaping Void
Garnerblog
Gates of Vienna
Gizmodo
Global Warming Politics
Greg Mankiw's Blog
Guido Fawkes' blog
HE&OS
Here Comes Everybody
Hit & Run
House of Dumb
Iain Dale's Diary
Ideas
Idiot Toys
IMAO
Indexed
India Uncut
Instapundit
Intermezzo
Jackie Danicki
James Delingpole
James Fallows
Jeffrey Archer's Official Blog
Jessica Duchen's classical music blog
Jihad Watch
Joanne Jacobs
Johan Norberg
John Redwood
Jonathan's Photoblog
Kristine Lowe
Laissez Faire Books
Languagehat
Last of the Few
Lessig Blog
Libertarian Alliance: Blog
Liberty Alone
Liberty Dad - a World Without Dictators
Lib on the United Kingdom
Little Man, What Now?
listen missy
Loic Le Meur Blog
L'Ombre de l'Olivier
London Daily Photo
Londonist
Mad Housewife
Mangan's Miscellany
Marginal Revolution
Mark Wadsworth
Media Influencer
Melanie Phillips
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
Michael Jennings
Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal
Mick Hartley
More Than Mind Games
mr eugenides
Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism
My Boyfriend Is A Twat
My Other Stuff
Natalie Solent
Nation of Shopkeepers
Neatorama
neo-neocon
Never Trust a Hippy
NO2ID NewsBlog
Non Diet Weight Loss
Normblog
Nurses for Reform blog
Obnoxio The Clown
Oddity Central
Oliver Kamm
On an Overgrown Path
One Man & His Blog
Owlthoughts of a peripatetic pedant
Oxford Libertarian Society /blog
Patri's Peripatetic Peregrinations
phosita
Picking Losers
Pigeon Blog
Police Inspector Blog
PooterGeek
Power Line
Private Sector Development blog
Public Interest.co.uk
Publius Pundit
Quotulatiousness
Rachel Lucas
RealClimate
Remember I'm the Bloody Architect
Rob's Blog
Sandow
Scrappleface
Setting The World To Rights
Shane Greer
Shanghaiist
SimonHewittJones.com The Violin Blog
Sinclair's Musings
Slipped Disc
Sky Watching My World
Social Affairs Unit
Squander Two Blog
Stephen Fry
Stuff White People Like
Stumbling and Mumbling
Style Bubble
Sunset Gun
Survival Arts
Susan Hill
Teblog
Techdirt
Technology Liberation Front
The Adam Smith Institute Blog
The Agitator
The AntRant
The Becker-Posner Blog
The Belgravia Dispatch
The Belmont Club
The Big Blog Company
The Big Picture
the blog of dave cole
The Corridor of Uncertainty (a Cricket blog)
The Croydonian
The Daily Ablution
The Devil's Advocate
The Devil's Kitchen
The Dissident Frogman
The Distributed Republic
The Early Days of a Better Nation
The Examined Life
The Filter^
The Fly Bottle
The Freeway to Serfdom
The Future of Music
The Futurist
The Happiness Project
The Jarndyce Blog
The London Fog
The Long Tail
The Lumber Room
The Online Photographer
The Only Winning Move
The Policeman's Blog
The Road to Surfdom
The Sharpener
The Speculist
The Surfer
The Wedding Photography Blog
The Welfare State We're In
things magazine
TigerHawk
Tim Blair
Tim Harford
Tim Worstall
tomgpalmer.com
tompeters!
Transterrestrial Musings
UK Commentators - Laban Tall's Blog
UK Libertarian Party
Unqualified Offerings
Violins and Starships
Virginia Postrel
Vodkapundit
WebUrbanist
we make money not art
What Do I Know?
What's Up With That?
Where the grass is greener
White Sun of the Desert
Why Evolution Is True
Your Freedom and Ours
Websites
-
Answers.com
Arts & Letters Daily
archive.org
Arts Journal
b3ta
Bjørn Stærk's homepage
Brussels Journal
Butterflies and Wheels
Cato Institute
City Journal
Civitas
Clivejames.com
Comment Central
Commentary
Cricinfo
Daniel Barenboim
Dark Roasted Blend
Democratiya
Digital Photography Review
ECB
FaithFreedom.org
Flickr
Frikoo
FrontPageMag.com
galinsky
Ghana Centre for Democratic Reform
Global Warming and the Climate
History According to Bob
Howstat
Imani
InstaPatrick
Institut économique Molinari
Institute of Economic Affairs
Lebrecht Weekly
Libertarian Alliance
LiveScience
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Mark Steyn
Oxford Libertarian Society
Pajamas Media
Paul Graham
Sean Gabb
Signal100
Soundstage Communications
Stockholm Network
Syed Kamall
Technology Review
TED
The Christopher Hitchens Web
The Inquirer
The Register
The Space Review
The TaxPayers' Alliance
This is Local London
Toccata Classics
UK Libertarian Party
Victor Davis Hanson
WSJ.com Opinion Journal
YaleGlobal Online
YouTube
Mainstream Media
BBC
Guardian
Economist
Independent
MSNBC
Telegraph
The Sun
This is London
Times
Syndicate
RSS 1.0
RSS 2.0
Atom
Feedburner
Podcasts
Categories
Advertising
Africa
Anglosphere
Architecture
Art
Asia
Atheism
Australasia
Billion Monkeys
Bits from books
Bloggers and blogging
Books
Brian Micklethwait podcasts
Brians
Bridges
Business
Career counselling
Cartoons
Cats and kittens
China
Civil liberties
Classical music
Comedy
Comments
Computer graphics
Cranes
Crime
Current events
Democracy
Design
Digital photographers
Drones
Economics
Education
Emmanuel Todd
Environment
Europe
Expression Engine
Family
Food and drink
France
Friends
Getting old
Globalisation
Healthcare
History
How the mind works
India
Intellectual property
Japan
Kevin Dowd
Language
Latin America
Law
Libertarianism
Links
Literature
London
Media and journalism
Middle East and Islam
Movies
Music
My blog ruins
My photographs
Open Source
Opera
Other creatures
Painting
Photography
Podcasting
Poetry
Politics
Pop music
Propaganda
Quote unquote
Radio
Religion
Roof clutter
Russia
Scaffolding
Science
Science fiction
Sculpture
Signs and notices
Social Media
Society
Software
South America
Space
Sport
Technology
Television
The internet
The Micklethwait Clock
Theatre
This and that
This blog
Transport
Travel
USA
Video
War
Here’s the new Olympic logo. Or perhaps logos. Cost them four hundred thousand quid, apparently.
I don’t hate it (them), because I hate the whole idea of the Olympics coming to London, so the worse the logo is the happier I am. But most of the people who actually want all these crazed contests to happen in London for a few weeks (provided that I and all the other anti-Olympians share the grotesquely huge bill for it all with them), well, most of them apparently do hate it/them. Good. They all deserve to suffer for their idiot enthusiasm and enthusiastic tax guzzling.
Said Iain Dale, earlier this afternoon:
Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. A successful logo should at least give some hint at the activities of the organisation it is meant to depict. This looks like the logo for the Annual Rabbit Shagging Championships.
Apparently Lord Coe and Tessa Jowell were going to do enthusiastically idiotic interviews about this ugly looking creation on the early evening TV, but then they became “unavailable for comment”. Excellent. They’re panicking already.
UPDATE: Norfolk hates it too.
It looks like a shattered swastika to me.
This is my second Olympics. (I was in Sydney for the building to 2000. One amusing thing is that the same exact things are happening. These go from the deeply worrying (the “fully costed” estimates of what the games will cost turn out to be made up by two people in a room and written down on the back of an envelope) to the vaguely amusing (to great fanfare the organisers release an unspeakably ugly logo that has cost four hundred thousand pounds. You should look forward to the announcement of the olympic mascot by the way. That is certainly coming soon, and it will certainly be worse.
They could at least have spelt London with a capital L.
Michael, email me about the mascot, as and when, in case I miss it. I can then quote your comment above.
The animated version - God! - it doesn’t bear thinking about! - has already been taken off TV because it is causing fits in viewers prone to epilepsy.
Dozens of people on the blogs I have read have referred to the swaztika.
The Beeb - yes, dear reader, it was they! - had a contest and got at least two very interesting and clever logos for free. Knocked up in a couple of days. Not 18 months with a full team of opinionated twits giving their “input” with an adolescent desire epatter les bourgoises.
I am looking forward to the immense costly failure of the London Olympics. Do you remember the Millennium Dome? (Tony Blair said the world would be looking at Britain when the century changed. The moron. The century didn’t change until a year later - du-uh - and New Year came to Asia first. Du-uh. He didn’t even know that.) What is the rat population in the long, long, long empty Millennium Dome these days, seven years later? Seven years that non-popularity happened. Otherwise known as failure. With taxpayer pounds.
London Olympics. Look for more of the same under the same team. The Tories could get in, even under David Cameron, if they promised to scrap the games.
But as someone said on another blog, what is wrong with the logo? David Blunkett thinks it’s great.
The BBC had a competition in which readers could send in their own efforts.
What was wrong with something like this?
Or, my favourite:
Although I’d obviously remove the tacky slogan.
Out here, we’re all on for the 2010 World Cup, although we don’t have any stadiums, everything is over budget already and the logo is utterly horrible.
Anything sound familiar?
Comment at Guido:
******************************************
since the “lisa simpson giving a blowjob” meme is now firmly established in the minds of people, corporate sponsors wont touch it with a bargepole.
probably the biggest PR fcuk up ever.
and thats just the friggin logo.
this is going to be Millenium Dome times hundred.
******************************************
It is starting to look that way.
Isn’t it fun?
The Beeb (yes, even the Beeb!) ran 10 others that other people, some of them as young as 14, had come up with and a couple weren’t bad. There were some on a blog yesterday and two of them were absolutely outstanding. One was rather witty, and one was a “feelgood”. Both worthy.
Apparently this is being giggled about in the media on the Continent. I can certainly picture the French smirking with great satisfaction.
“6000” - the Blunkett gag wasn’t mine. I saw it on a blog.
It is starting to look that way.
The games themselves will be pulled off with relatively few visible hitches. Everybody will enjoy it at the time. And for a decade afterwards it will be impossible to get anyone in government to admit to how much it cost. All the problems will be solved by throwing truly vast sums of money at the games. People involved in previous games will be brought in at considerable expense. (The real problem with organisation the Olympic games is that there is little institutional knowledge. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club knows how to run the Wimbledon tennis tournament because they ran it last year. Olympics organisers don’t). London transport workers will be bribed large sums of money to make sure that the tube works for 20 hours a day during the Olympics. The games themselves are quite enjoyable if there aren’t two many logistical problems, and the potential for embarassment is great, and the embarassment will (as I said) be avoided by throwing around large sums of our money.
That is the final outcome of everything looking exactly like what happened in Sydney. The organisers there looked equally incompetent this far from the games. (There was even an extremely funny “Yes Minister” style TV series made about organising the Olympics in about 1998).
Actually, there is something else to mind here. In the cases of both Sydney and London there was a logo for the bid, and then another logo later for the games themselves.
Sydney bid logo here. (Pretty simply stylised Opera House and Olympic rings). Sydney games logo here. (A dogs breakfast of imagery, and I have no idea what the yellow thing in the middle is although it is possible it is a Koala, but in truth not as bad as London’s. None the less, the much simpler bid logo was preferred by just about everyone).
In the case of London, the bid logo is here. Again pretty simple and to the point. The games logo we have just seen.
In both cases they have gone from a simple, to the point logo to a dog’s breakfast. I think this may be a consequence of the aim’s of the logos in questions. The bid logos actually have to achieve something, namely they are about attracting votes of ICC members. If they are not effective, then you may not win the games. Actual games logos perform no such purpose. They are not going to change whether anyone is going to vote for anything or buy anything. So if you are asked to design one, you can just get down to some serious wanking at public expense.
Look for lots of serious wanking at government expense. The Olympic Games is amongst the best of all opportunities for government and government employed officials to do this. (In truth, various officials from London went to the Sydney Olympics, saw all the wanking, and decided they wanted to do this too).
So we have expert testimony on the 2000 games in Sydney, I can vouch for the 1991 World Student Games in Sheffield *grin*; Greece in 2004 JUST made it and the London 2012 costs are spiralling out of control and I can tell you from here that parallels are being drawn between Germany’s World Cup last year and South Africa’s in 2010.
Surely the real question should be along the lines of the level of expectation we set for ourselves when going into these massive projects and events (and the world student games of 1991).
Why should we expect anything to come in on budget, without a hitch and on time - it’s seemingly never happened before and it probably never will again. So why are we surprised and angry when problems arise?
6000
I don’t think we are surprised. I and many of my Samizdata type friends opposed these games from the start, because we thought they would unfold approximately like this. We didn’t all know all the details worldwide (although this is not the first time Michael Jennings has commented on the subject), but we got the general idea. And we are not surprised.
But it surely makes sense to remain angry. A crime that becomes persistent and regular isn’t any less of a cause for anger. Maybe, arguably, more so. Since people have ever less excuse for letting the crime be done to them.
6000: I think this Samizdata post summarises the argument before the London won the games quite well. Particularly read the comments, and note the “Things may have been done badly for previous games, but things are different this time and the costings are correct” argument. Of course, that was something I had heard before, too. And of course there is complete refusal to accept my statement that I had heard it all before and I just didn’t belive them. The only question is how many of the politicians and hangers on were deluded and how many were flat out lying and knew it. Not exactly in defence of these people, but self-delusion can run high in such circumstances.
There is no reason for the games to exist except to make money for sponsors. If they called it Drug-Enhanced Performances from Round The World, it wouldn’t be so bad - although still jaw-crackingly dull. But this air of righteousness ... is it post-irony, perhaps?
Those opening ceremonies, which I have watched for around, oh, 45 seconds, are so naff - don’t you love the gold-tone blazers? - it all says small town America Rotarians’ Convention to me.
The good news is, that even with megaton steroids, they can’t keep shaving 1 millionth of a second (yawn) off performances forever. Little by little, they’ll have to drop the sporting events and do more Dancing with The Stars events. Aware of the way the wind’s blowing - they’ve already got synchronised swimming, for God’s sake, we’ll soon have Olympic Body Art, yurt-building, costume design and miming to ‘YMCA’, which will all be at least as interesting as watching people we don’t know pole vault.
2 interesting developments today.
First, of all the alternative Logos I’ve seen, the best, which seems to be widely popular, courtesy the BBC, is a simple Olympic Rings, plus “London”, with the “Lon” of London made to double up as “2012”, in a visual pun. Neat.
Second, apparently the politicians are starting to get antsy about the official logo, and that could actually change it. Mere people won’t shift them, but this is all a political exercise, and the politicians are the true “Olympic bosses”. If they decide to dump the Logo, dumped it will be. They will simply order the official “Olympic bosses” to make the switch.
Fun fun fun.
We can all calm down. Via Dizzy, I clicked on the link to Danny Finkelstein’s re-arrangement of the four - “elements”, I guess you would call these blocks of junk - to spell Zion.
End of story.
I bet it will have been pulled by tomorrow. Too bad, because it would have been fun to have it blazing across the sky above that 70,000 mosque they’re supposed to be going to build.
Tee hee.
Actually, some of the US Olympics did OK financially (LA, Atlanta, maybe SLC after bribes IIRC), but I’m quite happy that there’s no chance of San Francisco getting the 2016 Olympics.
The whole Olympics concept should be dynamited. Forcing this circus on the world is a dictatorial, Nazi-esque,thought controlling act of arrogance. “Ve heff vays of making you like ze long-jump.”
If they want to have drug enhanced athletes running around and jumping, why can’t they attend to their perversion in the privacy of arenas they have hired for the purpose. I don’t force my interests on other people. Why should this vile Olympics Committee be given such Olympian status?
Why not have an international contest of clowns every four years? It couldn’t be any more horrifying than these ghastly people with their ugly, muscle-bound bodies and tendons like ropes on their necks and legs.
A cheetah can still run faster than any of them and is beautiful and elegant at the same time. Also doesn’t need to be tested for illegal substances.
With respect to the mascot, I claim to have been right.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympic_games/london_2012/8690467.stm
It is seriously Cak and thare some cracking parodies appearing all over the place, some of them delightfully offensive.