No. 21 Recession, The Olympics, and the Honours List

Recorded on a battered Sony TCM-200DV dictaphone on 27/08/08

Another depressing bus journey home. The same cast of faces that would stop a clock at fifty paces (my own included); the same air of demoralisation; the same legion of identikit kids worshipping the cult of chav.

And whilst all this goes on, the slope becomes slippier. If, like me, you believe everything you read and hear, then we’re plummeting into a recession that could spell the end for us all. So where is our rudder? Our chosen champion? The one to guide us through the coming turmoil and out the other side without so much as a hair out of place.

Whilst the nation burns, Gordon Brown fiddles. This time in Beijing, kindly informing the President of China that the 2012 Olympics will be an equally successful event. I’m afraid that if I could be bothered enough to care, I’d be failing to share his confidence. Not with this bunch of chancers in charge, anyway. The Millennium Dome and Wembley are obvious examples that spring to mind, but it would be far too easy to liken such fiascos to what might occur in the next four years. So I won’t.

Like I said, I couldn’t really care less either way. A successful Olympics does not repair the damage, or the rot steadily setting into this once fine land. It’s nothing more than an Elastoplast for a very deep wound. A bit of tinsel, bunting, and pretty flashing lights to divert the attention away from how bad things have really gotten. ‘Smoke and mirrors’, as Victorian gentlemen of a magical persuasion would’ve rightly called it.

And whilst we’re on the subject of the Olympics, I hear that following Team GB’s most successful finishing in 100 years; the celebrations show no sign of ending.

I have to admit here and now that my own Olympic celebrations ended about half an hour before the opening ceremony began, and lasted for all of two seconds before common sense took hold.

Which beggars another question. When exactly did they become Team GB? How much did the branding agency charge to come up with that catchy little gem? And more importantly, what’s this obsession the press and everyone else has with shortening everything, just to save on a few syllables, a few column inches, and a few facial muscles? If anybody ever said ‘Brangelina’ in my presence, they could utilise the energy they’d saved by not saying ‘Brad and Angelina’ by picking up their teeth and jogging on to the nearest 24-hour dentist.

It must be said though, the Olympics has given us all the opportunity to forget how crap everything is and instead celebrate the fact that some rich people weren’t quite rich enough to successfully make a horse dance about as though its balls were on fire, but managed to pull it out the bag when it came to the sitting in a boat.

Gordon Brown was one of the first to congratulate the winners because they’ve taken the immediate heat off of him for a while, plus there’s the inevitable photo opportunities such an occasion always brings. The ones where he can bask in someone else’s glory and maybe hope a little of it will rub off. I’m hazarding a guess it’ll take a little more than that.

But let’s have Knighthoods all round. A quiet word from Uncle Gordon in Her Majesty’s regal ear and Team GB will have something extra to celebrate come the New Year. After all, they handed out a Dameship to Kelly Holmes after the last Olympic Games for bringing home two golds; so the bar has been set. Give it a couple more years and there’ll be honours for the man or woman who checked the team through to the departure lounge.

Which goes to show what a farce the New Year and Birthday Honours system is. As is BBC Sports Personality Of The Year, which hasn’t been won by anybody harbouring anything remotely resembling a personality since ‘Fingers’ McFulty won the coveted award for his distinguished services to bare-knuckle badger baiting, back in 1923.

It doesn’t need me to tell you that the honours system is nothing more than the old boy’s network taken to its logical conclusion with the occasional popularity vote (Kelly Holmes) thrown in for good measure to divert the public attention away from the long list of old Etonians, crooked businessmen, and inbred members of the social classes that make up the bulk of it. The deserving are only acknowledged on the rarest of occasions. Amen.

And that brings a close to just a few random meanderings or as I like to call it, stating the bleedin’ obvious. I’m sure these topics could be expanded upon in the near future. Then again, they might not.

Consider yourselves warned.

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