The Olympics: Mixed Media Messages

So who is against this global event convening in their back yard? Well, don’t expect a cogent answer from the media. In our City there are two major groups that continually upbraid the populace for supporting The Games. One is native-rights group that state that the land the games are being contested on is stolen, and belongs to them. Given that a second’s thought? Good – let’s move on. The second one is an Anti-Poverty group that protests on a regular basis that…..well, I didn’t know really. The fact that poverty in the city is bad, I suppose – or perhaps that there is poverty in the World. It’s something like that. While there has always been some ‘rhubarb’ from the back of the room that this exercise will cost a lot of money, it is these two groups that are always heard from when any announcement is made from the organising committee. “We have finished our building one year ahead of schedule.” Comes the clarion cry from VANOC HQ, closely followed by either: “Oh yeah? Well the entire process is being held on land that us First Nations’ land.” or “That is an unbelievable amount of money being spent, considering that there is poverty…somewhere.” Perhaps these negative comments have to be listened to, to be balanced in your reception of all messages, but there haven’t really been anymore. I would have thought that once these groups have been heard from once or twice, that would be all we needed to know about their existence, but No. Every time we get a Pres Release from the organising committee, there is a competing one from one of these two groups. My main problem with this is that the usual shit-storm stirring that the Press feels it must do while, at the same time, proudly boasting that they are “The Official TV/Radio/Newspaper/Blog of the Olympics. We aren’t children. We know that the Olympics are going to get a lot of press, and you want to be a major part of it. We KNOW! So while you are busting a gut to get the five rings connected to your corporate logo in front of us courtesy of your ability to get into our houses, do you really have the right to drag these burbling hand puppets out in front of us every single time to advertise yourself to us? The mixed message here is that the media are desperate to have you watch, read, or listen about this massive event on their channel, they can’t help showing that the very act of hosting this behemoth of PR causes angst in the hearts of about 0.25% of the populace – well, thanks a lot. Here is a story for you. The Olympic medal design was unveiled last week. Made mainly of cast off, junked computer parts harvested by those no doubt under the poverty line, they were made (and covered in Gold Silver and Bronze, I hasten to add), by the Canadian Mint – which is out of province. No poverty or First Nation issues there, I think, but a story you probably won’t get anywhere lese, because it doesn’t have the tension that the media require to report on.

The Olympics: Follow the Money

When I mentioned last week that $2 Billion was going to be the final price tag, those that preferred the figure $8 Billion as the final cost immediately harangued me.

Why two prices, and why is one 4 times bigger than the first? The reason is infrastructure prices, and how it is being spent.

 

When your city hosts the Olympics, it’s going to be too small to handle the influx of so many people, and you won’t have the facilities to handle it. This doesn’t necessarily mean sporting venues, either. In our case, it means roads, rapid transit, and a conference centre. ROADS: We have a tiny road system that doesn’t even have dedicated right hand turns at most downtown junctions, because the land is so expensive, we cannot dedicate space to anything but buildings. Of course this has led to too many cars downtown, not enough parking, and a crappy public transit system by comparison.

The journey from Vancouver to Whistler is a fantastic 3 hour drive along Howe Sound and up into the Mountains to Whistler. Unfortunately, three hours is just too long to spend on the road these days, so people speed and get killed making it a dangerous trip.

RAPID TRANSIT: Like most North American cities, we don’t have a direct transit route from our airport to the city – because cab companies ‘rule’ that area of transport with an iron fist. Unfortunately, we also have to cross at least two bridges across water to get to anywhere downtown, which adds huge traffic problems to the usual crawl. Our mid week rush hours are now 6am to 8pm, with a slow hour between 2 and 3 – which is when most International flights arrive.

CONFERENCE CENTRE: Once you get downtown, the ability of the city to fill hotel rooms with the size of our current Conference centre is, sadly, too small to make enough money. We have a fabulous design for one (that would be built into the water to save on infrastructure.), but can’t afford to build it – pity, because if it had a large-scale launch event for it, it would have an incredible impact on would be visitors.

 

What? Like the Olympics? Canada has always been a popular Olympic destination, we are on the US West coast time zone, Whistler was designed as an Olympic venue in the 60’s, and is the best ski resort in North America – why not?

 

Six years after we got the bid, we have a rail rapid transit link directly to the city from the airport, the highway to Whistler is flatter, wider, and has cut the journey time down to two hours, and we have our Conference centre that will be the 21^st century looking home to the media centre. Together with the $1 Billion security costs that weren’t envisioned prior to September 2001, there is your additional $6 Billion. Worth it? Worth it for the Canadian tax payer to pay for it? Well, from this city’s point of view – YES!

Olympics from the inside

Four months from today, the Vancouver & Whistler Winter Olympics begin – or the 19^th Winter Olympiad. Whichever name you prefer probably means how you look at the ownership of the event: It either belongs to the Host City, or the International Olympic Committee that runs it. This statement has been the major argument point of the whole event. Whenever demonstrations have taken place against hosting the Winter Olympics, or ‘official’ statements from the IOC have been sent by winged-ankled messengers from Mount Olympus, the same refrain is heard, with slightly different emphasis, depending on which side of the argument you sit – namely: “But, this is our city – aren’t they our games?

 

It has been 6 years since we were awarded the games (That’s a giveaway already, to me. Someone, somewhere decided we were good enough to host their games), and that has always been the refrain: “But this is our city.” What on earth and snow did we think were going to happen? Which Olympics have you peered at through the static on your TV have appeared to be anything but what the previous ones were? I think the more important question is why do we want to do it? I was asked that on my Facebook page yesterday: “I can’t think of anything negative about hosting the Olympics”, she said. Now, I am a Sports fan, and I’m close to a few people working for the organising committee in the city, so I am a Pro-games guy, bit even then, if you don’t look at a lot of money spent, and upheaval in your life to do this, as a negative, then you aren’t from this city or this country. Just for the record, the cost of this award is $1.76 Billion (Canadian, sure, but today we are at 96 cents US), and the cost to the tax payer (published) is almost 600 Million.

 

Since the award, there have been lots of negatives broadcast and published, and thanks to my sources, I can add some inside ‘juice’, so I decided to hijack the blog for the next four months, and let you know what it’s like living in an Olympic city – for better and for worse. First, though, here is the main question:” What does it mean to host the Olympics?”– or why would you want it?

 

It is something that only a comparative handful of cities that has ever done this – that’s why. Four 2 weeks in 2010, scenes of our city will be broadcast around the World. That kind of marketing would cost way more than the amount we have effectively paid for this, and when were you moved to visit a place because it was on TV? We will get lots of spanking new sporting venues, but I can’t see me busting a gut to try out that new ski-jump, just because it‘s there. No, it’s because we think we are good enough to be counted among the World’s cities that have done this, and this us sticking out chests out and saying: “We are good enough.” The cost of this Hubris is almost $2 Billion, and may make us the target of a horrendous terrorist attack. Let’s keep a running total of the pros and cons as we get closer to the end of this, but for the moment, It’s like buying those killer shoes, when you aren’t working. The Pride is still pretty high – if you ignore the cost for now.

The Forbin Project lives!

I remember, in the mid-90’s, complaining that IT had become the Master, not the slave. Because everything appeared to work much faster online than in my mind, I bemoaned the fact that it was the speed of my desk top that was driving what I did on a daily basis, not how fast I could get something completed. Of course, working for a small business then, we were constantly under the impression that there were competitive companies out there that were matching their speed of thought and action to their computers, meaning that they were being more efficient. If we didn’t assume this, we would be left behind. Fifteen years later, the only change to this paradigm is the speed of the machines we use. As predicted as far back as half-a-century in Science Fiction, we now trust almost everything we do to computers, and have seen what can go wrong with this lack of human oversight. I read recently that inflation could be explained as the Government money suppliers being able to change the rate of money in circulation. Prior to the Credit Card age, a U.S. Dollar would change hands about 4 or 5 times in a year. Obviously the value of the dollar when it changed hands changed exponentially rose after the introduction of Diner’s Club Card, and it’s competitors aimed a markets that were less and less likely to pay off a monthly payment schedule on time. Nowadays, with mouse clicks setting into operation a global domino falls of economies that appear to be automatic, and with no oversight, how do we know what exactly is IN any given national economy. How do national banks go about knowing how that ocean of e-money is affecting out daily lives? In our personal lives, we have fallen into this trap. I feel positively old-fashioned keeping an Excel log of my own monthly household bills, and a budget for future years, before paying them with a personal cheque through the mail. Are there really people out there that have direct debits set up that pay bills automatically from an account that they are paid automatically into? Are there people that have actually lost control over the most important part of their lives? Imagine us blaming local governments for expenditure, and the payment of any future deficits when we don’t even know how to balance our own chequebooks. There will be more of these sudden changes in the economy, because we believe that we can create programs, projects and machines that can do it better than we can. There are already more sudden and unexplained changes to global weather patterns than we have seen in the past. What the hell are we going to do in the future? When a massive hurricane hits a Miami Beach, a San Diego, a New York, at exactly the same time as the floor drops out of the global economy next time? Very soon, some machine is going to realize that we are useless and destructive and that it can do the job better – Just like those far fetched Sci-Fi movie of Yore. Check out The Forbin Project