Inside the Olympics: The Undesired Activity

In a recent post, I wrote about the amount of ‘boot-licking’ a host city has to do in order to continually keep the IOC on its side. From the original bid document, through to the tearful farewell and wrap-up in Spring 2010, this city has been hosed, charged, and demanded-to from these officials to the point where we are now unsure of who actually this month-long (don’t forget the Special Olympics) festival. O.K., it is the largest one of it’s kind on the planet and, if they intend to make money from it in the future, any host city should be ready to invest. However, when items dictated to by the organisers start to cross certain lines, is it not up to the city to hold up a hand and argue it’s corner? Two cases in point raised in the last month argue this.

Every Olympic host city also presents a Cultural Olympiad for the arts that shows the best of your city, country, and extends a hand to other Olympic country travelling exhibits and troupes. Imagine being a winter sports fan, and taking a week out of your life to go to a welcoming town in a different part of the World, see the World’s best athletes compete in your favourite sports, then spend the evenings taking in fabulous artistic and cultural artists. If I had the odd hundred grand sitting around, I’d do it! Well, in a recent guideline handed down, it appears that these artists must contract to perform without making negative comments or the like concerning Olympic sponsors and the IOC! For dancers and opera singers, this may be OK, but perhaps not for you if you are a comic, painter, or actor. These people see a different view of things as a perfect point worth bringing up, but if someone gets excited and ad lib something along these lines  in February or March 2010, their performance can be immediately stopped.

In a related issue, no negatives are allowed to be ‘presented in written form’ in public view. While designed to stop negative graffiti and posters in camera view of the globe’s TV viewers, this has been extended to the interior of businesses and residences! This means that if I have a “No to Visa” sentiment in an upstairs window of my house, a representative from my local city council (I live in a host suburb.), has the right to enter my house and take it down.

Now, in both of the above cases, we would have to be in an extreme situation for punitive measures, I understand this, but haven’t the IOC been told that this country has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantee free speech, and personal property rights? The IOC that aren’t putting these rules in place to protect itself – they are designed to keep negatives away from their sponsors. The largest global corporations on earth have the ability to order this, through the organisers. A soft drink company has the right to complain to an IOC rep, who will tell the local organiser, who will pass onto an elected local official to do the dirty.

I see the day when these games will only take place in totalitarian states – they may be used to taking orders blindly. How did Norway, Japan, and the US ever stand for this?

More on the torch relay to come – I have received a few enquiries about it – unless someone has a problem with that, and will block my internet link. Blogging may become an ‘undesired activity’ in Olympic cities.

Futuring the Royal Family

Whenever the media try to stir up anti-Royal feeling, I suffer the usual knock on consequence of having to answer for the existence of The Windsor’s. Just for the record, I look at the British Royal Family as I do about Christmas:

It is traditional, has nothing to do with me except gets me a day off, it creates some business, and makes us look at ourselves in a different way.

 

A recent state visit by The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall had the usual negative media spin that proved the entire edifice of the Royals was crumbling, and no one could save it. Considering this point, I was surprised by the sheer amount of bytes and print inches, the visit caused. It was obviously the biggest story of the entire 10-day time period they spent in Canada! Ten days, of ‘nothing to see here’, and ‘no-one cares’, all shot in front of crowds of people, and breathless reporting about the importance of the stay.

 

So, just for the record, here is my take on the present and future of the Monarchy.

 

Prince Charles has had a massive effect on pop culture over the lat 50 years. No-one hugged a tree, saved a whale, or thought green before him, then had the balls to announce it to a World calling him nuts for doing so. He does a far better job where he is, rather than being the Monarch, when he has seen his Mother button her lip for her entire life. He should abdicate the throne when the Monarch dies, and pass it to a younger person with more in common with a modern world – a criticism frequently levelled at the institution.

The Princes’ heroes through out his life have always been the quieter, more influential ‘powers behind the throne’ such as Lord Mountbatten, so he can support his sons while he is slipping into a dotage. Let’s be honest, he has had his life, he has finally got his love next to him, who needs the hassle? He could be 80 before he gets the job, anyway.

 

The first order of business for King William should be to thin out the Civil List that is the line of royals supported by the British taxpayer. Earlier in the Century, we all had larger families, and there is an incredible amount of hanger’s on from Elizabeth’s cousins, etc. Once they pass on, lets ask their kids to get careers – most of them do anyway. This should result in large properties becoming free. Let’s put them to a social use that will benefit as many people as possible. Both ‘heir and spare’ have a job to do promoting Britain. They will both have spouses, and offspring, but there shouldn’t be any more people doing this important job.

 

This should make them ‘relevant’ to the majority of us, cost less, and modernise the institution with no hard feelings, or hardship to anyone. See, I am a royal supporter, but even I see that believing in them as they are is a little like believing in Father Christmas. We have already modernised the annual gift giving festival, let’s move on to another ancient tradition.

The Olympics: Inside the Inner Circle

If you are looking for the perfect job, or a change of career, you could do a lot worse than joining the Olympic movement as a member of the board. Not only are you responsible for promoting amateur athletic sport both in your country, and around the globe (a very worthy endeavour), you will also live the life of a Banana Republic potentate by everyone you meet on the planet, with the possible exception of your wife. When you also consider many athletes are no longer amateur, but millionaires from their day jobs, you don’t even have to be very successful at your main purpose, either. It’s one of the easiest jobs on the planet – especially when you consider you are paid one of the best salaries in history, and are on expenses. But why are you treated the way you are?

 

Ever since the politic debacle’s of the early ‘80’s, when politics dictated an amateur athlete’s career arc, consider the size of the venues that have hosted the games. On the winter games side, Calgary, Lillehammer, and Nagano, and Atlanta and Athens in the summer months weren’t’ exactly global metropolises. After Moscow and Los Angeles, it looked as if a leaner, more stripped down games would soothe the diplomatic wounds we were all suffering from, and also get back to basics for the quadrennial celebration. Unfortunately, it also opened the experience of actually ‘getting’ the games up to local governments. In many cases these meant the very first time that the venue in question were going to be the focus of the world. So anything spent at the time to sway people’s minds, would be repaid exponentially in future tourism and investment cash. Therefore whatever these cities could do ‘above the table’ the better. Unfortunately, as is usual with human nature, these lessons were well learned by future venues, expanded, and therefore expected by the inner circle of a few thousand that make up the Games’ secretariat.

 

For this Olympiad, we have been shocked as host cities what we have to do when this Star Chamber gets here. First class travel, complimentary tickets to final events, penthouse hotel rooms, changes of traffic patterns in their favour, and member’s individual choice of meals during official Olympic events are not only expected, they are demanded – a necessary part of the host’s responsibilities. This is all for the handful of decision makers, and their support staff, and secretaries, their whole families, and members from their own countries. All in all, about 2% of all expenditure expected to be made by us proles on the sidelines is given away in order to make these people feel at home. Unfortunately, Vancouver is the largest city ever to host the winter games, so we are now using a different set of rules – and we have to do this by trying to make money from a much larger visitor number than those smaller towns. At what point is it our job to maximize profits? I guess it greasing palms after your product is bought, trumps any support the Olympic movement owes us for soldiering on through a huge global economic explosion to continue to present their product, and make less money from it. While paying more for it after these members of the sporting royal family have left for pastures and troughs anew.

The Olympics from the inside: 100 days to go

At the time of this writing, we are only 100 days away from the Opening ceremonies, and here are a few headlines from the last few weeks to show how we are doing.

The Olympic Village debacle: The construction of venues required was finished very early in the process. Thank God! With the recession hitting us last year, we weren’t trapped in the situation of having to complete at the last minute the way that Athens appeared to. While we are using a lot of existing venues (Look for changes at the hockey tourneys.), there was a fair bit of building to complete and we apparently did all of this under budget and early. The only sore point was one of the two Olympic villages built in the downtown core (The second one is in Whistler itself). This was always going to be a large project – imagine a small town centre being built on downtown soil – but thanks to the collapse of world-wide economies, it got very nasty. The builder ran out of money, the debt sold to secure financing suddenly couldn’t be serviced, and the hedge fund looking after it went insolvent. Of course, the tax payer is going to have to pick up the built, because the payments outstanding on the site match the annual budget of the entire council, or something just as alarming.

As of today, it is unfinished, but work continues apace, and it is to handed to the Organising Committee today. The apartments were going to be sold to individuals after the games anyway, so at least the City will reap the benefits of that, but not as much as originally planned. Also planned was a plan to earmark a percentage of the apartments as low income housing. While it is a tough pill to swallow, I believe we shouldn’t be doing that, now. We should get as much money back as we can from this ‘investment’. Financially, we are still in good shape, and very high-end purchases, such as ticket packs, and travel plans, are picking up. I think the hundreds of residents that thought they could earn a vacation by renting out their homes for the games are going to be disappointed, though.

THE TORCH RELAY: The Olympic torch touched down last week, and has started on it’s cross country tour. WAY too much First Nation involvement for many people’s liking, especially as it was held back by native people’s protests (see last blog), the first evening it travelled, but definitely a sense of pride about the country, and a sudden alert that we are only a few weeks away from the puck drop to this thing.

SECURITY: It was announced today that 90% of Security personnel have been hired. Now the fears start that these were mostly recruited from Craigslist, and may be ‘the bottom of the barrel’ as far as employers go! It must be nice to feel you are respected as you work for almost nothing in the coldest time of the year, pissing people off, and NOT enjoying the once-in-a-lifetime experience that you are guarding!
Considering the U.S. has spent millions securing their border, and the overall security bill is $1 Billion, it’s a pity we couldn’t be more positive about the front line folks we hire.

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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

The real Health Care debate.

The ‘current’ health debate certainly offers some de javu  moments, harking back to the last time it was the centre of an American political debate. Strangely enough, this was shortly after the last Democratic President was elected about 15 years ago. I wasn’t in a position to remember what it was like 30 years ago, because I was too busy destroying some brain cells on the way to needing some healthcare, but I imagine it was the same.

Bring in anyone other than a Republican administration, and they are going to try to give more people healthcare than currently get it. There is a huge outcry from a certain section of the US voter, and the media portray it as a 50/50 split across the nation. Of course, this isn’t true.

 

On a trans-continental flight about the time of Clinton’s attempt to open up healthcare, I spent a long time listening to an American try to understand a socialised medical system.

“Doesn’t this mean that someone is getting your healthcare?” was the question that I couldn’t help but laugh at. This is, of course, the central question. Not the Racial debate, not the Power debate, not The Place of Insurance In Our Lives debate. It is way more pragmatic than that: Who IS Going To Pay for it. In this case, it is the same debate in every country in the World – Even the UK, home of Socialised Medicine, there has always been a sizeable section of the populace that don’t like the idea of paying into a society-sized pot to look after others when you don’t need it, and to get care when you do.

 

Looking at the argument from the opposite POV, I have a real difficulty asking a question of a professional that I have to trust while knowing their only concern is the personal profit margin they could earn from it. That alone paints me as someone from a certain political stripe that would exasperate someone from a purely capitalist place, so the idea of consensus is absolutely pie-in-the-sky. S’Aint Happenin’.

 

If you trust a Government to run Law and Order, and Education, shouldn’t we at least ensure that they also are responsible for maintaining health? Shouldn’t everyone at least have a shot at getting to see a Doctor when they need it without having to re-mortgage their foreclosed property to do it? Or, to put it another way:

 

If the only real problem with health care for all is that illegal immigrants will get it, then let’s not employ them in the first place. I guarantee that their employers are not the ones desperate for Health Insurance. With the rest of the World knocking at the West’s door, it is worth remembering that part of the reason for them moving is better health care. As the rest of the World start to outnumber the Rich, White First World, how are doctors going to able to afford to make a living purely from our receding numbers?

 

Perhaps we will have to pay more, and deny medical service to more so that that professional can keep a Lexus on the driveway.

The way back is a global one?

I have read two different articles this week concerning two regions known as war zones, now on the way back to what we would know as normality. Eerily similar, but known for two different types of conflagration, it is amazing to see how their turnarounds have taken place, and they both offer ideas for the future.

 

I almost dropped the newspaper when I saw a travel article on Rwanda. Not because of it’s remote location (Just to the right of Congo), but the initial mental picture one gets when you hear of that country – Genocide by machete. It has been 16 years since it happened, but can you really think of anything else? And now, it’s a destination. Let’s forget about jokes like: How do they cut the garnish for my Sun Downer, the very thought that they have cleaned up their act enough to invite outsiders into their country with the wide smiles of the tourist industry is almost beyond belief. It feels like I’m the realtor for the Amityville House: “This really is a hidden gem…and the atmosphere around here.”

 

In the business press, you can read about Belfast and it’s promising future within the European marketplace. Unlike one orgiastic murder spree in Rwanda, wasn’t this place the home of guerrilla warfare for almost a Century? Of  Red Brigade Redux? What kind of entrepreneurial leap of faith leads someone to say: “Ulster! Why didn’t I think of that place earlier for international expansion?”

 

Bad jokes aside, the reason for change in both of these places is the same: Globalisation.

In both arenas, the final goal, either eradication of a tribe on a massive scale, or the joining of a province to another country became moot when the communication explosion of the last 10 years shrank the entire globe, and brought everyone closer together. In both places, the thought that the World ended at their own borders was proved to be untrue. When the European community came knocking with bulging bank accounts, willing to give you investors from Switzerland and Luxembourg that would make a definitive difference in your everyday life, continuing to kill became a secondary importance. When the US realised that they could send you tourists that would drop more dollars than you have ever seen in your life on a daily basis, the machetes stopped, and forgiveness began. Even the mighty UK saw that the importance of protecting a few of it’s own people in the name of a commonwealth that was no longer the largest voluntary trade club in the World, had become a lot less important.

 

Perhaps the toughest part of the entire process appeared to be sitting down with your enemies, and negotiate a settlement. However, if the entire reason for your existence, or your past actions has been taken away from you, what is there to negotiate. You may as well close the doors and get the Monopoly out – which is what may have happened as far as we know.

 

While I am loathe to admit it, the prospect of giving yourself a better life through trade, and not social welfare, will make entire terrorist organisations change their minds. It’s a Conservative, free trade argument, but it has been proven, and if it saves lives, who can argue with it? It remains to be seen that when globalisation ends due to high fuel prices over the next few years, if the porous international borders that makes Free Trade work in a globalised marketplace, begin to harden like last night’s custard. When they do, look out for these groups to start buying arms once again.