Opening Ceremonies

Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Of course every Olympics begin with the Opening Ceremonies in which the host nation showcases its culture, its history, and terrifying lockstep unity.

Our good buddy Mitt didn’t strap Rafalca to the roof of his Bain Capital Gulfstream to drop him off, he’s not even going to visit; but he did use his Salt Lake City cred to win the hearts and minds of his United Kingdom hosts.

David Cameron hits back at Mitt Romney over London 2012 doubts

Owen Gibson, Olympics editor, The Guardian

Thursday 26 July 2012

Romney said the fallout from the G4S security fiasco and a threatened strike by immigration officials were “disconcerting” and questioned whether British people would get behind the Games.

“Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that’s something which we only find out once the Games actually begin. It is hard to know just how well it will turn out,” said Romney.

But Cameron, who was due to meet Romney later on Thursday, said: “In terms of people coming together, the torch relay demonstrated that this is not a London Games, this is not an England Games but this is a United Kingdom Games. We’ll show the world we’ve not only come together as a United Kingdom but are extremely good at welcoming people from across the world.”

…

Asked whether the Games and Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, which will be watched by a predicted 1 billion people, offered an opportunity rebrand the country, Cameron said: “We don’t need to rebrand Britain. Britain has a great brand. I hope people will see all the things they like about Britain’s past, our history, our contributions to world development. But I also hope they will see a very open country and one that has an enormous amount to offer for the future.”

Olympic Games already have their share of controversies

By Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Newspapers

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Some 36,000 troops, police and hired contractors will stand guard at Olympic venues and on the streets of London and other cities. After the private security firm G4S acknowledged last week that it wouldn’t be able to furnish all of the 10,000 contractors it had agreed to, British officials called up additional service members to fill the gap.

The foul-up compounded what for many Londoners is beginning to seem like a long, costly summer, which began with a lavish diamond jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II and has coincided with ever bleaker economic news: The Office for National Statistics reported Wednesday that the economy had shrunk by 0.7 percent from April to June, a far worse contraction than had been forecast, deepening a double-dip recession that’s the severest in decades.

Meanwhile, the cost of staging the games has risen to several times the initial projection, exceeding even the infamous budget-busting standards of the 1996 Atlanta games. London’s now are expected to end up as the most expensive ever, at a cost of more than $14 billion.

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Competition got under way Wednesday, but a women’s soccer match that involved Colombia and North Korea was delayed by an hour after North Korean players were introduced on a video with their faces next to the South Korean flag.

The BBC reported that the rather dramatic mix-up – the neighboring countries are still technically at war, having never signed a treaty after a cease-fire took effect in the 1950s Korean conflict – occurred at the studio that produced the pregame video. The Christian Science Monitor pronounced it perhaps the worst blunder by a host nation in the Olympics’ 116-year modern history.

No, that would be Cameron’s austerity policies.  Watch what happens when the Olympic stimulus is cut off.