Coming home to LondonGrad

I have been away from London for a few weeks, on client work and holidays, and on returning I don't even feel like a citizen in my own city. It seems we have have had a Putsch and London has been taken over by a Brave New Olympic State.

I left London soon after London Bridge Station had an "Olympics Practice day", when officious people herded all the commuters like cattle and made us walk along endless, long and complicated mazes to ensure we could not get where we were going. In rush hour. It wasted a lot of people's time with no recompense, redress or even any apology. That was bad, but I have not been prepared for what I see on my return - we are seemingly now in the Olympic State of LondonGrad

I mean, what else explains these Iron Curtainesque symptoms:

- ZIL lanes for Olympic Apparatchiks to whizz around the city while citizens (who are the ones paying for all this, remember) get herded off in ther miserable masses.
- Olympic Party Chiefs staying in the best hotels, far away from the actual Olympics (hence the Zil lanes) while the actual athletes stay in the Olympic Gula....Village. Animal Farm had it taped....
- A 17.5 km, 5,000volt electric fence, topped with 900 daylight and night vision surveillance cameras spaced at 50 metre intervals around the Olympic Gula...Village..
- Booming announcements of Olympic Thoughtspeak across all public media and mediums where citizens communicate, commute and commune.
- Only Olympic-State approved media may be used to communicate, and you may not use certain words which are restricted to the Olympic Party (like, oh, 2012, Summer, Gold - you know, really rare words).
- Ditto, only Olympic-State approved brands may sell food, drink, or nearly anything else.
- Only Olympic State supported icons may be worn on clothing
- Arresting those who protest about the Olympic-State-Takeover, or wear the wrong things, have the wrong words etc (and, it would appear, shutting down protest websites and even parish magazines are verboten!)
- Many of the best goodies reserved for members of the Olympic party and their cronies, except for a few hand-me-downs for a few poor bloody comrad... citizens to go to finals, opening nights etc. To each according to their needs, and all that.
- White Elephant building projects that largely benefit no one and will be rotting in 5 years time.
- Some rhetoric about the health benefits of Sport For All, observed to be in the breach from nearly day one (Coke, McDonalds and as sponsors - really?)
- Strip searching regimes that would make the KGB smile
- Heavy duty military hardware moved near large numbers of people (and our Government moans about the Iraqis and Afghans using their citizens as human shields!)
- The 7,000 troops, 12,000 police and more than 20,000 security guards for the Olympic-Nation-State is the sort of numbers that any aspiring dictator would love, its more people in uniform than Britain has used in any war since WW2. Who exactly is being protected from whom?

How the heck did these laws get passed without us noticing, commenting -or, god forbid, having a say- one has to ask?

And of course, in true GOSplan form, the original estimated budget (a ludicrously low £2.9m) has been blown hugely, to £9bn and counting, while our Glorious Leader claims we will make £13bn "profit". And of course its the poor old citizens who will fund the losses. Private get-rich-quick gains for the few, public debts for years for the many - where have we seen that before recently?

But the biggest disgrace by far of all has been the Olympic-State-Sponsored commercial monopolies and draconian branding restrictions laws (As noted above, I apparently am breaching Oympic (TM) rules if I write "The Golden Summer of 2012") in what was once supposed to be a competitive country that stood for free speech. Even if the Olympics being an amateur ideal was a pipe dream, allowing an effective Olympic-Brand-One-Party State to take over is a bit extreme by any ordinary capitalist democracy standards. Especially as the Olympic-State-Sponsors have put in c £1.5bn to the (mainly London) taxpayers £9 bn+. And yet despite being the "majority funders" here, its the citizens who are getting shafted left right and centre?

The only saving graces are the security inefficiency exhibited by Olympic-State Champions G4S (Given 5 years to get enough security guards, finally admit to being 3000 or so short with just a few days left) - no decent Politburo would have allowed that to happen! It would be priceless, except the taxpayer is having to foot the bill yet again, though. Also the Official Olympic-State Logo is so crap* that no one is going to be putting it on their berets, flags or student radical publications anytime soon.

But to me, the really worrying thing has been the whole mindset of the public and private bodies doing all this - they have exhibited such an incredible lack of respect and consideration for London's citizens (that's
the people who are really paying for this by the way) - that it makes me really wonder what they think of us, and will they think they can get away with some far nastier restrictions on public freedoms than before?

You can just see Orwell and Kafka looking over and saying "told you....." and Gandhi saying "If I may make a suggestion here..."

(PS - yes, I got some tickets - but that was a scam too...)

*It's not just me that sees Liza Simpson gettin' on down in that Logo - and as for that fine upstanding one eyed mascot thingy, have they never heard the term "dead eye dick?