Sport
April 8, 2010 at 21:40 · Jon writes about Democracy & Citizenship, Politics, Sport
The Olympics are not just a great opportunity to showcase Britain’s sporting legacy and inspire the next generations to take on the Olympic values and encompass sport into their lives – but a real opportunity to redevelop a deprived area of London and kick-start regeneration that otherwise would have taken 60 years, instead of just 6. But in the midst of all this high-profile construction and preparation there looms a bigger issue and one that is not always ignored, but certainly never given the appreciation it deserves. Activists who look at the Olympic Games with a negative perspective might on first look have good reason to. It’s easy to dismiss the whole event as an extravagant ‘party’ that showcases nothing but athletes on drugs, and then at the end of the whole charade the host city is left with huge white elephant developments that leave the taxpayers a growing bill for years to come and a more expensive city with inflated housing prices. Read More »
March 22, 2010 at 16:00 · Jon writes about Broadcasting, Sport
So after 7 years of preparation, and a grand total of 26 days of competition the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games have drawn to a close. And so what can we take from the BBC’s coverage of the events? Well in my view, not much. It is no wonder that the so called ‘Olympic Broadcaster’ has lost the rights to broadcast the 2012 Paralympic Games, which will now hop across to Channel4 for the most extensive coverage of a games ever. The British Broadcasting Corporation decided to turn it’s back on the parallel event to the able-bodied Olympic Games this year in Vancouver, covering 9 days of competition with just a one hour highlights show, which I have just finished watching. The closing hours of the Paralympic Games in Beijing 2008 were watched by 23% of the population – a record number of viewers – so how can the BBC justify covering Vancouver with just a feeble hour of a programme? They say budget restrictions and the time zone – I don’t. Read More »
January 1, 2010 at 23:20 · Jon writes about Politics, Sport
With the transition from 2009 into 2010 we say goodbye to what has been a turbulent decade, in which the world has faced new challenges. At the beginning of the new millennium it was difficult to contemplate that less than a year later the world would be faced with looming financial crisis and one of the most shocking scenes from the whole decade, September 11th, in which nearly three thousand people lost their lives and has since led to a series of events in which hundreds have been killed in conflict. Read More »
