The Olympic Opening Ceremony - Most Offensive Ever?

No matter how you cut it, a potted history of the British Isles is pretty much guaranteed to be a catalogue of international offenses and insults. Last nights certainly was.

Also offenses against comedy

 Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the ceremony/festivities. It made me proud to be British. But perhaps part of that Britishness is the ability to pick out all the tiny little slights and pairs of fingers thrown around the arena as we went along.

For a start, why on Earth, in a ceremony about unity and inclusion and inspiring a nation, would you have Scottish children singing an anthem about how much the Scots hate the English? Yep, 'Flower of Scotland' is, at its core, about the Jocks fighting back and humiliating Edward Longshanks. I know, I know, these days the politically correct prefer to present it as a celebration of the resilience of the Scottish spirit, as an inspirational. But thats not how it goes down at Murrayfield when the Auld Enemy are in town...

One Ring to rule them all. Or at least keep them in a Commonwealth

Continuing with the theme of Rugby as a vehicle for f***-you-ishness, here's Jonny Wilkinson winning the World Cup - take that, Australia! (To be fair, its not like we have a lot of shots of Brits winning important stuff, and I'm really really glad the ghost of '66 wasn't dragged screaming into the auditorium)

Later on, during the dance-party section, we saw a crowd form the symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - suck on that, USA!

Generally, the UK is against WMD's

Somehow we managed to insult both sides of the greatest and most horrific armed conflict of the 20th Century by a) mentioning the war, and b) not mentioning the Munich deaths. 

Even our own government wasn't left out - how about a few hundred people celebrating the NHS - the Conservatives even took the bait.

Oh yeah, and there were lots of Christian songs (which I don't have a problem with) to celebrate our nations proud religious heritage, but it seems Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists aren't a part of our national identity we show to the world. The dead of 7/7 apparently now are though...

We'll put the slave ships over there, and the Mau Mau concentration camps to the right...

 On a side note, even the Danes, well one of them, took offense. My wife complained this morning athletes shouldn't be allowed to carry cameras and phones around the arena....

Yes, last night was a triumph for all involved. The 7500 volunteers were deservedly cheered and applauded and I would imagine an MBE is the spread to beat for Danny Boyle in next year's honours list.

Also, wtf?

 But Britain's greatest tradition, one we have proudly extolled and exported for centuries, is that of pissing people off, particularly foreigners, and last night was no exception. But given that we didn't even wait for the Games to begin to annoy the entire Arabic-speaking world and what could be the world's most dangerous rogue state, well, should we be surprised?

Here's looking forward to seeing how many more international gaffs we can squeeze into the next two weeks :)

A Little Less Than Daily

Sorry to say, my pledge of daily writing has been more than a little broken recently. It has been a couple of days since I last published on my toy soldiers blog and it was over a week since the post before that.

Part of that has to do with my wife working some crazy hours recently. Term time is over at the school at which she teaches, but that just means it is time for Summer School. Regular students have to audition to attend a course but, in the summer, the doors are more or less thrown open to all comers. Anyone who can pay, more or less, is able to attend a three week course in drama/singing/dancing. Its a fairly intense course for the students and it just about doubles my wife's teaching hours.

This, of course, leaves me at home with two small children. A challenge at any time, it gets worse when one is a baby who is going through teething and then gets a cold too. Oh, and refuses to eat all day and won't sleep all night ><

Stress-filled times at the White house then.

This then has left me little time for reading and writing. I have barely had any time to paint or exercise either. Usually I get about an hour in the morning to do something unrelated to babies and housework. Then it all kicks off...

The end is in sight though. Its the last week of Summer School and then we have a decent break, complete with overseas holiday. My wife has talked about doing some serious sleep training with the littlest monster in the house next week to try to get him back on track. And I should have more time to myself to think and plan and commit to the page.

Fingers crossed....