Oh, Great
Well, the Mittster headed off across the Pond to show Zero how an American President should promote our ‘special Anglo-Saxon relationship’ [ignore 1066 and the fact that it’s Great Britain, not just England, OK?] and promptly calls into question the current government:
Mr Cameron earlier met the Republican candidate for the US presidency, Mitt Romney, during his campaigning and fundraising visit to London.
The meeting came after Mr Romney expressed concerns about “disconcerting” signs of a lack of readiness for the Games.
“The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials – that obviously is not something which is encouraging,” Mr Romney told a US television station.
It was “hard to know just how well it will turn out”, said Mr Romney, who managed the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002.
Note that he also managed to highlight the problems associated with privatization of public services, which will come back to bite him in an ad, no doubt.
Romney apparently wants to have US-British relations revert to an earlier time, not Roosevelt-Churchill, but Madison-Liverpool.
8 comments
Much as I loathe Cameron he had an excellent comeback to Romney’s stupid gaffe
“We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere,”
I’m just waiting for Romney to take a dump on the Cenotaph
Ah, yes, let’s have another go at the War of 1812 on a trip that was supposed to show how much better Romney would be for the Anglo-American alliance than Obama.
Unfortunately there is no way to get him out of Britain without a formal complaint by the UK Foreign Secretary. The State Department would love to deal with this, but can’t for political reasons. I would imagine that Mrs Clinton needed a stiff drink after reading about it.
Mr. Cameron’s comment stings worse than is obvious as Salt Lake City, where Romney’s Olympics were held, has the same status among Mormons as the Vatican for Catholics, and Romney is a bishop in the Mormon Church.
I knew he was making a barbed comment about Salt Lake City 2002. I know Romney came in as CEO after the scandal but it still stunk of corruption.I dont have much interest in the Winter Games but I wouldn’t mind if Sydney was given the summer games in perpetuity!
Oh, I doubt Cameron was aware of the Mormon connection, I was just appreciating it.
Yes, there should be permanent venues to eliminate the greed and corruption on the IOC that is part of the bidding process. Greece held the Olympics and all the people got was poverty. With the policies of Osborne and Cameron, the UK may follow suit. There is no need to have all of these empty stadia littering the world’s landscape.
Luckily a lot of sports are being held in existing venues (earls court, the )2 Arena – formerly the Millennium Dome) and some of the others are temporary. The Basketball arena is being dismantled and will be used again for the 2014 Comonwealllth games in Scotland. Tere were plans at one time to send it to Rio after Commonwealth games.
Other venues like the swimming centre, will take over from older venues as national centres of excellence while the good money is being put on West Ham United to take over the Olympic stadium (It has been built with some temporary capacity). The Hockey stadium is being moved to another location after the games too. As for the velodrome we can’t have enough of those!
All in all it’s not likely that there will be much that will crumble to dust once the games are over…… Hopefully
It is nice to know that they planned to reduce the waste that normally follows these spectacles.
Yes, it does look like there will be a need for velodromes in Britain as more people are drawn into the sport.
And another being built in Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games. It’s going to be called the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome
That would be natural as he really has raised the level of the sport in Britain and awareness of its existence. The UK team is certainly in position to do very well in this Olympics.