The monstering of Ye Shiwen: my article in the Guardian

There's something about the principle of fair play that's taking a knock during these Olympics. What happened to the presumption of innocence until found guilty?

An unpleasant wave of hostility has picked on one group of athletes while others in the Western camps are rightly praised for their stunning performances. Teenage swimmers Ruta Meilutyte (Lithuania) and Katie Ledecky were allowed their outstanding wins while Ye Shiwen has undergone a pitched psychological battle in front of the world.

People keep arguing that China has the fastest, highest, longest record of sports doping despite only rejoining the Olympics in 1984 after the Cold War hiatus. Yet, after an unfortunate period when China did what everyone else had been doing for years, they changed their policy in the late 1990s and now come down hard on anyone they find breaking the rules. For those who keep insisting that China's the Big Bad in this, while the nation of Ye's accuser US swimming coach John Leonard is squeaky clean, I recommend you read these articles: here, Dr Wade Exum's report here, and here and here and here.

When British Olympic Association chair Lord Moynihan and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) exonerated Ye, BBC's Newsnight was one of several news outlets that changed tack and brought in experts to prove that China could possibly be using genetic science to cheat. If China is creating an army of genetically modified super-freaks, then why aren't they smashing their way to golds in every sports discipline? Where are China's champion runners?

If evidence arises proving that an athlete has been doped, then do throw the book at them. But let's not go down the Minority Report road of sportsmanship. That way madness and prejudice lie.

The Guardian published my article on Saturday — 2nd August 2012

The monstering of swimmer Ye Shiwen says much about declining superpowers

Chinese Olympic athletes are people, not comic book villains. Something's going on when one nation is so singled out

It's not cricket, you know. There's something fiendishly cruel about the monstering of 16-year-old Ye Shiwen, who won a swimming gold in Saturday's 400m individual medley. First she was labelled a cheat in front of a global audience and then refused an apology when repeated drugs tests show up clean as a whistle.

First off the block was the host nation's BBC commentator Clare Balding, who sprinted to the worst conclusion on zero evidence within seconds of Ye's record-breaking win with her loaded comment: "How many questions will there be, Mark, about somebody who can suddenly swim so much faster than she has ever swum before?"

With the starter pistol thus fired for the media witchhunt to find Ye guilty of winning while Chinese, in they all piled. ...

More HERE.

Another interesting incident you may have missed: in fencing, South Korea's Shin A Lam lost her gold opportunity due to us putting a 15 yr-old volunteer in charge of timekeeping. The kid allowed more than the one second left on the clock, a sudden extension that allowed Shin's German opponent to strike the hit and knock her out of the contest. And then the judges allowed it to stand!

Brendan O'Neill In the Telegraph on Chinese as freaks and robots.

Musa Okwonga in the Independent: If they're Brits we call it tactics.

British sportsmanship bites the dust: Ye Shiwen swimming gold-medal smear

Sour grapes or what? Where's that famous British sporting sense of fair play? Having failed to make the doping charge stick, the liberal media are now insinuating that there must be genetic engineering behind Ye Shiwen's stunning 400-metre gold-medal win on Saturday in the individual medley.

If so, the Chinese can't be very good at it as they'd have had a squad of super-athletes smashing all the records rather than one solitary outstanding sportswoman. Selective breeding, perhaps. China could learn a thing or two from our royal family, they being so very good at It's A Knockout and playing with their ponies. And it wasn't Chinese scientists who tried to copyright the human genome for private profit.

There's something cruel about labelling this 16-year old as a cheat in front of the whole world as the BBC's Clare Balding and US swimming coach John Leonard did despite having no evidence. Poor kid comes good and now she's forever linked with an Olympics scandal. The home country's media tactic seems to be, "we'll make them choke on their victory".

The international athletes, however, have supported Ye and pointed out that it's not uncommon for swimmers to put on a spurt in their teens, as the 15-year old Lithuanian swimmer did. And it's not true that Ye outswam "a man" (shock, horror) although that would have been nice. In fact she was 23 seconds slower than Ryan Rochte but, as he slowed down in his final length when he sensed victory in the bag and she swam for all she was worth, she ended up being faster for the last 50 metres.

Meanwhile, Michael Phelps' astonishing run of 19 medals over his career — including eight in Beijing — is rightly accepted for what it is: an astonishing feat. But it's only valid when it's the US that's doing it. Dave Renton writes:

Of all the various arguments behind the suggestion that Ye Shiwen, the 16-year-old winner of the women’s 400 metre individual medley, is a drugs cheat, the most compelling is that she has reduced her time for the 100m freestyle in a year by 7 seconds. US coach John Leonard says this is an impossible rate of improvement and compares Ye Shiwen to Michael Phelps, Leonard rejected comparisons to Michael Phelps, who broke the 200m butterfly world record when he was just 15, saying the American got “consistently faster every year on a normal improvement curve”.

These are Shiwen’s best times for the 100 metre freestyle at ages 14, 15, and 16: 2010 4:33.79 / 2011 4:35.15 / 2012 4:28.43

You will notice that Shiwen’s 2012 time is quite a bit faster than her 2011 time, but barely faster than her 2010 time, i.e. like quite a lot of professional sports people her progress has not been continuous, but punctuated, with (presumably) a growth spurt coming at just the right time.

These are Phelp’s best times for the 200 metres butterfly at ages 14, 15, and 16: 1999 1:55.42 / 2000 1:56.50 / 2001 1:54.58

You’ll see exactly the same pattern of a fast time, followed by a year’s regress, followed by a world best performance.

You’ll also see that in 2011 when he broke the world record, Phelps was about 1.6% faster than he had raced as a 15 year old, and about 0.9% faster than he had been 2 years before. In Shiwen’s case the improvements were 2.5% and 0.5% – i.e. her progress is a little bit faster than Phelps’ if you compare them over 1 year but slower than him if you compare them over two.

I don’t see any significant difference between their improvement rates at all.

One comment at the Guardian (where 98% of the poll says Ye deserves an apology) reads:

Ian Thorpe: "I took five seconds off my time in the 400m freestyle from the age of 15 to 16."
Adrian Moorhouse: "At 17, I took four seconds off my best time in the 200m breaststroke"

There was a spate of doping scandals in Chinese swimming in the 1990s but the tail-end of cold war competition meant that several countries were at it, not just China. And don't forget golden boy Linford Christie's substance escapades. As Renton observes:

Nor is US elite sport exactly drug free – at the climax of the athletics, in the men’s 100 metres, American eyes are expected to turn to Justin Gatlin, winner of the US Olympic trials, and banned in 2006 for 8 years (reduced to 4 on appeal) after a positive drugs test.

Chinese improvements are in part down to the fact they that they "have no comfort zone": Chinese athletes train harder, as one British coach working with the Chinese swimmers points out.

Although not head coach, I am in the Olympic Village with the Chinese team. I must say, taking aside the performances for a moment, the vast majority of comments on this (and many other sites I am sure) are riddled with inaccuracies and speculation.

I am certainly not aware of any talent ID programme – I am coaching five swimmers on this Olympic team and three of them I selected myself when they were 13 years old. No one "advised" or told me who to select – I just used my experience and "trained eye" to spot the guys I thought would be good.

Chinese athletes train incredibly hard, harder than I can explain in words and as a coach who has placed swimmers on five different Olympic Games teams, I have never seen athletes train like this anywhere in the world.

They have an unrelenting appetite for hard work, can (and will) endure more pain for longer than their western counterparts, will guarantee to turn up for practice every single time and give their all. They are very proud of their country, they are proud to represent China and have a very team focused mentality.

Let's also not forget that this is their only avenue for income; most do not study and sport offers them a way out or a way up from where they and their families currently live in society. If their swimming fails, they fail and the family loses face.

Newsnight, which pushed the boat out last night with the genetic engineering smear, is acquiring a habit of denigrating young women in the public eye. Working single mother Shanene Thorpe had to vigorously defend herself after they depicted her as a benefit scrounger.

The drugs body, which tests all the winners, may have cleared Ye. Lord Moynihan, chair of the British Olympic Association may have said: ""She's been through Wada's programme and she's clean. That's the end of the story. Ye Shiwen deserves recognition for her talent." But the media is still at it with the Guardian sourly headlining Ye's second gold-medal swim yesterday: "Ye Shiwen calmly takes another gold amid drug claims."

Today there's another uproar concerning the Chinese, with South Korean and Indonesian badminton teams also supposedly under-playing in order to compete with the weaker teams. The Chinese team is said to have thrown their game in order not to play their compatriots in the semi-final. Unlike with the Ye Shiwen case, there may be a case to answer, as reported in the Chinese press, with claim, counter-claim, and a knee-injury.

A source with the Chinese team told Xinhua that Yu injured her right knee while doing warmup before the game. The source accused the South Korean duo of trying to lose the game in order to avoid an early meeting with the other Chinese pair, saying "the South Koreans didn't take the game seriosuly and they didn't do warmup at all before the game." "It was the South Koreans who missed their serves first," the source said.

If this proves to be true then it is appalling and needs to be knocked on the head tout suite. Whichever way this one pans out, at least we've all forgotten the scandal of the acres of empty seats at the fantabulous London Olympics.

My article in the Guardian.

The unfair smear campaign in The Slate.

David Hughes in the Telegraph on the witch-hunt started by Clare Balding.

In the Guardian, 98% of readers who voted in a poll said Ye deserves an apology. So why are respected publications and outlets keeping this up?

Here's a proper Olympics scandal. Workers living in flooded squalour and paying £18 per day for the privilege whether they're given work shifts or not.

NOTE: The People's Republic of China only competed in the Olympic Games in Helsinki 1952 and did not rejoin the summer Olympics until 1984, missing the bulk of the notorious doping rivalry between the US and Soviet bloc that was a hallmark of the Cold War.

Danny Boyle backlash: what the Right know is being said at London Olympics 2012

In all the excitement of Danny Boyle's stunning London Olympics opening ceremony, I hadn't realised there might be a second phase of pleasure to be had for us armchair enthusiasts. Shrilling out from the widespread sigh of relief that Britain did not suck in front of a billion global viewers is a crescendo of protest from a section of Britain who've had it easy for so long they've forgotten what intelligent criticism looks like: Boyle lifted that rock on Friday and look what's emerged blinking in the light.

First off the block was Tory MP Aidan Burley whose instinctive reaction to the Olympics spectacle was to decry the inclusion of all those ethnic minorities that make up the fabric of Britain as "leftie multi-cultural crap". He was quite speedy with his now notorious Tweet, while for his spiritual bredren it's been like watching a dinosaur kicked in the tail and struggling to work out what's just happened, proving that Burley's brain-stem reflex is in better new world order than his mates.

Although Rupert Murdoch sensed political correctness, he is far too sly an old fox to express anything other than graciousness. (Watch out, Danny, your card may have been marked!)

Unlike a host of ill-wishing Tweeters such as @toadmeister Toby Young who saw "a £27 million Party Political Broadcast for the Labour Party," and Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) who "Found the torch ceremony truly unpleasant and deeply unsettling. Paganistic crowd manipulation" and described the whole show as "a piss-take of a lefty wet dream".

The climax of all this fear of "Other" was the hate-fuelled piece that stood out from some otherwise quite decent coverage in the Daily Mail online. “This was supposed to be a representation of modern life in England but it is likely to be a challenge for the organisers to find an educated white middle-aged mother and black father living together with a happy family in such a set-up."

On and on it went in the same unhinged vein until the inevitable complaints prompted someone on the paper to do a heavy edit. However, polishing a turd doesn't make it any less of one.

Apart from those of us of a duskier hue and less-abled being represented, what was it that disturbed the complacency of our dinosaurs so much? "Spelling out 'NHS' is an ideological statement, like spelling out 'Marxism'." said one Tweet. "The UKshould be celebrating our traditions and heritage, not nutty socialism." said another. Who'd have thought that anyone with fellow human feelings could find the wonder that is universal healthcare — a fine British invention — so upsetting? Or assume that the notion of public ownership in an equitable organisation of society for the good of everyone is not part of our tradition and heritage?

I suppose that depends on whose tradition and heritage you mean.

To think that I'd fully expected another stitch-up for the launch, such was the utter bottom-scraping build-up, as with the governments (Labour and Coalition) who sold our democratic civil rights to the lowest bidders in order to secure the 2012 games. For all I knew, Boyle might have been another chancer just like the former health and prime ministers, now carving up the NHS for their privatised personal gain. Or the ex-Home Secretary who's now a director of G4S and running the largest private army in the world.

Or he could have been a vacuous TV showbiz mogul and given us a variation on the dismal Jubilee concert, or made an idiotic attempt to out-extravaganza Beijing on a quarter of the budget during a recession.

Instead, Boyle pulled a people's Olympics opener out of the jaws of the plundering class who'd hijacked our games and tried to rip us off at every turn. (It's only through the efforts of organisations such as 38 Degrees that some of the sponsors have been pressured into abandoning their avoidance of paying their fair share of tax.)

The opening ceremony transcended party politics and took us back to root values.

In an age where the media shamefully allows lies to go unchallenged every time a supine minister or businessman caught with his hand in the till says, "Look over there", Boyle's cri de couer is refreshing. The Tory narrative that we are skint and the poor have to pay for the bankers' continuing excesses while the Sunday Times top 1000 is worth £440bn and corporate profits are at an all-time high is surely the sort of "crowd manipulation" a principled media should be challenging.

Instead it serves up the same dead-head business class in order to naturalise a status quo where the rest of us are fodder. How often do you see or hear a trade unionist or a working-class representative with the same pundit rights as Mary Portas, the Dragons' Den gargoyles, Alan Sugar, Secret Millionaires, abusive celebrity chefs, Simon Cowell and the whole finger-wagging, knife-wielding shouty gamut of grotesques now laying down the law at every level in our culture?

When Boyle decided to have the Olympics torch entry to the stadium flanked by the thousands of workers who built it, he was saying a big screw you to the business chiefs who Pollard, Young, Burley et al would have had celebrated on this occasion rather than their workers: the construction bosses who sneer at 'elf and safety, who destroy lives and blacklist anyone with enough of a conscience to seek to make the industry safer. You have more chance of dying on a British construction site than you do in Afghanistan.

Interesting that one slip of the mask can elicit such a howl of agony. The liberal press is unable to offer an analysis and, unlike the right, seems oblivious to the case being made, producing instead meaningless drivel like this.

On Friday, Boyle shone a searchlight allowing us to take stock of where we are now. The elegy was beautiful but we should do something to halt what he flagged up as being lost.

There are two great things to have come out of the London Olympics so far: the Thames cable car and the knowledge that there are still some brilliant people who can carve out a bit of space for the rest of us.

Well done Danny Boyle: reading the London Olympics 2012

Ian Sinclair in LRB: My Olympics.

Sour grapes over Ye Shiwen's swimming Gold. Although BBC commentators leapt to conclusions, it was an interview with the US coach that sparked fury following Clare Balding's intemperate accusation within seconds of the win on television.

Well done Danny Boyle: reading the London Olympics opening ceremony 2012

I'm not so sure Danny Boyle's expected establishment gong is as much of a dead cert as pundits assume now we've had a chance to unpack the movie director's critical state-of-the-nation London Olympics narrative. Last night's £27m opening extravaganza temporarily won me over from furious cynicism following the games' hijacking by Locog's pet corporations and their civil rights clampdown.

I should have realised — trust the creatives. The CREATIVES, not the crude showmen who might have turned in a vapid series of set pieces going no-where. I'm sorry I misjudged you Danny — the boy done good. This ceremony may have begun with a bucolic paradise with peasants tending their flocks but it ended with a vast setting sun as troglodyte primitives danced it into extinction.

Among the crowd-pleasers were woven some awesome subversive elements. Our unique selling points as a nation may be our musical back-catalogue, James Bond and the Queen, but even these were nicely handled. After watching Her Maj parachute into the stadium, I was hoping she might turn out to be the mystery cauldron igniter, maybe kicking a flaming football into the target, but Boyle had far more democratic plans for his climax.

He started with Kenneth Branagh as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a benign engineer kicking off the industrial revolution before top-hatted capitalists (reminiscent of the ones in Eisenstein's Strike) mess it up, tearing up the turf and turning the peasants off the land.

Branagh recites Caliban's speech from Shakespeare's The Tempest:

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

As some have noticed, this is what Caliban says just before he tries to kill "an imperial innovator who took away his island". Hmm, I wonder what Boyle is saying here.

Filling the stadium with five huge chimneys and factories and foundries to the sound of 1,000 drummers, we're reminded that British power came from its industrial (r)evolution and the people who laboured in it. Of course, most of yer actual working class were working their arses off on stage for free, not sitting in the comfy seats they couldn't afford.

But they were represented, hammering drums and metal, actually making things, while the tool-free capitalists worked thin air, much as they do with their banking tricks.

What they eventually end up with is the forging of the five rings of the Olympic symbol (yeah, the one we're all banned from using even though we paid for most of it) rising above the audience like something hellish out of Mordor.

A parade of Windrush immigrants, 1960s cultural explosion (Beatles), cockneys and the ordinary people who helped make Britain, made the most of a diverse range of the population and ensured they weren't rendered invisible. Boyle might have had an eye on Brecht who asked, "Who built the seven gates of Thebes?".

However, it was the NHS segment that gave me the most squeeing pleasure as Boyle stuck it to Richard Branson and the privatisers. Melding the NHS and children's literature, a battalion of nurses and doctors wheeled in hospital beds occupied by children (two to a bed — how it will look when the Tories get through with it).

A childcatcher (Maggie Thatcher?), a terrifyingly oversized Voldemort and assorted monsters (coalition creeps and Big Biz) harry the children while NHS staff attempt to fight them off.


Best of all, who did Danny choose to read during this scene? None other than JK Rowling herself, not only creator of the monstrous Voldemort and most successful commercial British writer, but famously a supporter of the welfare state who sends her own children to state schools. What's more, she doesn't avoid tax on her vast fortune but spreads it out. Unlike certain others now running the nation. Danny, this leftie salutes you.

Rowling read from J M Barrie's Peter Pan. J M Barrie donated the income from his book to children's hospitals.

And the music to accompany this warning to the forces of evil to get their mitts off our NHS? Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. Significance? Tubular Bells was the phenomenal seller in the early 1970s which made Branson's Virgin empire (he even named one of his Virgin America Airlines planes "Tubular Belle"). Branson's Virgin, now scheming to run the PRIVATISED NHS SERVICE, including children's healthcare!!! Kudos, Danny!

Also noted: national hero in his own head, Tony Blair, who's been jonesing for inclusion in the Olympics all week and is looking to carve up the NHS with his Mee Healthcare company, didn't even get a mention.

(Pic montage by Eddie Truman)

But the CND did, its symbol formed out of multi-cultural dancers — including some disabled — to a musical medley of our greatest pop and rock hits.

As did Tim Berners-Lee who invented teh interwebz. (Brits also invented carbon-capture coal-burning technology but we haven't built even one.)

Abide With Me was sung to an Anish Kapoor-influenced dying sun, a reference to Boyle's movie Sunshine. The song is not only used as the rugby anthem and at FA Cup finals, but it's sung at the funerals of miners. Or mines. Or our entire productivity and everything we've known.

After the athletes paraded in, the event ended with a spectacular cauldron-lighting ceremony, carried out, not by a tired old sleb, but by the next generation of athletes: seven young men and women.


Rupert Murdoch tweeted that it was 'a little too politically correct'. At least he wasn't as crudely reactionary as the Tory who complained about multi-cultural representation and was buried in an avalanche of tweets.

Meanwhile, outside the Olympic Park, the Critical Mass bike protest was being kettled and intimidated — so unlike Beijing which British commentators never tire of sneering at. The furious cynicism is still there for Dow, McDonalds, Coke, G4S and the rest of the greedy tax-avoiding exploiting bastards (only £700m out of the £9.3 bn cost is funded by the sponsors), but the performers and athletes are the stars of the show from now on.



I noticed after I'd written this that the Arctic Monkey's first song had the lyric refrain "1984", so Orwell was present last night. Here's another gem I missed from Alex Wolff in Sports Illustrated: "Somewhere in the cacophony of last night, during what might have been the world's largest Twitter storm, this nugget emerged: Hey Jude was No. 1 on the charts the day Smith and Carlos raised their fists -- and that single's B-side was Revolution." Thanks to Noel Currid for this.

[Okay, okay, Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, not the internet. I'm still impressed.]

Not forgetting Danny's writer, Frank Cottrell-Boyce who did such a great job, including introducing Boyle to Henry Jennings's Pandemonium.

Ian Sinclair in LRB: My Olympics.

I wondered when this was going to happen. Danny Boyle Backlash: London Olympics 2012

Must read Chris T-T's hilarous sharp take on the gruesome Closing Ceremony.

A Routemaster named Dystopia

Here's what I wrote in 2008 on where the London Olympics were headed.

And here's what I wrote last month.

Spooky, possums. Or maybe I was just paying attention.

But even I never guessed they'd stick major military hardware on people's homes (not the homes of the wealthy lining the Thames, note).

Protesters are having to get special legal training to know their rights. Heaven forfend that this should happen ...



Locog tries to take over the internet. Their rules here. Oh yeah ...?

London Olympics 2012 pastoral opening ceremony: sucking at every level

UPDATE 12 July 2012 at the end of this post.

Let them snort coke. It was announced today that the centrepiece of the London Olympics 2012 opening ceremony is to be a pastoral idyll. Sheep & cows will star — Marie Antoinette would be proud.

The fact that Britain was the world's first industrial nation with the first working class will take up ten minutes of the three-hour mediaeval fantasy opener — costing £27mn and directed by Danny Boyle — puts the politics into a screwed-up perspective. I wonder if Highland clearances and enclosures will feature, although I am reminded that modern clearances have already taken place with local authority housing tenants banished hundreds of miles away from their Tower Hamlets home. Not to mention the geographical exclusion zones that allow the games' organisers to bully small local businesses with the temerity to mock up their own olympic rings from flowers or hula-hoops.

How is it possible for such a major event to suck at every level? I mean at EVERY level. Even the Olympic Torch. Who cares if some of the 8,000 torch-bearers have emulated the sponsors (as above, so below) and tried to make a few bucks from their torches? It's penny ante stuff compared with the money to be made from fleecing a captive audience with overpriced food and drink (expect your water bottles to be confiscated at the border) and fewer than ten ATMs in the entire Olympic Park now that VISA have had the other twenty cash dispensers belonging to rivals ripped out.

Far more significant to the ethics of the event was the Olympic Torch route taking in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. No mention, of course, that Lewis was purchased by James Matheson (later Sir) in 1844 with his narcotics money made from selling opium to China alongside his partner William Jardine. Matheson created his own rural idyll by expelling 500 locals from Lewis in 1851 (1,771 in total), packing them off to Canada, and building Lews Castle at Stornoway for himself. So the Tower Hamlets clearances have at least one Olympic-connected precedent.

The sponsors comprise a rogues' gallery of some of the most despised corporations in the world. Food giants Coca-Cola and McDonalds — making us fat on crap (very athletic); Dow Chemicals who still haven't cleared up the mess and human misery resulting from the Union Carbide chemical explosion at Bhopal in 1984 which killed 3,000 within the first few weeks and injured half a million more; the ArcelorMittal steel giant whose queasy acquisition of Romania's national steel factories required the help of Tony Blair to whose party he'd donated £250,000; Adidas uses worker-abusing Li & Fung; perversely, ATOS, the French company chucking sick people off incapacity allowance is a big name behind the Paralympics (Jon Ronson video report here); BP whose corruption under Lord Browne and prior blowout in Azerbaijan two years before the Deepwater Horizon gush in the Gulf of Mexico is documented in Greg Palast's Vultures' Picnic.

Although the sponsors paid only two per cent of the total Olympics cost, they are receiving an estimated 38 per cent of the tickets while the actual talent — the athletes themselves — have been allocated a parsimonious two tickets for their own events. The ticket sales have been a long-running fiasco.


Then there's the militarisation of the event in the name of security. Missiles located on blocks of flats — Bow Quarter, a large apartment complex close to the Olympic stadium and Fred Wigg Tower, a 16 storey residential tower block in Walthamstow, east London — include a load that don't work in bad weather; G4S, the world's biggest security company in the world (actually an army) acted as hired guns for illegal Israeli settlers and will police the London games despite being accused of human rights infringements; HMS Ocean warship moored in the Thames; promises to shoot down hijacked planes even if they're over London's intensive urban sprawl: this is all increasingly reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's dystopian film Brazil, itself based on George Orwell's 1984.

And don't get me started on the transport nightmare expected to start a full TWO WEEKS before the start as media and athletes arrive. My home city turns into a no-go area for drivers; getting to the events; and the press are carping about stressed-out public transport drivers getting a measly £500 bonus. Cheap at twice the price.

But with several Goldman Sachs bankers — past and present — associated with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Locog) board, what do you expect?

If this turns out to be the final Olympics before everything turns to shit and World War 3 erupts for real, it will actually have been most apt and I congratulate the organisers for their cynicism and prescience. Have a nice day.

Bread and circuses but not for everyone: In this age of austerity and cuts imposed on those most in need, the government and Olympics organisers have some strange priorities. We found £11bn for the games, yet British people are struggling to survive. Interviews by Kate Belgrave.

Tax swindle at the "ethical" Olympics

The Austerity Games 23rd July, Hackney Marshes

Dave Renton on The Neo-liberal Games.

Comments on the games including the destruction of potential assets to the community such as the new bridge over the A11.

UPDATE 12 JULY 2012: It gets worser and worser, even.
G4S assured government of finding 10,000 security staff only two weeks ago, now admit failure. Army to send in 3,500 troops just back from Afghanistan.
Locals lose fight to halt ground-to-air missiles being based on their roof at Fred Wigg Tower. We note that there are none on the posh blocks lining the Thames.
Democracy and freedom of speech bite the dust as banned items at the Olympics include bottles of water and Che Guevara T-shirts.
Chips banned as MacDonalds demands right to be sole purveyor of fries at the Olympics.
Politicians trough down as MPs accept free top tickets, including from BT despite conflict of interest.
All the fat cats are larding up while poor musicians are expected to perform for free.
More exploitation.
And now a new TONY BLAIR SCARE ...
Not only back but rumoured to be showcasing his private clinic NHS bloodfest at the Olympics: Mee Healthcare (of course!

Madam Miaow on the radio: Reith lectures, China and the Body Beautiful

Hmm, I was going to video me performing the following poem and stick it up on YouTube but after Tuesday morning you won't be able to check what I'm on about. So until I get around to it, I'm posting the poem here.

This year's Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4 were given by Prof Jonathan Spence on the subject of Chinese Vistas and the producers had asked me to attend the three UK recordings (one of them was in New York and they weren't springing for a trip, boo!). The idea was that I ask questions as one of the named guests. Just so happens that the first two coincided with my lovely St Ives trip leaving the last one: China and the Body Beautiful, dealing largely with the Olympics.

It was an opportunity for Chinese to participate in public life, in the culture, so I went along. And the result is as you see below. I did get to speak right at the end of the programme.
Fourth Reith lecture. Chinese Vistas: The Body Beautiful Hurry up, though. Only available to listen until Tuesday morning.

WREATH LECTURE
I was excited
I’d been invited
To The Cultural Media Event of the year.
The annual Reith Lectures.
Not just to consume and admire
But to speak and aspire.
A BBC for the BBC,
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Had invited me
A British Born Chinese
To pose a question at the Reith and
Have it considered by great minds across the ether.
To participate like I was one of Them, “In the fold”,
A sui generis in the mold
Of a new rising force in the country
To talk about a new rising force in the world,
This year’s topic: China.
I’m a BBC for the BBC
New on the block, unfathomed, free,
Off the peg, ready-made,
Waiting all my life for the day
I would be called.
No longer the barbarian at the gates
The burglar in the hall
The Eastern invader
The Mongol Hordes
I was at Lords Cricket Ground
Hallelujah! I was lost and now I’m found.

I was excited
A troth was plighted.
We were recording the show on the hallowed estate
Of the MCC for a national debate
For the flagship BBC radio channel
Lords Cricket Ground, knackers
Under wrap in flannel
White male wet dream anachronism
Balls polished
The crack of willow
Against leather
Thwack! Eee-er, eee-er
The whack and squeal of balls polished again
And again.
And again.
Nuthin’ strange there, then
That’s just white men
And their normal ways.

I was excited
I was delighted
Before kick-off
The swanky reception
Nibbling at canapes
Perfecting my conception
Of tonight’s subject: China and the Body Beautiful, sport, the Olympics.
I’m cutting flab, tightening syntax.
Drinking sensibly
Coz red wine
Can dull the mind, make you whine and slur
And forget what spurred
You on in the first place,
Can make you forget your words,
And we all know you cannot drink and drive
Your words home.
I worked hard at them,
Every last moment
Chiselling my mini-masterpiece
A polemical miniature
In a nutshell
Educating and entertaining
Just the way the Man said it.
Institutional bores can shove it
I know Lord Reith, father of the BBC,
Would love it.
So I craft my infotainment gem
Making it short enough
To survive the edit
And to my credit I was
Shorter by a country mile
Than some of the waffling and pontification
And plain love of their own voice of authority
We would be hearing that night.

I was excited
A wrong was righted.
I am walked into the room
And put in my place,
No longer faceless in the crowd
But up front and proud
In the first row.
There it is,
A sheet of A4 with my name in big black second-coming font
Reserving my seat.
I’m on heat at the sight
I’ll be up all night remembering this.
Too cool to take a photo like a tourist
I take a snapshot with my mind
And store it in my inner iPhoto album
Titled – “Victories I have won”.
Only two photos so far.
This one and the fistfight when I was six.
I will be called to speak
By the chairperson who has read my gist
I am told she has me on her list.
I will be called by the legendary “Sue Lawley, Sue Lawley”
BBC Radio 4 stalwart, arbiter and queenpin.
I look around and check what fine company I am keeping.
Director generals and chairmen abound
I am the only Chinese Chosen One around,
Expected to speak
For the fraternity
An entire race depends on me.
I wonder who will win.

I was excited
My goal was sighted
My name’s on the chair
Who says the system’s not fair?
I plant my behind on my name
Like I am sitting on my own face
Kissing my own butt
Better mine than someone else’s
But I don’t mind, the establishment’s kind
If you are ultimately a Truth seeker.
Sue Lawley starts the show,
Introduces the speaker
On the subject of China and the Body Beautiful, sport, the Olympic games.
My eyes are alight, my thoughts aflame.
“Professor Jonathan Spence
Of Yale”.
My admiration is immense
I have his books, he makes a lot of sense,
Knowing what’s right, defending the poor,
Twenty minutes later
He ends with me longing for more.
Yay! (applause)
Sue throws it open to the floor
And picks her first questioner.
It’s Sir Sumthin’-Or-Other
A god on Mount Olympus
Or high-up in the Olympics committee
Same thing this evening
And he talks and he talks
I don’t understand
Even though English is my first language

Sue calls the next and the next til they all merge into
One red-faced, pink-eyed chubby well-fed bundle of done-thinking, done-feeling,
Done-living.
My head is spinning, my senses reeling.
“Blah, blah, blah
Human rights
Blah, blah, blah,
They hate the disabled, you know”
(Coz in Britain we’re supportive of our weak and our old)
“Blah, blah, blah
Whine, whine, whine,
Moan, moan, moan
Tibet or not Tibet
That is the question.”
If that is the question, the answer is surely not to bet
The farm on feudal theocracy.
I thought we all wanted democracy.
Hey, that’s what you said.
Now you’re telling me China ain’t parta the civilised world?
Somewhere a Union Jack’s unfurled.

Coz this is the country of Magna Carta
No longer.
The authorities here are growing stronger.
The Meaning of Life is 42
42 days detention without charge
42 days of your life writ large
42 days without a home
42 days because politicians lost their back bone.
Rendition to a torture zone
Your wife and your kids don’t know where you’ve gone
Guilty until proved innocent
Where sucking your teeth while black is an arrestable offence
A copper scrutinising every email you ever sent
Gotta fuck for food, steal for rent
Freedom of speech? What a cheek!
Satan could sue the bible for libel
Get a million pound payoff and a House of Lords title.
DNA records, CCTVs,
Media frenzied heeby-jeebies,
Asbo-land, tapping phones,
Booming business, crippling loans
For school fees in the land of the free
Hey, why you picking on the Chinese
It’s not us starting World War Three
You’ll free this land?
Iran, Iraq, I scrammed.


I was benighted
The night was blighted.
The Professor talked about Chinese physique
Once thin and attenuated, deflated and weak,
Now growing in stature, reaching its peak,
In pride, in power.
No wonder you’re all sour.
The only monster here has eyes of green
Ain’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?
It’s late in the hour,
Still Sue Lawley calls the faithful of
The Rational Front
One by one
They lecture us on human rights
When we’re giving up ours without a fight.
What happened to the Body Beautiful, to sport,
What happened to tonight’s topic, in short?
Yikes! What’s happening to the time?
They had their turn now I want mine.
The ticking clock counts down
Time dessicates and runs through my fingers
Only five minutes to go and every contributor lingers.
Everyone speaking sounds white and posh
Braying and wittering and talking tosh.
One Chinese woman sneaks in from the floor
And lands a killer punch on one of the bores.
Good for you, sister.
Oh god, we all look the same.
A producer gesticulates, “Sue, you missed her.
That’s not the one. She’s over here,”
He’s pointing at me.
But Sue doesn’t seem to see.

I thought I was set-up
Now I’m being ignored
No chance for a comeback on my question
No time to explore
No opportunity for illumination, expansion,
Gotta make every second count
Breathe in deep
Feel the tension mount.
Pray my soul to keep calm,
Stick to the truth you won’t come to no harm
I. Stick. Up. My. Hand.
The only guest to have to do it.
A humiliation, I knew it,
But it was a dirty job and someone had to do it.

Sue doesn’t announce me
That’s OK
I still remember my own name
And I do it for her

Deep breath
“Thank you Professor Spence.
I am tall, robust,
And not at all attenuated. Sadly.”
A ripple of laughter
“And my feet are size seven. Unbound.”
Louder laughter, I love that sound,
The wake awakes.
“I’m a BBC ...”
And Sue who has already explained eloquently
What a BBC is, dives in and asks me to explain
In case someone mistakes me for British Broadcasting Corporation.
“British Born Chinese,” I assure
Although I could equally have said more,
I could have said “I presented a series on Radio 4, Sue.
On the history of the Chinese in Britain so I’m a bit like you,
A BBC and a BBC”
But I don’t. Coz that way madness lies.
“Sorry, Sue. Enough about me.
Ahem. I couldn’t help noticing
The Chinese smurfs who guarded the Olympic flame
Were tall, healthy, handsome, hot ...”
Sue interjects again,
“This is entirely subjective.”
Yes, Sue. It’s subjective coz it’s my question.
“Ahem, tall, healthy, handsome, hot,
Reeking stamina,
Pounding out the miles on foot
While, the bobbies on bicycles ... were not.
This reverses the stereotype of the Chinese as small and plain
Due to a genetics rather than diet and confidence.
I also noticed ...”
Sue interrupts a third time, the bum’s rush,
“Hurry up, please, we’re running out of time.”
Well, whose fault is that, Sue?
I’ll give you a clue
I think it’s you and where you put me in the queue.
I smile. Deep breath. I have worth.
“I also noticed the hostility towards the Olympic smurfs
Bore no relation to what we saw on camera.
Is this reaction part of a wider fear,
Of the Chinese becoming physically stronger as a metaphor for economic strength?”
A ripple, a murmering and a stirring at length
Brains ticking, souls whirring,
Hearts thumping, me purring
As my arrow finds its target.
We have communication.
The professor smiles and has his say
But it’s all too late in the day.
Sue draws the night to a close.
Thwack! Eee-er, eee-er.
Whack and squeal
That was the sound of my balls being polished
Into oblivion.
Women have balls, they’re just higher,
Ethnics have wit, we’re just drier.
Sue’s so snippy, I mustn’t look chippy,
I wanna fight back coz I’m not a damned hippy.
An ectoplasmic wraith of my hand snakes out
And grabs the Fragrant One by her swan-like throat
“Take your goddammed claw off my balls, you goddamed creepy-crawley,
Sue Lawley,” I think to myself.
Hear that laughter, Sue?
They heard something new
And an earlier inclusion might have allowed
An outcome more in line with Lord Reith’s intentions,
To inform, entertain and explain.
Instead of retreading the same old lack of invention.
Boring, worn, turgid,
A political agenda
Turning every Chinese into a China defender.
Instead of sticking me at the end a the show.
I offer you something new.
But Sue, you never write, you never call,
You don’t see me at all.
A BBC for the BBC
Wreath Lecture
RIP

All four Reith Lectures on Radio 4
Reith Lecture transcript here

Off to St Ives on Wednesday for a stand-up gig at the opening night of their first ever comedy club. Wish me luck, guys.

Madam Miaow on the radio: Reith lectures, China and the Body Beautiful

BBC Reith Lecture 2008: China and the Body Beautiful

Hmm, I was going to video me performing the following poem and stick it up on YouTube but after Tuesday morning you won't be able to check what I'm on about. So until I get around to it, I'm posting the poem here.

This year's Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4 were given by Prof Jonathan Spence on the subject of Chinese Vistas and the producers had asked me to attend the three UK recordings (one of them was in New York and they weren't springing for a trip, boo!). The idea was that I ask questions as one of the named guests. Just so happens that the first two coincided with my lovely St Ives trip leaving the last one: China and the Body Beautiful, dealing largely with the Olympics.

It was an opportunity for Chinese to participate in public life, in the culture, so I went along. And the result is as you see below. I did get to speak right at the end of the programme.
Fourth Reith lecture. Chinese Vistas: The Body Beautiful Hurry up, though. Only available to listen until Tuesday morning.

WREATH LECTURE
I was excited
I’d been invited
To The Cultural Media Event of the year.
The annual Reith Lectures.
Not just to consume and admire
But to speak and aspire.
A BBC for the BBC,
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Had invited me
A British Born Chinese
To pose a question at the Reith and
Have it considered by great minds across the ether.
To participate like I was one of Them, “In the fold”,
A sui generis in the mold
Of a new rising force in the country
To talk about a new rising force in the world,
This year’s topic: China.
I’m a BBC for the BBC
New on the block, unfathomed, free,
Off the peg, ready-made,
Waiting all my life for the day
I would be called.
No longer the barbarian at the gates
The burglar in the hall
The Eastern invader
The Mongol Hordes
I was at Lords Cricket Ground
Hallelujah! I was lost and now I’m found.

I was excited
A troth was plighted.
We were recording the show on the hallowed estate
Of the MCC for a national debate
For the flagship BBC radio channel
Lords Cricket Ground, knackers
Under wrap in flannel
White male wet dream anachronism
Balls polished
The crack of willow
Against leather
Thwack! Eee-er, eee-er
The whack and squeal of balls polished again
And again.
And again.
Nuthin’ strange there, then
That’s just white men
And their normal ways.

I was excited
I was delighted
Before kick-off
The swanky reception
Nibbling at canapes
Perfecting my conception
Of tonight’s subject: China and the Body Beautiful, sport, the Olympics.
I’m cutting flab, tightening syntax.
Drinking sensibly
Coz red wine
Can dull the mind, make you whine and slur
And forget what spurred
You on in the first place,
Can make you forget your words,
And we all know you cannot drink and drive
Your words home.
I worked hard at them,
Every last moment
Chiselling my mini-masterpiece
A polemical miniature
In a nutshell
Educating and entertaining
Just the way the Man said it.
Institutional bores can shove it
I know Lord Reith, father of the BBC,
Would love it.
So I craft my infotainment gem
Making it short enough
To survive the edit
And to my credit I was
Shorter by a country mile
Than some of the waffling and pontification
And plain love of their own voice of authority
We would be hearing that night.

I was excited
A wrong was righted.
I am walked into the room
And put in my place,
No longer faceless in the crowd
But up front and proud
In the first row.
There it is,
A sheet of A4 with my name in big black second-coming font
Reserving my seat.
I’m on heat at the sight
I’ll be up all night remembering this.
Too cool to take a photo like a tourist
I take a snapshot with my mind
And store it in my inner iPhoto album
Titled – “Victories I have won”.
Only two photos so far.
This one and the fistfight when I was six.
I will be called to speak
By the chairperson who has read my gist
I am told she has me on her list.
I will be called by the legendary “Sue Lawley, Sue Lawley”
BBC Radio 4 stalwart, arbiter and queenpin.
I look around and check what fine company I am keeping.
Director generals and chairmen abound
I am the only Chinese Chosen One around,
Expected to speak
For the fraternity
An entire race depends on me.
I wonder who will win.

I was excited
My goal was sighted
My name’s on the chair
Who says the system’s not fair?
I plant my behind on my name
Like I am sitting on my own face
Kissing my own butt
Better mine than someone else’s
But I don’t mind, the establishment’s kind
If you are ultimately a Truth seeker.
Sue Lawley starts the show,
Introduces the speaker
On the subject of China and the Body Beautiful, sport, the Olympic games.
My eyes are alight, my thoughts aflame.
“Professor Jonathan Spence
Of Yale”.
My admiration is immense
I have his books, he makes a lot of sense,
Knowing what’s right, defending the poor,
Twenty minutes later
He ends with me longing for more.
Yay! (applause)
Sue throws it open to the floor
And picks her first questioner.
It’s Sir Sumthin’-Or-Other
A god on Mount Olympus
Or high-up in the Olympics committee
Same thing this evening
And he talks and he talks
I don’t understand
Even though English is my first language

Sue calls the next and the next til they all merge into
One red-faced, pink-eyed chubby well-fed bundle of done-thinking, done-feeling,
Done-living.
My head is spinning, my senses reeling.
“Blah, blah, blah
Human rights
Blah, blah, blah,
They hate the disabled, you know”
(Coz in Britain we’re supportive of our weak and our old)
“Blah, blah, blah
Whine, whine, whine,
Moan, moan, moan
Tibet or not Tibet
That is the question.”
If that is the question, the answer is surely not to bet
The farm on feudal theocracy.
I thought we all wanted democracy.
Hey, that’s what you said.
Now you’re telling me China ain’t parta the civilised world?
Somewhere a Union Jack’s unfurled.

Coz this is the country of Magna Carta
No longer.
The authorities here are growing stronger.
The Meaning of Life is 42
42 days detention without charge
42 days of your life writ large
42 days without a home
42 days because politicians lost their back bone.
Rendition to a torture zone
Your wife and your kids don’t know where you’ve gone
Guilty until proved innocent
Where sucking your teeth while black is an arrestable offence
A copper scrutinising every email you ever sent
Gotta fuck for food, steal for rent
Freedom of speech? What a cheek!
Satan could sue the bible for libel
Get a million pound payoff and a House of Lords title.
DNA records, CCTVs,
Media frenzied heeby-jeebies,
Asbo-land, tapping phones,
Booming business, crippling loans
For school fees in the land of the free
Hey, why you picking on the Chinese
It’s not us starting World War Three
You’ll free this land?
Iran, Iraq, I scrammed.


I was benighted
The night was blighted.
The Professor talked about Chinese physique
Once thin and attenuated, deflated and weak,
Now growing in stature, reaching its peak,
In pride, in power.
No wonder you’re all sour.
The only monster here has eyes of green
Ain’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?
It’s late in the hour,
Still Sue Lawley calls the faithful of
The Rational Front
One by one
They lecture us on human rights
When we’re giving up ours without a fight.
What happened to the Body Beautiful, to sport,
What happened to tonight’s topic, in short?
Yikes! What’s happening to the time?
They had their turn now I want mine.
The ticking clock counts down
Time dessicates and runs through my fingers
Only five minutes to go and every contributor lingers.
Everyone speaking sounds white and posh
Braying and wittering and talking tosh.
One Chinese woman sneaks in from the floor
And lands a killer punch on one of the bores.
Good for you, sister.
Oh god, we all look the same.
A producer gesticulates, “Sue, you missed her.
That’s not the one. She’s over here,”
He’s pointing at me.
But Sue doesn’t seem to see.

I thought I was set-up
Now I’m being ignored
No chance for a comeback on my question
No time to explore
No opportunity for illumination, expansion,
Gotta make every second count
Breathe in deep
Feel the tension mount.
Pray my soul to keep calm,
Stick to the truth you won’t come to no harm
I. Stick. Up. My. Hand.
The only guest to have to do it.
A humiliation, I knew it,
But it was a dirty job and someone had to do it.

Sue doesn’t announce me
That’s OK
I still remember my own name
And I do it for her

Deep breath
“Thank you Professor Spence.
I am tall, robust,
And not at all attenuated. Sadly.”
A ripple of laughter
“And my feet are size seven. Unbound.”
Louder laughter, I love that sound,
The wake awakes.
“I’m a BBC ...”
And Sue who has already explained eloquently
What a BBC is, dives in and asks me to explain
In case someone mistakes me for British Broadcasting Corporation.
“British Born Chinese,” I assure
Although I could equally have said more,
I could have said “I presented a series on Radio 4, Sue.
On the history of the Chinese in Britain so I’m a bit like you,
A BBC and a BBC”
But I don’t. Coz that way madness lies.
“Sorry, Sue. Enough about me.
Ahem. I couldn’t help noticing
The Chinese smurfs who guarded the Olympic flame
Were tall, healthy, handsome, hot ...”
Sue interjects again,
“This is entirely subjective.”
Yes, Sue. It’s subjective coz it’s my question.
“Ahem, tall, healthy, handsome, hot,
Reeking stamina,
Pounding out the miles on foot
While, the bobbies on bicycles ... were not.
This reverses the stereotype of the Chinese as small and plain
Due to a genetics rather than diet and confidence.
I also noticed ...”
Sue interrupts a third time, the bum’s rush,
“Hurry up, please, we’re running out of time.”
Well, whose fault is that, Sue?
I’ll give you a clue
I think it’s you and where you put me in the queue.
I smile. Deep breath. I have worth.
“I also noticed the hostility towards the Olympic smurfs
Bore no relation to what we saw on camera.
Is this reaction part of a wider fear,
Of the Chinese becoming physically stronger as a metaphor for economic strength?”
A ripple, a murmering and a stirring at length
Brains ticking, souls whirring,
Hearts thumping, me purring
As my arrow finds its target.
We have communication.
The professor smiles and has his say
But it’s all too late in the day.
Sue draws the night to a close.
Thwack! Eee-er, eee-er.
Whack and squeal
That was the sound of my balls being polished
Into oblivion.
Women have balls, they’re just higher,
Ethnics have wit, we’re just drier.
Sue’s so snippy, I mustn’t look chippy,
I wanna fight back coz I’m not a damned hippy.
An ectoplasmic wraith of my hand snakes out
And grabs the Fragrant One by her swan-like throat
“Take your goddammed claw off my balls, you goddamed creepy-crawley,
Sue Lawley,” I think to myself.
Hear that laughter, Sue?
They heard something new
And an earlier inclusion might have allowed
An outcome more in line with Lord Reith’s intentions,
To inform, entertain and explain.
Instead of retreading the same old lack of invention.
Boring, worn, turgid,
A political agenda
Turning every Chinese into a China defender.
Instead of sticking me at the end a the show.
I offer you something new.
But Sue, you never write, you never call,
You don’t see me at all.
A BBC for the BBC
Wreath Lecture
RIP

All four Reith Lectures on Radio 4
Reith Lecture transcript here

Off to St Ives on Wednesday for a stand-up gig at the opening night of their first ever comedy club. Wish me luck, guys.

Madam Miaow on the radio: world leaders at the Olympics

Stop me before I broadcast again!

Like the song says, I'm just a girl who can't say no. Hence my appearance (against my better judgement) on tonight's BBC World Service programme, "World Have Your Say".

Tonight we were mostly discussing the Olympics, and host Ross Atkins asked if we thought our leaders should attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Gordon Brown, sly dog that he is, has had an appointment washing his hair (or whatever) marked in his diary for months. But he insists it's not a boycott. Does this man want to have his cake and eat it or what?!

My answer: yes. And let's see how this rebounds for the 2012 Olympics when everyone who's suffered at the hands of the US and Britain learns from the Free Tibet protesters, and then some!

Anyhow, you can listen to the podcast for seven days:
World Have Your Say: Olympic Boycott

Next week I'm on "World Shut Your Mouth".

Madam Miaow on the radio: world leaders at the Olympics

Stop me before I broadcast again!

Like the song says, I'm just a girl who can't say no. Hence my appearance (against my better judgement) on tonight's BBC World Service programme, "World Have Your Say".

Tonight we were mostly discussing the Olympics, and host Ross Atkins asked if we thought our leaders should attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Gordon Brown, sly dog that he is, has had an appointment washing his hair (or whatever) marked in his diary for months. But he insists it's not a boycott. Does this man want to have his cake and eat it or what?!

My answer: yes. And let's see how this rebounds for the 2012 Olympics when everyone who's suffered at the hands of the US and Britain learns from the Free Tibet protesters, and then some!

Anyhow, you can listen to the podcast for seven days:
World Have Your Say: Olympic Boycott

Next week I'm on "World Shut Your Mouth".