The Night Mail

[rockershovel]

25 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

The South Korean Team were introduced as the DPRK (North Korean) Team.  South Korea are "somewhat p1ssed"** apparently.....

 

(**Technical, diplomatic terminology)

Leaving aside the flag issue (which is a quite unforgiveable breach of protocol by a professional team who surely practice it regularly and often) I also wondered who wrote the garbled piece about the Viet Minh? 

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

I've just noticed the reports of the Olympic flag being raised upside down.

 

How does that even happen? The whole point about the inverted flag being a symbol of distress or surrender is that the fastenings on a flag are one way up and an inverted hoist can only be deliberate. 

 

 

I thought all French flags were made that way?

 

Although to be fair, the tricolore looks is the same whether flown correctly or inverted.

 

Perhaps the flag party thought all flags where the same.

[rockershovel]

5 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

I thought all French flags were made that way?

 

Although to be fair, the tricolore looks is the same whether flown correctly or inverted.

 

Perhaps the flag party thought all flags where the same.

You might be excused for thinking so... there's also the fact that flying some tricolours inverted, just makes them look like someone else's flag

 

However the Olympic flag isn't one of them. A military colour party with no other role in the proceedings can't be excused. 

 

The "Marseillaise" was good, although I still think Mireille Matthieu owned that particular ditty. 

 

I missed the Smurf, which my good wife thought was a character from Astetix the Gaul

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

10 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

 

However the Olympic flag isn't one of them. A military colour party with no other role in the proceedings can't be excused. 

 

 

 

 

Don't I know it, and the world wide military community will be taking the p*ss at every opportunity for years to come.

 

 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

There are quite a few posters on here who proudly boast of having avoided the Paris Olympic opening ceremonies.
 

I wonder if they would be so proudly absent if the ceremony had been in London for  Olympics held in Britain? 
 

I suppose it's simply the case of the posters on TNM indulging in a variation on that age old British custom of "French bashing*". Perfectly understandable for mainland Brits. But for those who make their residence in La Belle France? 
 

Zut Alors, as they might say.

 

Although not a military man myself, there is deep wisdom in the adage of "knowing what your enemy is up to" and can be applied to civilian life. Ergo, knowing what they got up to in France (and the torturous homages to various less than savoury parts of society) is very valuable Intel indeed. 

 

+ mind you "French bashing" seems to be a Europewide phenomenon. Every country in Europe at one time or another has had a "testy relationship" with France

[Compound2632]

On the whole, I thought it was interesting and inventive. But I was glad I wasn't there.

[Winslow Boy]

23 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

On the whole, I thought it was interesting and inventive. But I was glad I wasn't there.

Bit like Southport when the tides in then.

[New Haven Neil]

36 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I wonder if they would be so proudly absent if the ceremony had been in London for  Olympics held in Britain? 

 

Yup.  No interest in it whatsoever.  I read a book.  Limp what?

[jjb1970]

We don't have broadcast TV, and even if we did would have been highly unlikely to watch given the time difference. 

 

There's no Olympic buzz here at all, I don't know whether that's because Singapore has no skin in the game, or whether people aren't interested in sport, or something else. 

 

Is there much Olympic branding on stuff in Europe? That is also very noticeable by it's absence here, one of the big revenue streams for the Olympics is selling marketing licenses and letting Coca Cola and others plaster their goods with the Olympic logo but there's hardly any of that here.

[Oldddudders]

I may live in France by choice, but I don't have a working tv, so I didn't see any of the ceremony, nor will I see the events. Speeches? France lives on them, spoken and written, as it were. My local commune is hosting a Comice - sort of fair with agri (no, not aggro) overtones - next Month. A nicely-printed booklet has gone out to every household (bear in mind that I live 2 km from the village of less than 1k souls), largely paid for by local business ads, but giving full details of what and where.

 

You might think there would be a welcoming note from someone. Oh, boy. First there is such a note from the President of the Comice of the Community of Communes. Then one from the President of the Commune Comice. Then one from the President of the Commune fête Committee. Next is the Maire (recently elected due to decease of her predecessor). Then one from the Departmental Councillor representing us. Then one from the Senator. Then one from the President of the Community of Communes. And, er, that's it. Seven people getting a page each, all wishing us well and saying what a good idea it all is. Sigh.

[Happy Hippo]

The problem with the limp pig opening ceremonies is that they have lost the core reason, which was originally a parade of athletes, who were welcomed into the main area and pledged to uphold the ideals of the games.

 

Now it's all about one upmanship with excessive amounts of money being spent on ever more elaborate celebrations. Ditto the closing ceremonies.

 

No I didn't watch the London opening/closing ceremonies either.

 

I will watch the sports I'm interested in, but I won't be glued to the TV 24/7 for the period of the games.

[Compound2632]

24 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Now it's all about one upmanship with excessive amounts of money being spent on ever more elaborate celebrations. Ditto the closing ceremonies.

 

But that's what the IOC wants. 

 

25 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

No I didn't watch the London opening/closing ceremonies either.

 

Then you missed out big time.

[rockershovel]

Since the good Doctor (and im afraid he will always, to me sound like Tom Baker) raises the subject, I remember sitting in a pub near Hartlepool docks, watching the 2012 opening ceremony and thinking how interminable and utterly dire it was. 

 

People visibly lost interest after about an hour; around the 2 hour mark the landlord turned the sound down. 

 

It was excruciatingly PC. One might have been forgiven for being unaware that without Sub-Saharan Africa there would be no NHS; nor was I aware that bedmaking was an Olympic sport, and I  certainly wasnt aware that I K Brunel was closely related to Morgan Freeman.

 

These perceptions werent widely understood and I recall increasing jeering and barracking when the barman made the mistake of turning up the sound. 

 

Still, at least I was in England and saw it. Expats very much don't watch BBC World.

Edited July 27 by rockershovel

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

It was excruciatingly PC.

 

It was utterly brilliant. I started watching sceptically but was hooked. I fear you are merely exposing your own non-PC prejudices!

[iL Dottore]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

But that's what the IOC wants. 

 

And they’re 90% of the problem with today’s Olympics.

 

Remember the “Games Lanes” at the London Olympics?  Ostensibly so that athletes could get to their events in time (unlike in Atlanta), they were branded at the time by some wags as ZiL Lanes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZiL_lane and see the paragraph about the London Olympics lower down the page)

 

Why unelected petty bureaucrats can demand (and get) the same privileges as Heads of State is beyond me….
 

Neither FIFA or the IOC are, as they say, con mani puliti!

[iL Dottore]

8 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Since the good Doctor (and im afraid he will always, to me sound like Tom Baker)

I take that as a VERY big compliment 😁👍🏻 Thank you!

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

And they’re 90% of the problem with today’s Olympics.

 

Indeed. 

[Northmoor]

16 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Since the good Doctor raises the subject, I remember sitting in a pub near Hartlepool docks, watching the 2012 opening ceremony and thinking how interminable and utterly dire it was. 

 

People visibly lost interest after about an hour; around the 2 hour mark the landlord turned the sound down. 

 

It was excruciatingly PC. One might have been forgiven for being unaware that without Sub-Saharan Africa there would be no NHS; nor was I aware that bedmaking was an Olympic sport, and I  certainly wasnt aware that I K Brunel was closely related to Morgan Freeman.

 

These perceptions werent widely understood and I recall increasing jeering and barracking when the barman made the mistake of turning up the sound. 

 

Still, at least I was in England and saw it. Expats very much don't watch BBC World.

I'm not sure they would put much value on the views of people drinking in a Hartlepool pub.  My wife's family comes from Hartlepool and I'm pretty certain they wouldn't either.  The local mindset could be summarised as, "The town's rubbish but I hate everywhere else more".

 

However, I do agree that the Olympics has become an exercise in one-upmanship; there are perhaps only 6-8 countries in the world that could afford to host it.  There are far too many sports that have no place in it; Football, FFS.  The rule is simple: if the Olympics isn't the pinnacle of your sport, it shouldn't be there.  Never mind that I got to work in an office overlooking London's Olympic Park, I would gladly see the Olympics held every four years in Athens.  The whole world could chip in to support the Olympian ideal continuing in its original location.  But if that happened, the IOC couldn't spend their working lives being wined and dined fantastically expensively, receiving gifts for them and their families - which are in no way bribes, of course - while they tour the world "choosing the best candidate location".  And wherever is chosen, it is an enormous bonanza for the construction industry, for something that all too often (Athens, again) becomes derelict soon afterwards.

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

There are quite a few posters on here who proudly boast of having avoided the Paris Olympic opening ceremonies.
 

I wonder if they would be so proudly absent if the ceremony had been in London for  Olympics held in Britain? 
 

I suppose it's simply the case of the posters on TNM indulging in a variation on that age old British custom of "French bashing*". Perfectly understandable for mainland Brits. But for those who make their residence in La Belle France? 
 

Zut Alors, as they might say.

 

Although not a military man myself, there is deep wisdom in the adage of "knowing what your enemy is up to" and can be applied to civilian life. Ergo, knowing what they got up to in France (and the torturous homages to various less than savoury parts of society) is very valuable Intel indeed. 

 

+ mind you "French bashing" seems to be a Europewide phenomenon. Every country in Europe at one time or another has had a "testy relationship" with France

It's a component in the at times, laboured relationship between England and Scotland. The English mostly believe in the Union, so much so that they will put up with the Scots for the sake of it. 

 

However they also know that the Scots cannot resist being suckered into acting as French cats-paws. Scotland was, for many years England's Afghanistan; an ungovernable, rugged badlands exporting little of value and much that was undesirable, where tribalism, endemic civil war and a sense of grievance ruled the roost. 

 

The Romans simply built a wall. 

[NHY 581]

4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Leaving aside the flag issue (which is a quite unforgiveable breach of protocol by a professional team who surely practice it regularly and often) I also wondered who wrote the garbled piece about the Viet Minh? 

 

You could always watch it again, start to finish rather than feed us piecemeal with individual parts of the ceremony which you want to moan about as I've no doubt you'll see more second time around or even on a third viewing. That way, you can get it all out of your system at once and move on.

 

Hopefully, for all our sakes. 

 

Or you could start on another country such as Scotland.........oh, hang on..........

 

Rob

Edited July 27 by NHY 581

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Then you missed out big time.

 
In that case A Certain Bear also “missed out big time”

 

For some strange reason I don’t feel any sense of loss whatsoever.  Relief - yes….

[jjb1970]

I sometimes have sleepless nights worrying that the noble Olympic tradition might be sullied by the introduction of politics into the games. A terrible thought.

[Happy Hippo]

25 minutes ago, NHY 581 said:

 

You could always watch it again, start to finish rather than feed us piecemeal with individual parts of the ceremony which you want to moan about as I've no doubt you'll see more second time around or even on a third viewing. That way, you can get it all out of your system at once and move on.

 

Hopefully, for all our sakes. 

 

Or you could start on another country such as Scotland.........oh, hang on..........

 

Rob

 Oh, Especially Wales!

 

How well we are doing in world Rugby rankings?

 

Now below Italy for goodness sake.

 

I'll not mention our world class football team.

 

Still we are still the world's best at chasing sheep

 

Which is probably why you try to spend as many weekends as possible over the border at English railway exhibitions🤣

[NHY 581]

1 minute ago, Happy Hippo said:

 Especially Wales!

 

Still we are still the world's best at chasing sheep

 

Which is probably why you try to spend as many weekends as possible over the border at English railway exhibitions🤣

 

 

Quite, though I am still able to effectively escape and evade. Should that fail, I still have a few tricks up my wool.

 

In terms of exhibiting in general such commitments are being reduced going forward......but I honestly do prefer a West Country show to those in my home town. 

 

Rob

[rockershovel]

14 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

I sometimes have sleepless nights worrying that the noble Olympic tradition might be sullied by the introduction of politics into the games. A terrible thought.

Try watching Olympia - Leni Reifenstahl's quite brilliant film about the 1936 Olympics. Ms Reifenstahl basically wrote the book on sports filming, introducing formats still in use today. 

 

Politics being very much, among them.