Great China To Little Britain

So, the clumsy slob of the new London mayor got to wave the Olympic flag in Beijing, looking like he had lost his trousers belt. There's none of Boris Johnson's merit in bringing the Olympics to London - it all was Tony Blair and Ken Livingston's doing - yet he radiated triumph and self-confidence. Let's remember his firm promise that the Games budget will be kept under£9.3bn budget (the original budget in 2005 was £3.4bn). I predict by 2012 this will be at least in the ballpark of 20 billion - that is if nothing unpredictable happens.


London 2012's 8-minute presentation really showed us that Britain is completely out of touch with what the rest of the world likes. After the Chinese awe-inspiring glamour on an unparalleled scale - two dozens modern dancers (costumes courtesy of the Salvation Army) with newspapers and umbrellas, Myra Hindley in the video reel and Beckham with a football - well, good luck trying to impress the world with that kind of symbolism!

Just like Britain's annual Eurovision contributions doomed to puzzled shrugs anywhere east of the English Channel, a soul starlet with a sweaty old dude playing a 30-year-old hit on the electric guitar were greeted by a bewildered rustle of the audience at the Bird's Nest. It all sure would have been taken well by beer-drenched London crowds but the world wants tacky torch ballads, acrobatic dances and lots of fireworks. Britain's insular idea of coolness can sometimes click with Anglo-Saxons but for the rest of the world it is just quaint and not really that much fun.


China with all its alleged aloofness seems to have understood the power of American cultural message which is in its fine tuning to the expectations of the whole world. Britain, on the other hand, can't seem to fathom that her little cultural idiosyncrasies stop being hip somewhere half way between Dover and Calais. I hope festivities at London 2012 will overcome cultural navel-gazing and won't end up with nul points. It's Olympics, NOT Olimpicks this time!