Le Logo we’re not supposed to use but we is gangster and use it anyway. Respec.

With 50 days left before the blessed event, it’s finally time for Ooh Sometimes to get into the spirit as we often do and fully rip apart the forthcoming London 2012 Olympics, a subject about as near and dear to our hearts as having our heads smashed in with an Olympic hammer.

Before beginning, perhaps it’s best to point out that this is not about complaining about watching people run around a lot and do other things to win shiny stuff to go round their necks. Nor indeed will it be suggesting new events such as beating the crap out of a charity mugger, putting together a piece of furniture from Ikea or explaining the offside rule in football to a goat.

No, this is a record breaking attempt at “Most bile in a blog post”, to be fully adjudicated by a team from the Guinness Book of World Records, we will be focusing on some key areas where the bile is most deserved, and perhaps maybe suggest the odd improvement here and there for the current state of play.

First of all; the Corporate sponsorship for the games itself.

How the world actually works.

Basically a long time ago there was a great hoopla about companies paying lots of money to get things, and also getting a hell of a lot of tickets, thus removing them from ever getting into the hands of people who may actually want to go, and perhaps some whose taxes when to fund the entire thing.

Good lord, surely this has never happened in human history ever that money has allowed certain entities to get things ahead of other people? Who are these vagabonds? Well lucky for us, they’re all listed on the interweb;

London Olympics Worldwide Partners:
Coca-Cola (everyone needs a carbonated beverage after running 26,000 miles)
Acer (so you can blog on a laptop about how knackered you are after running 26,000 miles)
Omega (so you can time how long it takes for you to run 26,000 miles)
Dow (when you need chemicals after 26,000 miles)
GE (When you need light bulbs to light the way as you run 26,000 miles)
Macdonalds (When eating too many Big Macs stops you running 26,000 millimetres)
Panasonic (To watch blu-rays while running 26,000 miles)
P&G (to ensure someone supplies Frosties to eat while running 26,000 miles)
Atos Origin (ensures your IT works while you’re on hold waiting for someone to fix that crap Acer laptop you tried to blog on after 26,000 miles)
Visa (to ensure you’re f**ked off because you tried to pay for a 26,000 mile trip to the Olympics on Mastercard and computer said no.)
Samsung (To watch blu-rays while running 26,000 miles as the Panasonic player packed up 10,000 miles ago)

The list doesn’t stop there either, here are even more of them;

London Olympics Official Partners (in Kryme, innit.):
BP
BMW
Adidas
BT
EDF
Lloyds TSB
British Airways

London Olympics Official Supporters (guess the public don’t count as supporters then) :
Adecco
Arcelor Mittal
Cadbury
Cisco
Deloitte
Thomas Cook
UPS

London Olympics Official Suppliers and Providers:
Airwave
Atkins
The Boston Consulting Group
CBS Outdoor
Crystal CG
Eurostar
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP
Holiday Inn
Mondo
Populous
John Lewis
McCann Worldgroup
Next
The Nielsen Company
Technogym
Ticketmaster
Trident

No word on Official London Olympic Prostitutes yet, but you can be sure we’ll report it as soon as we know which country they will fly over from.

There is no doubt that you will have no idea who some of those companies are, hell you would have to become Google engineers to find out who the hell Dow was for starters.

But no matter what they are and what they do, these are the only companies able to associate themselves with the London Olympics brand. People will find great comfort in that any chemicals bought from Dow will be Olympic approved.

Anyone else, has to follow the London Olympics Marketing Rules which as a starting point, are found here. Basically, if you try and make money using Olympic branding as anyone would when lots of people are coming to London without reaching an agreement of some sort involving selling your first born and a kidney, and they will land on you like a sumo wrestler.

Fantastically though, if you’re moaning about a subject in a critical manner (Or as shown on this post, taking the p*ss), technically this is fair use and therefore we’re all right to show the London logo for example.

But we cannot show you the normal Olympic Logo even in that circumstance, without the written permission of the IOC, even for school work, or face their Olympic wraith (probably being forced to watch old men fight each other in beans or stare at Susan Boyle shaving her legs.) In case you’re wondering, it’s written here for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Some of the sponsorship deals though still defies belief even after all this time, such as McDonalds.

No toilet would ever be enough to flush this away either, come to think of it.

How this promotes healthy living and sports is frankly beyond the comprehension of anyone who was not on the receiving end of their cash to dump a huge McDonalds in the Olympic Park. In many ways, I’m shocked that the end of the 400m doesn’t divert through the drive-thru lane, where the athletes can pick up a Big Mac alongside a medal if they’re lucky. Medals of course, can be exchanged for a Mcflurry.

But the biggest bone for contention sure has had to have been Visa.

Visa basically ensured that you must use their payment system or cash in order to pay for anything to do with the Olympics, including paying for tickets to any event. This will have p*ssed off the rival payment providers such as Mastercard and American Express to a massive degree, but also what happened to those without a holy Visa card of Olympic Justice?

None of these will do.

There are certain things which should not have been allowed to pass; first no limitations on paying for anything to do with the Olympics, everyone’s money and payment provider should be good enough, no matter how much Visa paid to engineer this. Making people jump through hoops to get tickets may sound sporty, but it just f*cks us all off.

By all means, have sponsors for the games to help grease the wheels in getting things done, after all, it helps the world go round, but while you take that cash, perhaps you may want to look at who exactly gets to sponsor the thing if there is a certain message you want to bring across, like running around for no reason is good for you. Apparently.

Which kind of moves us over to the directly related subject from above; Money grabbing.

Everyone pretty much assumed we were going to be ripped off, we just weren’t sure how. But now far closer to the beginning of the events themselves, we have a far better idea.

For example, a pint of p*ss water in Central London typically costs around £2.90 to £3.50 depending on where you go, a large amount compared to everywhere else in the country. But beer served at the Games will cost the equivalent of £7.23 a pint, according to sample menus for ticket-holders.

Unbranded Chicken and jacket potatoes will cost £5.80, Unbranded chicken in a Singapore noodle stir fry for £8.50 and Unbranded chicken with penne pasta will set you back £6.50. Non-Alcoholic drinks will typically set you back a couple of pounds too for the most part, save the water which is £1.60 a bottle (branded by Coca-Cola). It all sounds far too yummy for me. MMMM, unbranded.

How good are they? Geniuses I tells ya.

The Westfield Stratford shopping centre, which basically is a hallowed place crammed full of all businesses wanting to exploit any stupid b*stards, I mean “foreign sports enthusiasts”, you’re basically required to go through the thing from leaving the Underground before you reach the Olympic park. Surely the only way they would have gone further by having the Central line stop at the John Lewis’ store directly, who would charge them for getting off the train in non-Olympic approved clothing?

Then the accommodation issue rears its head, laughing at any poor soul who dares try and pay less than £80 a night. Most hotels despite recently having more rooms released from the Olympic Organising committee from not being required, have decided to keep the prices high for the entire time the games take place.

Many private landlords threw out their existing tenants to charge thousands of pounds a week for a basic roof over incoming presumably rich people heads during the blessed event.

Can someone at least f*cking pretend that the Olympics are about some sporting prowess? Anyone? Anyone at all? No? I’m sure this is also why the Olympics started in Greece in the first place.

Next, the transport situation.

Welcome to a world of magic, a tube station.

We all know that the Tube is all fine and dandy 24 hours a day, with unicorns and elves doing their best to ensure that little Timmy makes it for his play-date on time. We all know the happy Oompa-Loompas diligently drive the shiny red buses all day without ever having to wait in any traffic, because there isn’t any, ever!

So imagine what will happen when the previously mentioned “foreign sports enthusiasts” have no idea what they’re doing in numbers during rush hour which is at breaking limits full of workers.

A perfect example unfortunately occurred yesterday, when some happy-go-lucky scamps working for Thames Water, managed to flood the Central Line in the area not from….Stratford, where the Olympics are due to happen. Given the Central Line is one of the busiest lines and one of the main ways to get to the Olympics, it was not great timing.

On the bright side, we now have a new indoor swimming pool and water slide.

With platforms crowded all the way, and the effect continuing today with severe delays through Central London on multiple lines due to other problems, it proved that only one thing was required to bring it all down.

This came on the back of the Evening Standard proudly proclaiming London was ready based on the Jubawee, where far less people were around and the only problems were at London Bridge due to sending everyone around in circles thanks to a brilliantly contrived one way system. You could never hope for a more ironic situation.

So what happens when the Olympics do indeed arrive? The best that anyone could come up for anyone to prepare with, was a website GetAheadofTheGames.com which they say to you;

• Leave at a different time (which more often won’t work, given workplaces are still expecting you in at the same time, unless you stay in bed.)
• Try changing your route (nah, I’d suggest living in a tent outside of work instead)
• Consider reducing your travel (Very easy to do if you’re a shop worker, and not working in the City where all the technical gubbons are at your disposal. Mind you the tent idea probably solves that, or better yet, just live at work. Or stay in bed.)
• Walking may be quicker (Translates as Don’t use public transport, just stay in bed)
• Cycling may be an option (May be, if there are any Boris Bikes left around, and you don’t live 100 miles away, so I guess…stay in bed for this one too.)

There’s no real way to fix this one, either for the duration, everything becomes staggered business hours over 24 hours a day or there was something else….it came up a lot just now….something bed something?

Surely they should not be shown in front of children?

What hate filled rant could walk past the logo and those two things they have as the mascots?

Where do we even start? What’s that coming over the hill, is it a mascot? Is it a MASCOT?!?!?! It’s bad enough we have a couple of one-eyed monsters popped out for everyone to see, which surely would raise questions when having to explain to the kids what Daddy means when he talks about his own one-eyed monster to Mummy, the logo itself cost £400,000 to design and it clearly was drawn by a three year old with epilepsy.

Surely there is no way that they went through all the fonts in the world and decided, no, none of them are any good, so let’s do them as though we were being electrocuted at our genitals at the time.

And finally, whoever said the Olympics are a once in a lifetime event, please go back to the nearest cave you crawled out of, as clearly you haven’t seen that it occurs every four f*cking years and therefore if you really want to see the games, that tends to be the time to do it, regardless where it’s being held.

Thus concludes our record breaking attempt at “Most bile in a blog post”, and now it goes to the Judges.

Oh no, we lost out to some internet posts about the ending of Mass Effect 3. Damn, will have to try harder in another 4 years then.