The Aged P

There wasn’t much about this outside the Telegraph, Sun and Express – I wonder why?

Army officers have told troops on duty for the Paralympics to travel around in groups after servicemen were “attacked, verbally abused and harassed” during the Olympics.

In the worst case a lone soldier was abused, attacked and beaten near Tower Hill Tube station. Police are investigating but in a city swarming with CCTV there appears to have been little progress – one wonders if senior officers have have decided that making too much of it would cause trouble with the local Presbyterian community…

Those Presbyterians – always ready to be provoked….

h/t Brendan O’Neill at Spiked

Confession time….I was a cynic and doomster about the London 2012 Olympics. In 2005 I was hoping Paris would get the time bomb and we could avoid all the expense and inconvenience. It seemed a classic piece of Blairite New Labour grandstanding, as empty and vapid and meaningless as the Millennium Dome.

In the weeks beforehand my pessimism meter dial hit the red zone as transport unions blackmailed extra bonuses, private security companies failed to deliver and predictions of traffic chaos and empty seats filled the pages of the Daily Mail eager, as always, to always play Cassandra.

Then it all changed. An brilliantly orchestrated opening ceremony that captured the essence of our quirky, eccentric, self deprecating British spirit segued us into a fortnight of sporting drama. No transportation problems, no security breakdowns, no violence, just day after day of pure unadulterated enjoyment.

We were on holiday in Italy for most of the time so just got to see bits and pieces of the action from screens in the restaurants and bars surrounded by Italians and Germans. Imagine how good it felt to gloat (inwardly, of course) as our sportsmen and sportswomen piled on the gold medals….

And, after that magnificent Olympic cauldron was finally extinguished and the Mayor of Rio took hold of the Olympic flag I suddenly remembered……..Mitt Romney and his cheerleaders at the US conservative blog Hot Air. Even with the rest of the world praising London 2012 resident blogger Allahpundit was sustaining his glass half empty schtick, pursing his lips and flaring his nostrils at the closing ceremony…..

Sorry, Allah (as I commented at his post), I think the rest of the world will pay more attention to the response of the Aussies whose 2000 Sydney Olympics have, up till now, been regarded universally as the benchmark of success. Down under they rate the 2012 Games as even better than Sydney and, coming from Oz, that is praise indeed.

As for the closing ceremony it is always more of a party atmosphere and the audience and the athletes in London obviously enjoyed it. In lengthy celebration there will always be low spots and Russell Brand fits that bill admirably. The rest of it, however, was great fun.

But then Hot Air has systematically waxed eeyore over the London Games. That might be because of an inbuilt tendency to regard anything outside the USA as weird/outlandish but it is more likely to be due to the fact that Atlanta 1996 was not one of the best summer Olympics or that Salt Lake 2002 winter Olympics had to be rescued from a bribery and corruption scandal.

As for Mitt, is he man enough to eat his own words and offer his congratulations to Lord Coe, the man who organised the best ever summer Olympics, and to the British people who embraced the Games with a fervour unmatched in modern times?

Just askin’ as our American friends might say…..

My Tea Party friends in the US have never held Mitt Romney in high regard. Until the autumn of last year (coincidentally when the Republican presidential primary campaign began) his public rhetoric against the Obama administration was strangely muted and he has always retained an aloof distance from the tea party.

His ascension to the probable GOP nomination was strangely lacking in public warmth from ordinary voting Republicans. But it was certainly well organised with legions of surrogates doing their very best to undermine potential rivals even before the 2008 presidential election was over.

Romney didn’t win the campaign with love, but he did win it with money – and the support of a seedy coalition of GOP “consultants/strategists” , RNC hacks and those Washington/New York “conservative” media pundits apprehensive of the tea party and the new media which was beginning to break the old news monopoly.

But when I heard that Romney was coming to Britain ready to build bridges I thought maybe the guy had a bit of steel in his backbone

Members of the former Massachusetts governor’s foreign policy advisory team claimed that as president, he would reverse Mr Obama’s priority of repairing strained overseas relationships while not spending so much time maintaining traditional alliances such as Britain and Israel. …….
……..The two advisers said Mr Romney would seek to reinstate the Churchill bust displayed in the Oval Office by George W. Bush but returned to British diplomats by Mr Obama when he took office in 2009. One said Mr Romney viewed the move as “symbolically important” while the other said it was “just for starters”, adding: “He is naturally more Atlanticist”.

Then I read this

But he told US television there were “disconcerting” signs about Britain’s readiness. “It’s hard to know just how well it will turn out,” he said. “There are a few things that were disconcerting: the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”
Nonetheless, Mr Romney questioned the enthusiasm of the British public. “Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment?” he asked. “That’s something which we only find out once the Games actually begin.”

For crying out loud – if that’s his way of building a bridge I think I would rather deal with some fruitloop from Iran….at least you know the guy is a viper right from the start.

If he knew us better he would realise that it is in our very nature to moan and complain until the event actually starts. We did that with the royal wedding and the diamond jubilee. Indeed a lot of us were never that enamoured of hosting the Olympics anyway. But now the thing has arrived our enthusiasm has already started to show….witness the crowds in every village and town to greet the Olympic torch. Why didn’t Romney’s crew do some research on that?

…and maybe Romney (as well as Allahpundit at Hot Air) forgot about the 1996 Atlanta Olympics

If International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Juan Antonio Samaranch’s address to the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games is remembered at all, it is for his unwillingness to bestow Atlanta’s Games with the honor of “the greatest in Olympic history” – that coveted rhetorical flourish lauding the host city’s organizing efforts. Unbridled commercialism, poor and unreliable public transportation, a deadly terrorist attack on Centennial Olympic Park: such significant failures shaped Samaranch’s verdict that these Olympic Games were “most exceptional,” but not “the greatest.”

Romney’s gaffe about the London Olympics, bad mouthing them even before they start is in itself of little consequence in the great scheme of things. But it does tell us something about the man…. say what you like about Sarah Palin she knows the difference between being forthright and showing good manners. Maybe Mitt Romney is really Edison Carter….

Max Headroom was shown to have been created from the memories of Edison Carter. The character’s name came from the last thing Carter saw during a vehicular accident that put him into a coma: A bar with a sign warning of low clearance, marked “MAX. HEADROOM: 2.3 M”.

Mitt Headroom, anyone?

Governor Mitt Romney, who is likely to be the Republican nominee against President Obama in the forthcoming US elections this coming November will spend the last days of July attempting to burnish his foreign policy credentials with visits to Britain, Israel and Poland.

The aim will be to introduce himself onto a world stage where the other players, on the surface at least, appear not to have bought into the disappointment and disillusion felt by large swathes of the US electorate. The myth of the transformational figure peddled by the US media in 2008 which presented a shallow Chicago machine hack as a latter day Moses who would lead his country and the rest of the world into a global era of peace and honey is still the official party line of the chattering classes outside the USA – except in Poland where Obama is seen as Putin’s poodle and Israel whose government is very wary of repeating the role of the Czechs against Obama’s Chamberlain.

So Romney wants to remind these folk that, come January there might very well be a new face in the White House with a very different world view. A lot of his foreign policy advisors could well be George W Bush retreads with a far more cynical view about resetting buttons and the faces in Warsaw and Jerusalem will be far more comfortable with that.

One would like to say that David Cameron and his London colleagues would also be keeping their fingers crossed for a Romney victory since Obama has been rather disdainful America’s closest ally with his pandering to Russia and Argentina – but, unfortunately, Cameron, like the UK media in general, is still infatuated with Obama the myth. Indeed, during his visit to Washington last March the British Prime Minister was so grovellingly obsequious to the president that Romney surrogates let it be known that they felt an election year line had been crossed.

Romney will be in London for the opening of the Olympics, reviving memories of his own connections when he was drafted in to rescue the Utah 2002 winter Olympics from corruption and confusion. However he will also take the opportunity to press some influential flesh
At his first stop, in London, Romney plans meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Foreign Secretary William Hague, and Ed Miliband, who leads the opposition Labour Party. He plans fundraisers, where attendees will likely include bankers and others from London’s financial sector.

For most of this year David Cameron has been particularly gaffe prone. Let’s hope he isn’t stupid enough not to realise that, with the polls still too close to call, he might well be talking to the next US President and a man who almost certainly will have more respect for the special relationship than Obama and his Chicago cronies….

But you never can tell with Cameron. For all his Tory rhetoric you always get the feeling the man is essentially a fully paid up member of the metro elite who still hungers for approval from North London dinner parties and and the UK branch of Obama’s media “palace guard” at the BBC…and, with Michelle Obama heading the US Olympic delegation he might find her beady eye a little discomforting….

Abu Qatada, the Jihadist hate preacher who hates our country and its culture of democracy so much is still fighting his deportation order to Jordan despite even the Kafa-esque European Court of Human Rights saying he could go. He is making an appeal to the ECHR via a very expensive lawyer (naturally – after all he is one of our privileged elite, living on benefits and thus subsidised by we the taxpayers) and asked for bail.

IT WAS REFUSED!!!!!!!

I’d love to say that Theresa May, the Home Secretary, backed by a former PR man for a failed TV company (aka David Cameron) had suddenly discovered spines and said don’t give him bail because we are going to bundle him onto a military plane and fly him to Amman, economy class with handcuffs within two hours at the same time we send the ECHR a message saying “Whoops, sorry but you can stuff your decisions where the monkey keeps his nuts….come back in a thousand years when your legal system is as mature as ours”

Unfortunately that wasn’t the reason..

It was because if he was given bail it might upset the Olympics…

That’s right folks – we have to allow these Britain haters plenty of elbow room to facilitate their “rights” to encourage vicious scumbags to blow us up but when it comes to interfering with a festival of sweaty over hyped narcissists strutting their stuff at the public ‘s expense (and that’s just the politicians and celebrities) even an al Qaeda groupie must stay banged up.

No wonder they despise us and think we lack the will to resist – I sometimes think they may be right…..