March 25, 2008
Guru has been away. And once again the Olympics has demonstrated just how small the world is by bringing a level playing field to all corners of the... erm... globe _ although, admittedly, from a scientific and mathematical perspective, this is clearly impossible outside the realms of quantum physics.
Returning from a ‘fact-finding’ mission to the People’s Republic of China at the weekend, Yours Truly was confronted by the a rail system in chaos, a road system in chaos and absolutely nothing worth watching on the TV – pretty much like the home of Confucius then.
Initially, Yours Truly was sat on a snow-bound train watching workmen scurrying about on the rails ‘fixing’ something or other, looking every bit as busy – albeit freezing cold – as the Chinese workers he’d seen only days before just outside Beijing.
Then on the UK’s premier roadblock – the M25 – with its endless streams of yellow-jacketed, fully coned-up ‘workers’, who seemed intent on making the madness last as long as possible, he was reminded of the cracked and scarred muddy main routes around Guangzhou and the teams of jolly, mostly female, road crews striving to fix up the main routes to Olympic glory.
As Confucius might have said: "The path to success is long and rocky, and filled with potholes."
But these similarities do bode well for the UK’s very own Olympic adventure currently taking shape in the east of London.
Although, judging by the coverage of the ceremony in Greece to launch the start of the Olympic flame's journey to Beijing, the UK has a long way to go to reach the heights of freedom afforded to the people of the People’s Republic – especially those in Tibet.
China clearly has ‘issues’ with freedom of speech and actually allowing it is proving a tough cookie for our far eastern chums.
But whereas in China independent organised labour movements are banned, in dear old Blighty, the unions will see to it that the Olympic dream remains just out of reach until the very last minute, by stifling the developers' freedom to build an Olympic arena, village and associated other venues on time and to a specified budget.
However, luckily for the 2012 games, the UK will not have to rely on home-grown talent to secure its place on the podium of nation's staging this celebration of all that is corrupt in sport – unlike some of our athletes who regularly rely on supplies of home-grown non-performance enhancers to ensure they conform to the British ideal that it's 'more important to take part' than to win.
For while this great nation's unions adopt a policy of burying their heads in the sharp sand, the developers will be employing our former Eastern Bloc chums from Poland and Romania to ensure the games get off to a flying start. And the chances of these workers being exploited are pretty good.
So it seems the Olympic ideal is alive and well and while the torch may be winging its way to Beijing from Athens, in reality it's already been picked up by the UK.
The Olympics truly does hold out hope for all: the hopes of the poor to secure gainful employment; the hopes of the money men, who hope to make a killing (in more ways than one); and the needs of the drug-fuelled and pampered athletes of the world, who need a sub-holiday camp location in which to ‘inject’ a bit of pace into their performances.
It seems the only people to suffer from this interminable 'Olympic torture' will be the public who will have to display marathon-like powers of endurance to survive the non-stop media onslaught about the will-it won't-it be built saga that has already begun.
