Their entire lives. They're feckin 15 the lot of them, they haven't had lives...they're just a big bunch of kids and your type puts them under inhuman pressure just so you can have your jollies without getting off the sofa. Pathetic. No, you do it for financial gain. Ask the sponsors. Don't bother about the competitors. After all, it's just Christians v Lions again to you, isn't it. Oh I don't think so. Feel free to evidence, as your big noisy declarations are not enough and "I can assure you" means nothing. This is shocking and unsuspected stuff indeed to discover you are a total Philistine. And also to learn you make it up as you go along. Athletes. Children. Tell it like it is. Fecking brainwashed kids. Now amongst all these silly assertions you try to make, I will just mention that you claim to have been everywhere and therefore you are speaking for everyone everywhere and you know exactly how everyone everywhere thinks. Bollocks of course to make any such silly claim. It is fact though, that I have traveled widely and strangely last week traveled to the Olympic football where I saw some people (not all the people in the world, mind you) getting all warm and fuzzy together over the happy football feeling. These people were not partisan in any way, perhaps because if you purchase an Olympic ticket ahead of time, you don't have a clue which team you will see. You don't buy a ticket to see your own team. You take your chances. Therefore huge numbers of the crowd have no affiliation whatsoever and are just there to.....get the warm fuzzy feeling of international friendship. You carry on using it to discredit your country through arrogant loudmouthery though. There aren't enough people hating US as a result of imagined or otherwise interventionist policies and destruction of the global economy and abuse of labour workforces. You do need to stir it up a bit in case war peters out completely... He is a yank.... Did anyone mention alleged substance abuse? That would be unbelievable. I almost responded to that post, then realised it has no credibility and why bother. I see the Frenchies doing really well in the pool. The Yanks will not like that you know. (sore losers)
Yeah, nobody in your part of the world takes sports seriously, huh? I hear that people aren't allowed to wear football(soccer) jerseys in many pubs because it would result in riots. [video=youtube;xtOXiQToz64]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtOXiQToz64[/video] [video=youtube;ka5eAEB0CZ8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka5eAEB0CZ8[/video] [video=youtube;Z4_EOAsGjLc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4_EOAsGjLc[/video]
I'm surprised this wasn't part of the opening ceremony industrial revolution type theme; Liverpool was a major slaving port and its ships and merchants dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the second half of the 18th century. The town and its inhabitants derived great civic and personal wealth from the trade which laid the foundations for the port's future growth. The growth of the trade was slow but solid. By the 1730s about 15 ships a year were leaving for Africa and this grew to about 50 a year in the 1750s, rising to just over a 100 in each of the early years of the 1770s. Numbers declined during the American War of Independence (1775-83), but rose to a new peak of 120-130 ships annually in the two decades preceding the abolition of the trade in 1807. Probably three-quarters of all European slaving ships at this period left from Liverpool. Overall, Liverpool ships transported half of the 3 million Africans carried across the Atlantic by British slavers. The precise reasons for Liverpool's dominance of the trade are still debated by historians. Some suggest that Liverpool merchants were being pushed out of the other Atlantic trades, such as sugar and tobacco. Others claim that the town's merchants were more enterprising. A significant factor was the port's position with ready access via a network of rivers and canals to the goods traded in Africa - textiles from Lancashire and Yorkshire, copper and brass from Staffordshire and Cheshire and guns from Birmingham. Although Liverpool merchants engaged in many other trades and commodities, involvement in the slave trade pervaded the whole port. Nearly all the principal merchants and citizens of Liverpool, including many of the mayors, were involved. Thomas Golightly (1732-1821), who was first elected to the Town Council in 1770 and became Mayor in 1772-3, is just one example. Several of the town's MPs invested in the trade and spoke strongly in its favour in Parliament. James Penny, a slave trader, was presented with a magnificent silver epergne in 1792 for speaking in favour of the slave trade to a parliamentary committee. It would be wrong to attribute all of Liverpool's success to the slave trade, but it was undoubtedly the backbone of the town's prosperity. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/europe/liverpool.aspx
I missed the part of the Olympic opening cermeony showing the ethnic cleansing in Ireland, which has been the essence of British rule dating from the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169. One of its earliest racist laws, enacted in 1367, was the “Statute of Kilkenny”. It prohibited intermarriage between the British and (Gaelic) Irish under penalty of death. To the British, the Irish were subhuman. Hmmmm....must've been on a bathroom break when they showed that part of their history.
Here we go. There are over 500 US athletes, with just a few of them being under the age 18, basically in the sports of female gymnastics and female swimming. The "feckin lot of them" is complete BS. Next? Welcome to the real world, where money is given in exchange for a profit. New concept to you? Maybe, maybe not. I'm more traveled than 99% of the people I've met so I'm guessing you fall into that category. 38 US states, 31 countries on 5 continents. I speak English, Russian, Polish, some southern Slavic and enough Spanish to get by. Go ahead and provide the percentage to kids under the age of 18 competing in the Olympics. This should be fun. I claim to be speaking for myself. It's nice you happened to see people acting like adults in the UK over a soccer game. That's a rare occasion, from what I understand. Or.....to just watch a soccer game because they like soccer, and could care less about international this or that. I'll watch an American football game regardless of who's playing...Because I enjoy the sport, not to participate in a international circle jerk of friendship. Right, because I'm somehow a international representative for the United States. Do you think I care if you, or anyone else hates the United States? I can tell you with a smile on my face I don't. I'm more than happy here sweetie, and you're opinion about the US means dick to me.
Laws against Scots and Welsh at various times were not dissimilar (and sometimes far more severe than that particular law), but that isn't the point. The point of it was to show off some of the positive achievements and developments which have been made by the UK over the past few centuries, which are undoubtably many (whether anybody else in the world likes it or not, and I'm no great lover of the UK myself, of course!). Nobody denies that there have been many negative things too, but they wouldn't be expected to appear in such a celebration. Such things should, of course, be recognised and acknowledged (and, most importantly, learned from), but that obviously wasn't the time for that. In a similar kind of thing, would the USA be including the treatment of their natives at the hands of the newcomers as they spread across the continent over their lands, or would they be showing man walking on the moon and the like?
Agreed the thing with China and Russia is not only their hard work on the line but their lives, in those countries the government are so tyrannical that if they don't win competitions their lives are ruined by the state and possibly they could face death too. That is probably why China is doing so well against the US, while US competitors are there because of liberty and passion their competing against Chinese competitors who face death if they don't bring home Gold medals so its kind of unfair to our athletes in the olympics. Finally I still believe that the US symbol of liberty for the world will triumph in the end and we will have the last laugh in the final statistics with the most gold medals for 2012.
China takes the men's team gymnastics gold, with Japan silver, (after a protest) and GB bronze, their first medal in the disclipline since 1912! You have to feel for Uzbekistan, who were dropped to fourth by Japan's appeal. America came fifth.
I hope to see Laure Manaudou win a bronze or something. She was slandered a few years ago by an ex-bf posting nude pix of her on the web, and it looks like she never recovered from it. She is a great athlete though, and derserves to be praised for her great career.
Wow superwhiney irish diaspora are even worse than the normally superwhiney Irish press. I liked the opening ceremony, it received a hugely positive response here. I haven't seen any commentary in papers about how in a moment of celebration in Britain they should have taken a moment to flagellate themselves for the sins of their forefathers. They didn't show Scottish land clearances or the cotton famine either boo feckin hoo. It was fun and cute and gave a genuflection to each of the four constituent countries of the UK while remaining focused on the shared experience of the whole.
Still lots of Olympic sports yet to be played, but for the first time in these games the United States has pulled ahead of China in the medal count on the back of a world record setting, gold medal performance in skeet shooting.
You must be a Unionist. We're Irish diaspora because Irish people were facing discrimination in the United Kingdom based on their religion, increasing rents and evictions...the potato famne is not the sole reason for the mass emigration from the Isle. It's the Olympics, and the thread should be about sports, however I'm pointing out Britain's long standing tradition to conquer and subjegate a people's wherever they go... Now back on topic... Does anyone know if the Chinese swimmer will be DQ'd for doping? I've heard there have been complaints.
It's like that with Scots too, the Nationalist fervour increases in direct proportion to the distance from Scotland. That and the maudlin songs about how nasty the English were. How's life in Dublin these days? Is it still in Eire?
Hey, good to see France being third with a fourth gold medal !!! It probably won't last so best to cheer now than never The countries with gold medals make a pretty long list already. I feel some pity for our host though... Where art thou ???
I believe it's just allegations against the Chinese swimmer at this point. I don't think she has actually tested positive for anything. From what Ive read though, her performance was basically impossible. I'm not expert on swimming but it doesn't seem possible for a 15 year old female to swim faster in the second half of the race than the man who took gold.
That's what I heard driving into work this a.m. Other coaches were saying her performance was superhuman. The Chinese push their athletes, to tortuous levels...particularly children. I watched a documentary on Chinese children training for a Chinese circus, and it's borderline child abuse. It's possible she's just a really good swimmer, but I'm no expert on the sport. Maybe it's just envy on the part of the other coaches.
There are several videos on YouTube of brutal training techniques used in China on kids that were handpicked by the state as future Olympic athletes, some as young as 3 years old. Pretty hard to watch some of it.
When a 16 year old girl posts a time better than the gold medal winning male's time, it makes you wonder. Steroids or some other substance that isn't initially red flagged in the testing process. Training can only take a person so far, to reach that level of performance.
Lol! I am tired of the endless self pity of the woe is me brigade and that make me a unionist? My Great-grandfather was in the IRA, My Grandfather is a Gaelgoir and like many families we have our own stories of the civil war and the tans. Grow up get over it move on. Self pity is a rather unattractive trait.
Just out of curiosity, how old are you? In all honesty, nasty is an understatement. I think it's a little too soon to forget and move on as if nothing happened. I am all for looking to the future, but keeping these things in the back of your mind always keep you sharp. My grandfather was in the IRA as well and had to flee the country because of it.
There is a time and a place for a good maudlin song, there is a time and a place for the rebel hearts, their is also a time for just enjoying the moment and putting your best foot forward. Dublin is miserable, it is raining incessantly, and they can't save the hay. Fingers crossed for Katie Taylor, my dad tried for tickets for the womens boxing but no luck!
Yes, the current Ireland is all about in with the new and out with the old...and the romance of the "tragic beauty" is reserved for those who left long ago trying to reconnect with their roots. I'm aware of all that. My intent was not to hijack the thread or to turn it into an "anti-English" diatribe... So perhaps we should just "let it be"..to quote the Beatles. Though U2 is by far a better band, and not just becuase their Irishman. Sunday bloody Sunday.
i laugh at that comment. seriouslly you might want to travel a bit, learn different culture instead live on a hill in west virginia
