| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (25 min. 36 sec.) ; 154338222 bytes |
| Summary |
Take your marks, world, the Games of the XXX Olympiad are set to start soon and they will be inescapable. The London Olympics will have unprecedented reach as social media supercharges conventional media coverage and takes the spectacle to ever more eyeballs. Close to the action though - in the shadows of the venues - you'll find eyeballs rolling with contempt and tut tuts of disgust as some Londoners do their best to turn the 5-Ring-Circus into a Grumpylimpics. Why the sore heads?When Sebastian Coe was a world beating distance runner and collected gold medals for the prestigious 1500 meter event at consecutive Olympics in 1980 and 1984, no-one cheered louder or applauded more enthusiastically than his fellow Brits. Fast forward to 2012 and (the now) Lord Coe's latest achievements, and fellow Brit Johnnie Walker would put his hands to a different purpose."I'd like to give him a clump. I'd like to chin him."The crusty community football boss is annoyed at the way the London Olympics juggernaut has crashed his patch. Seb Coe's unstoppable machine has claimed 12 of Johnnie's playing fields for Olympic parking and so a league of 1500 players now crowd a much smaller space."It's elitist everything has to be ploughed towards the elitist and the grassroots is neglected - you aint going to get your elitists unless you look after the grass root." - Johnnie Walker, Hackney & Leyton LeagueJohnnie is just one of a group of Grumpylimpians annoyed at the unbridled enthusiasm and runaway hyperbole surrounding London's big sporting carnival.Veteran Grump Will Self is another. The acerbic author would surely medal at the anti-Olympics."It feels like North Korea to me actually when people go 'yeah the Olympics, the Olympic bid yeah'. It's like Kim Jung Ill, you know, we don't really know why we are cheering for the great leader and his amazing plan but we better do it because hey that's what people like us do." - Will Self, AuthorForeign Correspondent's Philip Williams braves the bile in search of both sides of the story in London's East End. In a challenging lap in and around the Olympic site he does manage to find enthusiasts like Olympics Ambassador and rapper Wretch 32 and former Olympian Yvonne Arnold who's had her lifelong ambition realised with a massive, state-of-the-art gymnasium appearing in place of ill-equipped facilities. It's now an incubator for British gymnasts of the future."It is emotional and whenever I walk through these doors and show people the gym I have a well of pride inside me and I can't stop smiling about it." - Yvonne Arnold, Former OlympianLord Coe tells Phil he thinks it's all 'fantastic' but another local critic Iain Sinclair has it otherwise."I feel excluded from my own territory. I feel I hardly know who I am because all my familiar markers that I've known over 40 years, have either disappeared or been enclosed in razor wire?" - Iain Sinclair, Hackney activist |
| Event |
Broadcast 2012-06-12 at 20:00:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: NC |
| Subject |
Gymnastics.
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Mass media -- Social aspects.
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Olympics -- Planning.
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Olympics -- Social aspects.
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Olympic Games.
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England -- London.
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United Kingdom.
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Streaming video
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| Author |
Williams, Philip, host
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Arnold, Yvonne, contributor
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Cheyne, Julian, contributor
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Coe, Sebastian, contributor
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Robertson, Hugh, contributor
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Scott Sinclair, Jermaine, contributor
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Self, Will, contributor
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Sinclair, Iain, contributor
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Walker, John (Johnnie), contributor
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