Archive for the ‘news’ Category
For once, it pays to be ginger (and Welsh)
Sunday, August 26th, 2007Olympic Logos That Aren’t Awful – London 2012 Organisers Take Note
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007London’s 2012 Olympics logo was unveiled yesterday, to almost universal derision. If you look at it you can see why.
It’s hideous enough as it is, without knowing that this logo cost £400,000 to produce (which many have labelled a flagrant ‘backhander’), and is supposed to appeal to young people. The young people of 1986, presumably. Compare to the original London 2012 logo, which I grew quite fond of.
Let’s have a look at how the other cities competing for the 2012 games fared with their logos.
How did we get it so wrong?!
The campaign to get rid of the new London 2012 logo is well underway, less than 24 hours after the unveiling, an online petition has gained nearly 10,000 signatures. I urge the 2012 Olympic committee to ask for their money back – all £400K of it – and seek out the designers of the following logos. These are how you do an Olympic logo properly.
Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any thoughts on the new London 2012 logo, or any other the suggestions I made above. I would be especially interested to hear from you if you like the new London 2012 logo, though I don’t anticipate many responses…
Latest News: According to the BBC, an animated version has been banned from British television because it may cause epileptic seizures.
Links
Online petition to change the London 2012 logo
Wolff-Olins – The “design” firm who brought you the London 2012 logo / atrocity
The Olympics – yay or nay
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006At this rate it will cost £14billion
At the risk of sounding like an “Outraged in Oxbridge” letter to the editor of a broadsheet…
As if we weren’t a big enough target already, the country is spending billions on attracting people from all over the world to the Olympic games. The fact that the London tube system was bombed less than 24 hours after we secured the Games might prove to be an omen.
As usual, the price they’ve quoted is hugely underestimated (see the Millennium Dome, a hive of tourist activity and profit-making grand public events…)
As usual, the timescales they’ve quoted are slipping back (see the Wembley building site, sorry, “stadium”)
If the bookies would accept my bet, I’d gladly put a grand on the much-lauded Channel Tunnel – Olympic rail link not being completed on time. Sadly, the bookies learnt their lesson when a bunch of guys in hard hats in the Wembley area placed large sums of cash against Wembley opening on time.
I live in East London (the nice part not the grubby part, obviously) yet even I fail to see the long term benefit to anyone other than the contruction firms who will secure sizable chunks of the billions to build the various arenas and Olympic village, then afterwards convert the lot into “luxury Olympic apartments” and make a fortune selling or letting them out to the ever-increasing Canary Wharf workforce. (There’s another rant about Canary Wharf-types, but I’ll save that for another day)
All this heavy investment in an area which – if you’re a New Scientist reader – stands a good chance of being underwater in 50 years. Leave NuHackney and NuStratford drown and run to the hills!
Idea for a new drinking game
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006Get all of the day’s newspapers and drink everytime one of the following phrases are used:
“angered the Muslim community”
“the Muslim Council of Great Britain”
“radical Muslims”
“outrage in the Muslim world”
“British-born Muslims”
And, if you’re dumb/alcoholic enough to play this game, then I’ll see you in hospital or worse.
It seems that the Muslim Community® is getting the kind of exposure that Jordan could only dream of.
P.S. Before the hate mail floods in, this is a criticism of the British press, not a criticism of the Muslims being written about.
It’s da bomb
Thursday, June 1st, 2006
Quite literally. An unexploded WW2 bomb has been found at a building site directly across the dock from me. It better not go off and interrupt my sleep.
Click this link. (and check out the OOOOOOLD photo when Canary wharf was the only big building in the distance)
Religion *rolls eyes*
Saturday, March 25th, 2006This is so unbelievably stupid it makes me nearly weep.
The Tuesday Linkdump
Tuesday, March 14th, 2006Links.
Why can’t this sort of thing happen to me?
Nine Inch Nails fucking with Guns N’ Roses, part 1: a photoshopped Axl Rose taking the photo
Nine Inch Nails fucking with Guns N’ Roses, part 2: note the sign above the door
Getting a UFO to work: proof that British Rail lost it’s marbles decades ago
Dumped.
How to run a university
Monday, March 13th, 2006An excerpt about UCL from the Financial Times’ Lucy Kellaway in an article about university management. Make of it what you will…
Increasingly, universities are run by people who are trying to embrace what they see as modern management techniques. This can be catastrophic. They import third-rate management fads that the private sector has already junked and implement them badly. University College London got into a mess last year when it spent £600,000 ($1m) rebranding itself as UCL. Its staff were not amused by a 51-page booklet telling them how to use the new logo, containing edicts that all images should be “vibrant and aspirational” – such as two people jumping into the sea. They were also given two dozen words including “challenging” and “liberalism” that they were encouraged to use when communicating with the outside world. All of which would have been insulting to the intelligence of a humble office worker, let alone an esteemed academic.
What the fuck is wrong with this country?
Wednesday, March 8th, 2006Two BBC news stories to make your blood boil. This nation is chock-full of simpletons.
Story #2: Baa Baa Black Sheep is now Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep. Morons.
I despair, really.
It works both ways, you know.
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006If the Home Office have their way (see what I did there?), soon you’ll pretty much have to halt your drunken fumbling to fill in a watertight multi-page paper confirming both parties consent to sexual intercourse. Nothing like legal documents to make you randy.
Quoted from the article:
“Mr O’Brien said that redrafting the law would stop cases being thrown out by judges and increase the number of convictions.”
I note that there’s no mention in the article of a revision to the law that reduces the number of false accusations. Just increase the convictions. Never mind if they’re actually guilty of anything, let’s get the number of rape convictions up.
Imagine – or don’t – that Anna Slacktrousers gets hammered one night and wakes up with Jimmy Plateface. Anna can’t believe she’d sleep with such a fat, grotesque mess. Therefore, he must have raped her. Yeah. Got her blind drunk and he forced himself on her. Or maybe, just maybe, Anna is a whore. A whore who has such a high opinion of herself that she doesn’t remember that she dropped her linen quicker than her morals the previous night in a freakish, unshapely concourse that would have sickened even the most hardened Internet porn addict.
Of course, I do not mean to make light of rape. But how can you prove or disprove rape when the accuser can’t remember if they consented or not?