General Comments

"It was a social worker's history of Britain - a nation of simple peasants crushed and besmirched by evil top-hatted capitalists, but rescued in the end by the NHS, immigration, the suffragettes, and the egalitarian strains of pop music. I half-expected the giant Voldemort to transform itself into a menacing Thatcher figure, trampling, slashing and cutting every nice nurse in sight, and tossing bedsteads out of the stadium with a callous sneer. It is a strange sort of nation that can turn a hospital bed into a symbol of national pride, especially in an era when you can die of thirst in one. But most people under the age of 40 have been taught not to have pride in their country, so the Health Service is all they've got left. They have been cheated of any real knowledge of history. I'm not talking here about the Armada or the Empire - it's hard to trumpet military glory when you've scrapped the Armed Forces, and the Olympics might not be the place for that in any case. It's our dogged insistence on liberty of thought, speech and assembly that needs to be celebrated in a world where arbitrary power and censorship are stronger every day. It is our greatest gift to mankind and we don't even know it's ours. I'm sure Danny Boyle could have found a way of portraying that great tradition of limited government and human freedom that grew out of Magna Carta and flows through our history, and that of the world, like a mighty stream. But to do that, he might have needed a few more words and a bit less drumming, miming and dancing. It was strange how little use he made of that other great possession of ours, the English language. Where were Dickens or Wordsworth, Keats or Tennyson? As for Shakespeare, I suppose it would now actually be subversive for such an occasion to include the thrilling words of John of Gaunt's dying speech: 'This blessed plot, this Earth, this realm, this England', for 'England' and 'English' are words that social workers don't like to hear" [Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 29 July 2012].

"There was too much going on with hospital beds for far too long, and it must look a bit weird to foreigners that we appear to have turned our healthcare system into a kind of national fetish. Nor can I accept that CND is/was an integral part of our national heritage to be worthy of of such a visible inclusion. There are surely other voluntary organisations that are more widely supported and ingrained in public life. This, along with the oh so PC olympic flag carriers and the concentration of ethnic minorities was clearly a sign of the producer stamping his political outlook on proceedings"   /   "I agree, what about the RSPCA, RNLI and many others?"   /   "The RNLI would have been a good choice. Unlike CND, they've actually achieved something - as the many people whose lives they have saved will attest. Or the Salvation Army, formed in the UK. Even the Citizens Advice Bureau has done more to help people in their everyday life than ... CND" [comments at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"This was a great chance for the real unsung heroes of Britain to be recognised for the work they do - the volunteers and charity workers (the proper variety, not the government paid ones), selfless people who really understand the meaning of the word 'community'" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"[It] was at times blatantly socialist and at times obscurely occult. Overall it aimed to present the world with the concept of man as the supreme ruler of his own domain" [Tricia Booth, http://www.birthpangs.org/articles/prophetic/olympics2012.html].

"That's My Sort of History Lesson"

"Blake's 'green and pleasant' land never existed. Before the industrial revolution most people lived in rural poverty where they had to work dawn to dusk to grind out a meagre living. Haven't any of these allegedly smart 'intellectuals' ever asked themselves why millions of peoples fled farms to go to dirty and dangerous cities to work in the gritty early factories? Because it was better than what they left" [comment at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"[L]ife in the Middle Ages wasn't a rural idyll of dancing round maypoles. It was marked by ignorance, savagery and terrible poverty and hardship. The industrial revolution, in turn, wasn't a hell of harsh-faced bosses and oppressed workers, but happened to be the engine of progress and modernity that produced the affluence we all enjoy today. The idea that industrialists are heartless tyrants and workers are helpless victims is, frankly, a fantasy that belongs to crude Left-wing agit-prop" [Melanie Phillips, http://melaniephillips.com/oscars-all-round-for-a-patriotic-feelgood-fantasy].

"Strenuous attempts have been made to suggest that Boyle was being ironic in his broad historical commentary with his portrayal of Britain as being a pastoral idyll before this was rudely disturbed by the industrial revolution. I wish I could believe he was, but I cannot because this is just the type of sentimental ahistorical pap which a certain type of left liberal adores and, even more worryingly, believes. ... Boyle's putative historical representation of a blissful agrarian life filled with peasants who were trampled by the grinding face of capitalist engineered industrialisation is ludicrous to anyone who has any understanding of British and in particular English history" [Robert Henderson, http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/].

"I was very impressed - in the most negative sense possible - by the Marxist imagery in the segment on the Industrial Revolution. The way it was handled served to deny images of brilliant innovation, as from Scotland's Watts, and the wise use of private capital, to what seemed like an endless stream of grimy 'exploited workers'. Of course to anyone who actually understands the economic and social dynamics, the Industrial Revolution was not about exploiting the poor. It was in fact the dawn of opportunity for urban dwellers, who for two centuries had been living in some really abject slums. I do not know the philosophy of the director of the farce - whether he is a doctrinaire Leftist, or simply a brainwashed toady, reflecting that British education has become as corrupt as public [state] education in much of America; but visual Egalitarian propaganda has no place in something like the Olympics, which is supposed to be about affording an opportunity for the best athletes in the world, to excel - to achieve above and beyond the ordinary; to demonstrate that there is joy in excelling" [comment at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"First we had the Arcadian bliss of pre-Industrial revolution England with its happy peasants milling about ... [whose] idyll was destroyed by the 'satanic mills' represented by the marvellously theatrical chimneys rising up from the ground. This is the view of industrialisation provided by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto ... in which they lamented the effects of industrialisation and Free Trade, and wrote of the destruction of 'feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations' that had supposedly existed in the countryside. It seems barely to have occurred to Marx and Engels, any more than it does to Boyle, that the lives of the pre-Industrial Revolution rural poor were disfigured by ignorance, disease and illiteracy, and that life in the cities, though undoubtedly very hard for many, led quite soon to a higher standard of living and at least a modicum of education. ... For him, subsequent history has consisted of a series of challenges to capitalist power (the Marxist class struggles) ... his Marxist version of our island history was ludicrously lopsided. Marxists will not mind. As I'm not a Marxist, I do" [Stephen Glover, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182328/London-2012-opening-ceremony-Danny-Boyles-genius-taken-Marxist-propaganda.html].

"There were no references to the achievements of the Empire ... Empires for the likes of Danny Boyle are purely repressive. Nor were there even fleeting references to the role of the Church or religion in British society (Marxists don't like God) or to the inventions or innovations (railway engines, steam ships, telegraph etc.) which powered the evil capitalist Industrial revolution that Mr Boyle abominates. ... [I]f there was space for the suffragettes and the Empire Windrush, the Beatles and the Arctic Monkeys, there was surely room for one or two of them" [Stephen Glover, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182328/London-2012-opening-ceremony-Danny-Boyles-genius-taken-Marxist-propaganda.html].

"One of the commentators described it as 'my kind of history lesson' and probably for many it was. For anyone with discernment, it was a totally unreal piece of creative imagination which fitted in with the superficial modern mindset that swallows propaganda without thinking. The pre-industrial age was not an idyll of happy peasants living on the land but had times of oppression and terrible poverty. The industrial revolution did bring hardship for multitudes but it was not all harsh faced capitalists and oppressed workers. it was during this time that the Gospel message went out powerfully into the British Isles and from these islands spread around the world. The modern age is certainly not a time of liberation and enlightenment, as we forget God, obsess over media and sports stars, while plunging into debt, with a culture filled with immorality, violence, addictions to drink and drugs and the occult. Much of that culture was celebrated in the ceremony" [Tony Pearce, London's Weird Olympic Opener].

"Not surprisingly any positive view of the contribution of Christianity to Britain's past was omitted. The 19th century saw revivals of Christianity with 59% of children attending Sunday School in 1859, and missionaries going out to spread the light of the Gospel to the world. Nor was there anything about the British Empire or the contribution of Britain in promoting parliamentary democracy and the rule of law in the world. This is entirely in keeping with the worldview our youth are constantly being presented with in schools and entertainment (particularly from the BBC). According to this view the past traditional values of Britain are a subject for mockery and rejection. One sensed something of this spirit in the sequence where 'Mr Bean' was sending up the opening scene of the 'Chariots of Fire' film and even in the arrival of the Queen with the mock up of being parachuted out of the helicopter" [Tony Pearce, London's Weird Olympic Opener].  

"It opened with Britain's agrarian peasantry being 'violently uprooted' from their happy lives ... [and] forced into the Dante-esque factories of the Industrial Revolution, where they performed oppressed proletarian toil under the eyes of capering, smug, stovepipe-hatted capitalists. ... We progressed with great speed up to the present day, pausing only to note the more obvious examples of Marxist class struggle in the Suffragettes, the Trades Union movement, the Jarrow Marchers, and last but not least an absurdly reverential paean to the greatest symbol of socialism possessed by Britain - the National Health Service. All of the above have made a truly positive contribution to modern day Britain, but why were they the only examples deemed worthy of attention? Why was the formation of modern Britain viewed only through a Marxist prism? Where were the references to Common Law, William Wilberforce, The Pilgrim fathers, Magna Carta (one of the mainstays of our liberty), Catholicism and Protestantism, great British inventions that formed our modern world, or indeed, for good or bad, the British Empire?"  [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

"[B]lack Victorian Capitalists? Empire Windrush? None of Brunel's real achievements? No great British inventions - except the Web - where were Stephenson's Rocket, Baird and the TV, the Penny Post, Chadwick and public sanitation, Newton et al, the concept of satellites, penicillin, ... if the CND logo could be included, surely more significant British items could be referenced? Even the importance of the canal system was hardly touched on although the flame was carried up the Limehouse canal. And nothing really about Britain seeding so many notions of civic freedom, parliamentary democracy, rule of law etc. With so many despotic nations attending, it would have been good to rub their noses in such stuff. ... And it might have been worth reminding the world that Britain invented so many sports - and codified them, and spread them around the world via that horrid British Empire and via British trade under Pax Britannica" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"As a history graduate I object to this re-writing of our history. What's the most famous ship this country ever produced? The Mary Rose, The Golden Hind, Victory, Warrior, The Great Eastern, The Ark Royal. No silly, it's the Windrush. ... It's all part of the plan to rob us of our culture that the BBC have been pushing relentlessly for years" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"Danny Boyle presented pre-industrial England as happy, carefree, delightful and united in its allegiance to the old ways of folklore, superstition and the worship of the ancient spirits. We saw men and women at play, laughing and friendly, clean and healthy! Nothing could be further than the truth. Large parts of pre-industrial Britain were filthy, lawless, drunken, impoverished, disease-ridden and ignorant" [Tricia Booth, http://www.birthpangs.org/articles/prophetic/olympics2012.html].

"Today it's fashionable among liberals and idealistic environmentalists to demonise industry and commerce, because they associate it with what they call 'imperialism' and 'capitalism' as well as 'strict morality'. But I'm willing to bet that none of them would refuse to educate their children, or prefer to use gas lamps, or ask the local quack round to perform an amputation without anaesthetic. Danny Boyle himself would be hard pressed to find a job as a movie director without the technological advances that began in the Industrial Revolution. Although some parts of the Industrial Revolution can be seen as ghastly and negative, the majority, including the final outcome, was outstanding good for Britain! Fundamental changes took place in agriculture, textile and metal manufacture, transportation, economic policies and the social structure in England. It is almost impossible to imagine what the world would be like if the effects of the Industrial Revolution were swept away. Electric lights would go out. Automobiles and airplanes would vanish. Telephones, radios, and television would disappear. Most of the stocks on the shelves of department stores would be gone" [Tricia Booth, http://www.birthpangs.org/articles/prophetic/olympics2012.html].

"My 13-year-old son had some pals over last night to watch the opening ceremonies. After an hour or two of the gibberish, I turned off the boob tube, and gave the boys a brief lecture on the history of the Olympic Games (ancient and modern), and the greatness of Great Britain - starting with colonization of the New World and carrying on through the Battle of Britain. When I was done, the kids said: 'That would have been a lot better than what they did'" [comment at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"[O]thers have pointed out, rightly in my view, that if it was meant to be a history of these isles, then such references were selective at best and just bad history at worst" [http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/12695/].

"England and Britain have a fascinating history. ... And they managed to reduce that to this?" [comment at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"I've never minded being in a minority - its usually the surest sign that you'll turn out to have been right later. The mob can be relied on to be wrong about anything important. But there's still something downright odd about the universal praise lavished on the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, recognised by many Leftists as a triumph for their version of the truth. It's as if the Olympics are now going to be what the Millennium Dome was supposed to be, and failed to be - the founding ceremony of a new age in which our proud past is ridiculed and our history rewritten. personally I find it creepy and disturbing that the Nelson statue in Trafalgar Square and the Duke of Wellington's statue, have been officially defaced and trivialised. I think people like me are being told this isn't our country anymore" [Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday, 05 August 2012].

"Apparently our only national achievements are the NHS, the juvenile 'texting' habit and mass multi-culturalism as typified by the representation of the population of bucolic pre-industrial Britain. This was just another manifestation of the fact that the left decided some time ago to colonise the past and re-write history - a typical marxist trick. Insidious, weak PC hogwash accompanied by a BBC voice over 'that's my sort of history lesson'" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

Diversity, Multiculturalism, and Racism

"I liked a couple of bits - the section where the chimneys rose up, and where the Olympic ring was wrought and then raised to meet the others moving into position up in the air. ... Otherwise it was a sick-inducing lefty multi-culti fest, made little sense to us and even less to viewers overseas" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"Once again the opportunity to 'rub our noses in diversity' was embraced wholeheartedly. Junk history at its worst. ... in fact it seemed that every 'vignette' had a disproportionate number of ethnic minority participants. Surely the leftists don't honestly think the global audience will be fooled by this..." [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"The MV Empire Windrush also got a mention with no apparent historical rewriting this time - all those disembarking were non-white. But this was not actually the case. Fifteen percent of the immigrants were refugee Polish women who had fled Nazi occupied Germany and were subsequently picked up by the Windrush in Mexico. The racist Boyle and Ugwu chose to ignore this reality" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

"I noticed no concern about anachronistic representation of 'vibrants' as C18th peasants and even one 'capitalist', yet when the 'Windrush' arrived ethnic authenticity was instituted" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"[I]t was spoiled for me by political point-scoring and continuous observance of political correctness ... to the point where it began to feel racist" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"It is extremely interesting that the lefties in charge of the ceremony considered it PC to include minorities in the industrial revolution section of the show, when it is clearly the case that they, to all intents and circumstances, were not part of the population at that time (some were even used to play the industrialists!) and yet the immigrants in the ship section were, quite correctly, all black. This is an absolute classic example of why political correctness is a disastrous mind set for any person to labour under (pun ENTIRELY intended), let alone an entire organisation. Why is it allowable to do this? The reason is that political correctness, by its very definition, assumes a 'goody' and a 'baddy' within any given scenario. ... it goes without saying that in the mind of left wingers and therefore of the BBC that the 'whities' are the devil and the minority in any given scenario are the 'good guys'. When the politically correct mindset is put under even the slightest intellectual probing it unravels like the leftie web of lies that it truly is" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"This is the kind of event that the diversity industry can really make a visible impact on, and it showed. Look at any local council or central government literature or presentation and you will see the same kind of over representation. This is what diversity managers exist for - their sole purpose is to increase the amount of representation of certain favoured groups within the public sector, with no regard to whether that representation is proportional. If they were to consider the percentages of these groups within the population as a whole, these things would look a lot less diverse than any of them would find acceptable" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"[N]ote Marr's declaration of London as a 'world city'. It was like a soundbite from a multiculturalist's victory speech" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"This multicultural equality agenda was so staged it was painful to watch" [quoted at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"Boyle also included the rapper Dizzee Rascal as a representative of modern, multicultural Britain. Why? Mr D Rascal is hardly an advert for racial cohesion let alone decency, kindness or morality. ... Why was such a man with a clear anti-white agenda and a man who glorifies in criminal violence allowed anywhere near the opening ceremony?" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

"Even the Telegraph have gone all Beeboid. One of their bloggers, Tim Stanley has just said, on Sky (in response to Burley) that, 'The issue of multiculturalism is settled now, in this country.'  Where have we heard that sort of phrase before? Well young man (he looks younger than Owen Jones), No it isn't - and there are many, including Trevor Phillips, who think it has ill served the country and our diverse communities" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"What I found most enlightening about the whole thing was the 'modern' tech set. ... what was the reason behind having [the black girl's] new boyfriend be himself black? Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to be a blond 'English' type? That is, if we want to be representative and all that. The way they did it edited out most of the actual  indigenous English in favour of recent immigrants, as if they are the only 'English' that matter" [comment at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"In the opening ceremony, there were 70 sheep, 12 horses, 10 chickens, 3 cows, 2 goats, 10 ducks and 9 geese. But apparently in an idyllic British farmyard there are no dogs or pigs. Well fancy that!" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"There was also the silly agenda going on that 'we are a nation of immigrants' - something much exaggerated and used as a justification for mass immigration ... in the past immigration to this country was minimal: a few people came and brought their ideas - not millions of people. The Norman conquest added immigrants but no more than 1% of the population; ditto with other 'waves' of immigration" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"During the singing of 'Abide With Me' which is a genuine Christian hymn, there was a dance scene led by Akram Khan, a Hindu who is a devotee of Sri Pratap Pawar who is known as 'India's Divine Dancer'. He is an outstanding exponent and teacher of the North Indian dance form, kathak. According to Wikipedia 'kathak' dance begins with 'an invocation to the gods'. One of Akram Khan's most well known works is a presentation called 'Gnosis'. On his website we read about Gnosis: 'Inspired by the Mahabharata story of Queen Ghandari, who blindfolds herself for life to follow her blind husband, Gnosis explores the notion of inner knowledge and clouded vision, of 'seeing darkness yet being blind to light'. Those with discernment will recognise this as bringing in New Age / Hindu concepts which are anti Christian in their origins. It also links into Gnosticism, the heretical belief system that infiltrated and plagued early Christianity. Multiculturalism, which has really become the belief system of modern Britain, demands that we merge Christianity with other religions and declare them all to be one. This was part of the message behind a Hindu inspired dance group performing while a Christian hymn was being sung" [Tony Pearce, London's Weird Olympic Opener].

"The anti-white ideology [Boyle] promoted really was disgusting to all those who realised the underlying message he was so assiduously promoting. Is it now so politically incorrect to be an indigenous Brit in Britain that we all need to be airbrushed out of existence?" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

Our Trite, Disrespectful, Narcissistic, Culture

"Are [texting and hooking up] the great achievements of British endeavour?" [comment at: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2911848/posts?page=23].

"Girl loses phone, boy finds phone, girl loses phone, boy finds phone, just shoot me now"  /  "If boy had her phone, how was he able to phone phoneless girl to say he had her phone? Or maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention to the trite, hackneyed, multiculti cliches and missed it" [comments at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"[I]t celebrated the Sixties as an age of liberation. In fact, that period fatally subverted the Britain of morality, self-discipline and tradition. ... the sixties tableau culminated in an 'all-you-need-is-love' celebration of lifestyle choice - the doctrine that in fact did so much to replace love by self-interest, and condemned countless children to the misery of fractured family life" [Melanie Phillips, http://melaniephillips.com/oscars-all-round-for-a-patriotic-feelgood-fantasy].

"[W]hat was meant by the attempt to portray the significance of the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Leigh, by wrapping him up in a story of staggering banality about British youngsters connecting with each other digitally? [Robert Henderson, http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/].

"It's a crying shame that the true splendour and glory of Britain was glossed over, while the overwhelming amount of time was given to rock music and disco dancing, along with mobile phones, TV, movies and the Internet. The tracks chosen seemed to proclaim the same message: social revolution, the freedom to do as we please, and the overthrow of morality. ... All the loud music, partying and dancing seemed to be heading for a climax, but in the end what was revealed in the virtual house centre stage was none other than the inventor of the World Wide Web! He sat surrounded by computer screens, hailed almost as Emperor of the Feast. It was as if HE were the secret magician pulling all the strings of the Ceremony, hidden behind the screen-filled 'house'. He was a kind of Wizard of Oz revealed behind theatre curtains, but with about as much authority and magnificence" [Tricia Booth, http://www.birthpangs.org/articles/prophetic/olympics2012.html].

"[Dizzee] Rascal ... anti-police song about mugging innocent people. Nice chap, definitely one of the best Britains [sic] since the industrial revolution" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"[I]t appears we are a nation of celebrity. ... And of course the [Q]ueen. But she too has now got to be a celebrity rather than the embodiment of the Crown. So they cast Her Majesty in a skit with Bond actor Daniel Craig, and made her the Queen of Comedy. ... if I was a royalist rather than a republican I would have been aghast at what they done to my monarch" [http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/12694].

"There were also what can only be hoped were the last throes of Blair's 'Cool Britannia', with the celebration of the inane and superficial. ... [with] the Queen as herself, sadly reduced to the status of a pantomime walk-on" [Robert Henderson, http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/].

"I would even question the depiction of the Queen, which most people apparently regarded as a hoot. ... A joke? Of course - but a joke with a purpose. Mr Boyle, we may reasonably surmise, is a republican. As even he can't actually get rid of the Queen, the next best thing he can do is to have her chucked out of a helicopter in a manner that was hardly intended to increase the dignity of the institution" [Stephen Glover, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182328/London-2012-opening-ceremony-Danny-Boyles-genius-taken-Marxist-propaganda.html].

"I wonder what Mr Boyle's views on our monarchy are? They certainly don't appear to be well-intentioned. There was no mention of her long service to this country, just an admittedly amusing but ultimately disrespectful stunt pretending she was parachuting into the stadium. ... No doubt the Sex Pistols' rendition of 'God Save the Queen' offended her. It should have done, because that was always Johnny Rotten's anarchist intention, as Mr Boyle knows only too well" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

The National Health Service

"Just in case this government hasn't got the message yet, Danny Boyle has repeated it to the world: don't mess with the NHS" [comment at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/29/danny-boyle-joyful-celebration].

"[F]or Boyle and many others, the NHS is an eradicable symbol of all that is good about Britain - because the myth that it gave birth to altruism and that, without it, the poor will be left to die, goes very deep. The NHS was always an impossible dream. But then, Left-wing thinking is driven almost entirely by such Utopian fantasies. As a result it creates cartoon villains who it thinks thwart such ideals, while sanitising favoured groups - both such villains and heroes were on display in Boyle's show" [Melanie Phillips, http://melaniephillips.com/oscars-all-round-for-a-patriotic-feelgood-fantasy].

"There is something strange in sanctifying a system for delivering health care. We do not venerate the schools that educate our children, let alone the Tube trains that transport us to work. If Paris had won the Olympics, there would have been no dancing doctors and giant baby in its opening ceremony, even though its insurance-based service is often judged the world's best. Unfortunately, Britain's misty-eyed myopia over the NHS - which will intensify now it is an official part of our island story - is a delusional, self-defeating national tragedy" [Ian Birrell, http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/is-this-the-scene-that-won-labour-the-next-election-7987077.html].

"My humble opinion is that they were showing support for Obamacare. That's what leftists do. Still boggles the mind a patient dying due to lack of drinking water" [comments at: http://www.lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=602961].

"Well, the Olympic London 2012 Opening Ceremony is now behind us and what a piece of Statist agit prop nonsense it was. Little wonder the BBC have been going on about how 'wonderful' Danny Boyle's production had been. ... The NHS section was particularly odious and yet that seems to be one of the bits the BBC liked best. A paean to a BLOATED grossly expensive inefficient cold statist monstrosity - mmmm... think I know WHY the BBC liked it so much!" [http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"It's often forgotten that the NHS is now on a par with the Nazis in terms of the number of incinerated foetuses" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

The Flag Bearers

"Far too much pop music - there was a place for it, given our history, but they overdid it - and an overdose of leftist propaganda, both of which required stiff mental discipline to keep the shouting-at-the-tv Tourette's at bay (resistance finally cracked with the appearance of Chakrabarti and Lawrence)..." [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"Where was the mother of Kriss Donald the 15 year old white victim of the countries [sic] worst racist abduction torture and murder at the hands of an Asian gang - doesn't fit in with the multicultural message so lets have some more of Shami and the Lawrences" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"Why was Doreen Lawrence, ... one of the Olympic flag bearers? There are many mothers, both black and white who have had their sons murdered by disgusting racists, but the inclusion of Doreen Lawrence was an overt statement of black racial politics which had no place in what should have been an impartial Olympic ceremony" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

"This achingly politically correct flag-carrying by Shami and [Doreen Lawrence] was the weakest and most misplaced part of the whole opening ceremony. Did they deserve to be there? No" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"Surely, it would have been far better to have survivors of the Islamist bombings (a result of immigration here, it must be said) hold that flag ... in a clear show of defiance against enemies within and without. ... Not PC that, though" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

"For those who really fought for our freedom and that of others - this sort of Political Posturing by Shami and Liberty undermines their heroic efforts - and that is sad" [comment at: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/rod-liddle/2012/07/shami/].

Demonising the Dissenters

"Apart from among a few embittered bigots and backwoodsmen, the ceremony has been well received across the political spectrum"  /  "And right there in that statement ... you have in a nutshell the approved BBC answer to any and all criticism" [comments at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"Mitt Romney, Aiden Burley, Toby Young, the EDL - your boys took a hell of a beating tonight" [comment at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/29/danny-boyle-joyful-celebration].

"[The Daily Mail article (now removed) by Rick Dewsbury] appears to have attracted a concerted lefty attack. As one supportive comment warned 'Well said, now wait for the hate mail that will surely come your way. As you know, you must not express the 'wrong' opinion'" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"What's distressing is that there is clearly an editorial lockdown on dissent throughout the media. Only squeaks of disquiet are being allowed through, even in newspapers like the Telegraph and the Mail. For the most part the meejah seem to have decided it would be unpatriotic not to be seen supporting this collectivist nightmare" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"The extent to which the media and politicians have fallen into line with the Boyle politicking demonstrates the success the liberal left have had in acquiring the levers of power and working them ruthlessly. Whenever a highly contentious subject provokes little public debate you may bet your life on it being the consequence of the suppression of one side of the debate. It is no wonder that in present day Britain so little public opposition to the nature of Boyle's show should have occurred. Politicians and people with access to the mainstream media know only too well that to go against the politically correct tide is to invite serious trouble" [Robert Henderson, http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/].

"Boyle was fully aware he was historically misrepresenting our racial history, but he did it in such a way that those who recognised his virulent anti-white racism would be too afraid to raise the issue publicly. And it has worked. Not one mainstream media outlet has mentioned this. Stephen Glover (alone) picked up on the Marxist propaganda but skirted around the obvious racial angle. Very wise too, if Mr Glover wishes to continue in his employment. What a dreadful indictment of totalitarian multiculturalism in action" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

"Taking to Twitter when the NHS was worshipped, as if it were not a state institution that has given us MRSA and let young men die of thirst, I quipped: 'Not even communist China were so brazen as to extol their nationalised stranglehold on their country so blatantly.' I don't like state worship. In any form. I found the Jubilee fairly nauseating too, but when I said that I wasn't hounded for seventy-two hours. ... So far that tweet has earned me a kicking in the New Statesman, twice that in the Guardian, endless tweets and some charming emails. Even the former footballer Stan Collymore weighed in online. We are through the looking glass when a man who beat up his girlfriend becomes a moral arbiter. ... While I disagree with Aiden Burley's reference to 'multicultural c***', I do agree with his lefty nonsense jibe, but even if I did not sympathise with part of his sentiment I'd like to think I wouldn't be clamouring for his blood. ... The second [an MP] puts his or her head above the parapet, especially if it is to criticise the sacred NHS, normally reasonable commentators literally call for them to resign. It's madness - disagree, for sure. But silencing dissent? Come off it. The media has lamented the tight rein that Lacog and co (pun intended) have run these games on. ... the stifling of freedom in the name of the games has rightly been attacked. But when you can't even hold an opinion that differs from the rest of the sheep then surely Locog have won? If silencing people is the legacy of these games then count me out" [Harry Cole, http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1468/the_legacy_of_these_games_is_looking_dark_].

But Definitely No Political Agenda...

"Sometimes you have to take a step back and consider whether your own bias is distorting your view. Had I really watched a tribute to socialism posing as an Olympic Games opening ceremony? I consulted Professor Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Political Science at Royal Holloway College. An exultant Professor Chadwick told me 'Olympic ceremony is socialist realism meets cabaret. A triumph!', adding further that 'So many subliminal and not so subliminal lefty messages in the Olympic Ceremony. We are all Progressives now'. ... Seems I was right. ... (Alright, so I didn't really consult Chadwick. Those quotes are his tweets.)" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"The London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony saw plenty of laboured nods to progressive and collectivist thinking, from the sly CND slogan to the bizarre NHS episode" [http:///www.thecommentator.com/article/1462/nice_olumpics_ceremony_pity_somebody_else_did_it].

"Just what I expected. It should not have political but of course they don't think it is if its left wing" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"I watched the opening ceremony with a son-in-law who is ... decidedly leftie in most of his views. he commented almost immediately - and before me - that there was a lot of PC stuff in there. Several times he groaned at the superficiality of the PC inserts" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/28/nhs-worship-on-license-fee/].

"Danny Boyle's analysis of the history of Britain was splendidly subversive and leftwing. After a communal rural Eden and the Fall, it was the competitive ruthlessness of the industrial revolution - which produced, among other things, the individualism of a competitive Olympics. Salvation came in the form of the caring NHS and this was in turn threatened by the evil rising of Voldemort (while JK Rowling was reading). Was I the only watcher to recall that the nickname of the current health secretary is Voldemort?" [comment at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/29/danny-boyle-joyful-celebration].

"Was it dripping with political correctness? Certainly. Was it suffused with sentimentality and cliches? Of course. How could it not be? For that is what Britain has become. In today's Britain, objectivity has given way to emotion. reality has been replaced by the creative imagination. Truth has been supplanted by wishful thinking. Anyone who dissents from any of these orthodoxies is treated as a pariah. Those for whom this is anathema, for whom the loss of the Britain they once knew and loved causes real anguish, felt Danny Boyle's ceremony was an affront" [Melanie Phillips, http://melaniephillips.com/oscars-all-round-for-a-patriotic-feelgood-fantasy].

"By its very nature the Olympics opening ceremony should be apolitical because of the vast range of political behaviours and ideologies which are represented by the two hundred or so competing nations. No overtly political production could do other than irritate many whilst pleasing few. It should have gone without saying that the opening ceremony should have eschewed any ideological message. Boyle ignored this imperative wholesale and pumped out the liberal internationalist message with shards of Old Labour thinking embedded within it. ... Apart from being politically partisan it was doubly crass because the overwhelming majority of the foreign audience would not have had a clue about what was going on. The British have an additional beef because they were taxpayers paying for unambiguous political propaganda which came from only one side of the political spectrum. Judging by phones-ins and comments left on blogs, newsgroups and mainstream media comment boards quite a few Britons cavilled at that" [Robert Henderson, http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/].

"To understand how inappropriate Boyle's show was, imagine an equally political partisan and uncritical show put on by a director with non-pc nationalist sympathies crossed with a religious belief in free enterprise. (This would be a stupendously improbable event in modern Britain but do your best to get your imagination to stretch to the Herculean lengths required). Such a director might have started by extolling the British Empire as a great civilising force, portrayed pre-industrial Britain as a place of poverty and brutality which was transformed into a much wealthier and more ordered society by industrial capitalism, created a narrative which depicted state interference with the economy as disastrous with the nationalised industries of Attlee including the NHS being shown as inefficient and wracked with political activists, showed the dockers' march of 1968 in support of Enoch Powell after his Rivers of Blood speech resulted in his sacking by Tory leader Ted Heath and the Notting Hill riots as legitimate political protests against mass immigration before ending with a scene encapsulating the erosion of freedom in Britain by the combination of political correctness and the vast opportunities for surveillance offered by modern digital technology. This last could have had Tim Berners-Leigh with his head in his hands as a court sentenced someone to prison for putting out a non-pc message on Twitter. All that would have been as inappropriate as Boyle's offering but no more so" [Robert Henderson, http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/].

"The obvious liberal left agenda showed so what is new? It was to be expected. They still believe they have the moral high ground. To me it showed that this is now two Englands. London and the shires. As the poet said we must seek the place where London ends and England can begin. It is London's Olympics and I wish the city well of it. I really do" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

"[I]t would be a huge mistake to write off this production as a piece of harmless fun. It may have been fun, but it was not intended to be harmless. Danny Boyle is engaged in a cultural battle of ideas that matters a great deal to him. The absence of almost any criticism on the Right suggests to me that the Left may have already won" [Stephen Glover, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2182328/London-2012-opening-ceremony-Danny-Boyles-genius-taken-Marxist-propaganda.html].

"This is serious. If we have become so brainwashed we can no longer see overt propaganda for what it is, then Britain is finished. The divisive ideologies of multiculturalism and mass immigration have already caused great damage to our community, whilst socialism has already economically bankrupted us. ... we must ... become politically aware of the leftist policies designed to fracture our country, no matter how disingenuously they are presented to us" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/londons-marxist-multicultural-olympics-2/].

"Interesting factoid - the guy who wrote the script for the Open[ing] Ceremony, Frank Cottrell, cut his teeth writing for Living Marxism. No bias there, obviously" [http://www.atangledweb.org/?p=34097].

"Danny Boyle worked with one scriptwriter and four selected assistant directors to stage the opening and closing ceremony. [These included]: Frank Cottrell Boyce ... [who] started his career writing for the far-left magazine Living Marxism [aka] The Journal of the British Revolutionary Communist Party. Stephen Daldry [who] was a member of the Socialist Workers party ... in the 1960s, ... The SWP describes itself as Anti-Capitalist and Revolutionary. Catherine Ugwu ... Her work is quoted on reading lists centred on Marxism and Black Liberation Theology" [Paul Weston, http://britishfreedom.org/olympic-opening-ceremony-hijacked-by-far-left/].

The Last Word

"Mrs U and I watched the opening festivities with some old friends from France. After the display of highly selective British history, M. Dupont turned to me and remarked, 'C'est formidable mais ou sont les Anglais?' - sums it up really" [comment at: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2012/07/27/couple-of-bbc-tweets-about-olympic/].

And So To Close...

"... [I] laughed quite a lot at the [Closing] Ceremony (or Cacophony), ... It was, unintentionally, quite funny. ... it [was] even more of a Moronic inferno than the opening ceremony, and ... was explicitly anti-religious. It gave a central place to the anti-religious song 'Imagine', getting children to sing it (doesn't that rather fly in the face of the Dawkinsite rage against children being brought up *with* religious belief? Wouldn't the same difficulty apply to bringing them up with an active unbelief?) And it gave an even more central place to the singing of 'Always look on the Bright Side of life', which was an important part of the puerile anti-Christian film 'Life of Brian'. (Even more childishly, some people continue to deny that it was anti-Christian. Don't bother.) In case anyone didn't get the message, this was accompanied by a chorus of Roman soldiers (fresh from Golgotha?) and by a squadron of women dressed as nuns, speeding about the stage on roller blades. Well, I never, what a wheeze (I don't think, actually, that many orders of nuns in this once-Protestant country were to be found wearing the elaborate winged coifs sported by these fake sisters, but what the heck, making a joke out of nuns has always been a key part of anti-religious agitprop, from the French Revolution onwards). ... By the way, although I don't like the old Beatles numbers that were played at the closing ceremony (though I do quite like 'Waterloo Sunset', alas sung without much strength to it), the old songs have a certain power to them, and a memorability. It does seem to me that pop music since the 1960s has become utterly uninteresting by comparison. I think it's because it's now conventional, and has no power to shock, and also because it has already said all that it could possibly say. Listening to George Michael (which I'd never knowingly done before) was a form of torture. How can anyone enjoy this? It also seemed to me as I watched it that the closing ceremony failed on its own terms. I thought the praise for it this morning was a bit faint. But the Olympic frenzy still has a little life in it. Most of the media have lost all detachment, and are still reporting it as if it were a sacred ceremony rather than an event. ... Take this closing sentence from a BBC news report, on the Today programme: 'The warm memories [of] the games have a while yet to glow'. This sort of thing was rightly mocked, 30 years or so ago, in sycophantic reports of royal visits. But, as always, the revolutionaries themselves are just as bad as those they've overthrown, once they're firmly in power. The slobbering over Mr. Blair's 'great' conference speeches by supposedly independent journalists was worse than any Royal toadying. And so is this." [Peter Hitchens, http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/08/on-being-pompous.html].

"If the Opening Ceremony presented us with a struggle through Britain's past to recover its ancient religious roots, the Closing Ceremony celebrated in song what the New World Order will be like, and who will rule over it. Music at the show was indicative of the kind of morality we have come to expect at this kind of event. ... The choice was interesting, and the lyrics said it all. John Lennon's song Imagine about a united world with no religion could have been composed especially for the occasion. ... Finally, [the band] The Who took to the stage ... [and] was then joined by other performers ... for one last song: My Generation - the new generation's contempt for all that has gone before" [Tricia Booth, http://www.birthpangs.org/articles/prophetic/olympics2012.html].

"Raising a Fist in the Face of God"

"The main Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies reminded me of the Tower of Babel, as almost every item depicted - in one way or another - man 'climbing high' and trying to reach perfection (or heaven) in his own strength.  The Closing Paralympics Ceremony, titled a 'Festival of the Flame', displayed at one point a very unpleasant 'face' set alight behind a wall of fire, in front of which danced semi-clad people, bringing to my mind Moloch, one of the gods who was worshipped by the descendents of Lot (rescued from Sodom...)" [Michael Smith, personal letter on file].  

"Not only the thousands present in the flesh but perhaps billions around the world watched the ceremonies on TV. Many more will see them on subsequent digital media. How better to reach the entire world with a new message? 'The first essential characteristic of the Olympics, both ancient as well as modern, is to be a religion. It represents, above and outside the Churches, humanity's superior religion.' (Baron de Coubertin, reviver of the Olympic Games and founder of the IOC). The message I watched removed God from not only Britain's past but the world's future. He was not given one iota of recognition or praise for the many blessings we have received over the centuries in this country. Indeed, the height of evangelism and missionary endeavour of the 19th and early 20th century was entirely reduced to a bleak, black and 'satanic' nightmare called 'pandemonium'. ... beyond the blatant paganism and idolatrous symbolism I felt there was a challenge to the sovereignty of God at this time, a rejoicing in man's own strength and ability, and a desire for self rule" [Tricia Booth, http://www.birthpangs.org/articles/prophetic/olympics2012.html].

--------------------------------------------

"The Frankfurt School believed that as long as an individual had the belief - or even the hope of belief - that his divine gift of reason could solve the problems facing society, then that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation that they considered necessary to provoke socialist revolution.

Their task, therefore, was as swiftly as possible to undermine the Judaeo-Christian legacy. To do this they called for the most negative destructive criticism possible of every sphere of life which would be designed to de-stabilize society and bring down what they saw as the 'oppressive' order. Their policies, they hoped, would spread like a virus - 'continuing the work of Western Marxists by other means' as one of their members noted.

To further the advance of their 'quiet' cultural revolution ... the [Frankfurt] School recommended (among other things):

(1) the creation of racism offences,
(2) continual change to create confusion,
(3) the teaching of sex and homosexuality to children,
(4) the undermining of schools' and teachers' authority,
(5) huge immigration to destroy identity,
(6) the promotion of excessive drinking,
(7) emptying of churches,
(8) an unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime,
(9) dependency on the state or state benefits,
(10) control and dumbing down of media,
(11) encouraging the breakdown of the family.

One of the main ideas of the Frankfurt School was to exploit Freud's idea of 'pansexualism' - the search for pleasure, the exploitation of the differences between the sexes, the overthrowing of traditional relationships between men and women. To further their aims they would:

(a) attack the authority of the father, deny the specific roles of father and mother, and wrest away from families their rights as primary educators of their children,
(b) abolish differences in the education of boys and girls,
(c) abolish all forms of male dominance - hence the presence of women in the armed forces,
(d) declare women to be an 'oppressed class' and men as 'oppressors'."

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!"
(Isaiah 5:20-21)

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