Et Tu, Jessica?

Those Olympics, eh?

Heady sun-drenched days filled with joy, where the Union flag became popular again and where the nation learned to banish, for one glorious summer, the miseries of this world.

This included hag-faced nannies who were sent scuttling into the grime-oozing shadows (where they belong) as we celebrated the successes of shit-faced shooters, sozzled surfers, along with boozy boxers, McDonald's gorging martial artists and discus champs on a bender.

Still, I'm sure the public health industry was feeling quite content that these were just the lesser lights misbehaving and not likely to make too many headlines.

It's not like the British poster girl Olympian would ever let them down, now is it?

GOLDEN girl Jessica Ennis says she is celebrating her Olympics success with sex, wine and junk food.

She was the poster girl for the London 2012 Olympics and after taking gold in the heptathlon, Jessica said she can finally let her hair down.

And that means indulging in all the things she had missed while training for the Games.

Jessica, 26, said: “When I was competing I had to turn a lot of things down so now I can relax and enjoy myself a bit.

“I’m a big red wine fan which is really bad and I can have all the bad food I really love to eat but can’t when I’m training.”

D'oh! First it's Wiggo proving you don't have to be pristine to be a world-beater, now Jess wades in and gets the health lobby's knickers all knotted too! It must really suck to be a finger-wagging bore in summer 2012.

They still hold out hope though, 'cos Agent Oliver is on the prowl.

Jessica confessed she was gobsmacked by the number of celebrities who turned out to watch her in the Olympics.

“One of my favourites was Jamie Oliver. I absolutely love him. He offered me a free meal and I think I will hold him to it.”

Wouldn't it be divine if she were to ask the lardy hypocrite to "make us a nice greasy fry up love, and none of that low fat malarky!" and watch his jaw drop down onto his multiple chins?

Now that really would be 'pukka'!

Winning Olympians Just Keep Misbehaving!

Following recent articles here on the shocking behaviour of successful Olympians who have dared to enjoy frowned-upon products, many thanks to fellow jewel thieves who have since pointed out a few more examples.

Simon Cooke spotted these sporty Spaniards ignoring the nannies.

On Wednesday, [Joel] González won Spain’s first ever taekwondo gold medal, whilst [Brigitte] Yagüe took home a silver.

Once the competition was over and they had received their medals, the pair had to do some press calls and go through anti-doping tests. When they finally returned to the Olympic Village, it was 3am and they were exhausted. “We contemplated going out to celebrate, but decided against it as we still have a colleague competing,” said Joel. “All we wanted to do was go back and eat. We attacked McDonalds,” adds Yagüe.

Not to be outdone, Elsie Tanner (I suspect that's not a real name) dropped a link in the comments to Britain's boxing gold medallist, Nicola Adams, favouring chain joints and a few bevies over pomegranate juice and a bag of pine nuts.

"I'll probably go to Nando's to celebrate. A few drinks? Why not?"

Why not, indeed, it's kinda the motto around here and in direct contravention to the whining of shrivelled joy-haters.

Meanwhile Séan Billings thankfully brought the best of the lot - German Discus champ Robert Harting - to my attention.

Now THAT'S how to celebrate Olympic gold! 'Incredible Hulk' of discus tears off his shirt then runs 100m hurdles in incredible display of joy

- Harting then tried to take one of the Olympic flames before going on drinking session on German cruise liner

- After alcohol-fuelled session he fell asleep on a train and had his Olympic Village accreditation stolen

Almost deserves a gold medal in itself, doesn't it?

Wunderbar, Robert, wahrlich wunderbar!

Another Misbehaving Achiever

Oh those ultra-healthy windsurfers, right?

Windsurfing silver medallist Nick Dempsey on BBC Breakfast: "I'm good, slightly hungover but good."

Alcohol Concern's binge-drinker naughty step just got a little more crowded.

Live A Little, Aussie Losers!

Congratulations to Anna Meares for today winning Australia's third gold medal in the Olympics. OK, so it's a trifle down on the 14 from Beijing 2008 and the 17 from Athens 2004, but I'm sure their government's recent risk-terrified ban frenzy and hysterical approach to health will kick in soon.

It's very amusing that Anna, particularly, has bucked this trend considering she was a poster girl for McDonald's in 2008 for her liking of kicking back with a sinful treat once in a while.


What kind of message does that send, eh? That you can enjoy unhealthy products and still be a global champion? Something must be done!

So the University of Sydney (who else?) did that something. They conducted a study to see what other Aussie athletes thought about the likes of Meares earning money from such endorsements.

CONCLUSIONS: Elite athletes are receptive to supporting health promotion through sport and many are not in agreement with the promotion of unhealthy products in sport or by sports people.

So, let's get this right. Australian athletes don't like their successful counterparts - because they are the ones gaining the big endorsement contracts - advertising products like McDonald's.

Of course, if the lesser athletes had earned the 'elite' tag before expressing these concerns - not much sign of that in London - they could have refused the endorsement cheques to prove their point, couldn't they?

Anna doesn't give much of a stuff, I reckon. She's won a gold medal and is probably enjoying ice cream and a fizzy drink - or maybe something stronger like British winners - while her failed compatriots are planning their flights home and consoling themselves with their medal-free self-righteousness.

If the result of the unending Australian health obsession is a nation - which used to be nigh impossible for us to beat - becoming a rag-bag array of limp pussies, I'm all for it.

Keep it up Australia! We certainly don't want you going back to those devil-may-care days when you lived a little and beat us hollow.

My Kind Of Olympian

Squirrelled away in the BBC's coverage of the Olympics Gold-fest yesterday was this class quote.

Asked how he's going to celebrate after winning gold in the double trap, Britain's Peter Wilson responds: "I'm going to get very, very drunk and probably do something silly." Sweden's silver medallists Hakan Dahlby asks if it'll be a free bar at the pub where Wilson used to work at back in 2009 and the 25-year-old says he hopes so.

He's only young, so I'm sure such refreshing honesty will be beaten out of him before Rio in 2016. He should, of course, be thinking of the children.

It's not been a very good couple of days for the righteous. Bradley Wiggins was 'at it' too just the day before.

That's the Olympic spirit, lads!

Britain Should Copy China, Say Indian Morons

What a shocker, eh?

Indian anti-smoking lobby hits out at London Olympic organizers

NEW DELHI: London has failed to do what Beijing carried out so successfully four years ago - make it smoke free.

Despite having the largest prevalence of tobacco use in the world, China had set an unprecedented standard by declaring the Beijing Olympics (2008) completely smoke free, including all outdoor venues.

How awful! Country which claims to value freedom and rights of the individual doesn't follow the lead of communist dictatorship which has a track record of human rights abuses and treats its citizens with suspicion, contempt and unconditional state control.

The tobacco control industry isn't picky about which regimes to claim as bedfellows, is it? Already swooning over racist and disgustingly brutal Bhutan's, err, compassionate smoking cessation efforts, China is now held up as an example of purity by the Indian chapter of hateful anti-tobacco freaks. They'd probably overlook the prison camps and summary executions too if North Korea were ever to bring in a smoking ban.

"It is shocking to know that despite England being declared smoke free in 2007 the LOCOG has allowed DSAs within the perimeter of ticketed competition venues and are also present in specified areas of the athletes village, exhibiting specific signage denoted as 'smoking areas'."

The more cynical amongst us would say that it's one of the few things that LOCOG have got right! It's certainly to their credit that they considered the comfort and convenience of law-abiding citizens and put plans in place well in advance, you sub-continental clowns.

Besides, what the fuck has it got to do with you anyway? If you're still smarting about that bird at the opening ceremony, this is not the way to express your frustration, you know.

Ganesha on a bike! If you're an example of Indian civility, the girl deserves a medal herself for pissing your country off.

Dick Out And About: On The Olympics In The Kitchen

One problem behind empty seats at the Olympics is still being wilfully ignored, but I've written about it here before.

So I've guested at the Devil's place with something further. Please do go have a read.

Previous DP exports can be viewed here and here.

Well, If You Insist On Stifling The Free Market ...

Questions are being asked about this, but I'm pretty sure they won't come up with the correct answers.

An investigation has been launched by the London 2012 organisers Locog after large numbers of empty seats were evident in multiple sporting venues on the opening day of the Games.

Despite tickets for the events being sold out, television images revealed scores of empty seats at the swimming, dressage, volleyball and tennis.

Commentators noted the unfilled seats and members of the public who were unable to purchase tickets took to social media websites like Twitter to express their anger.

Predictably, LOCOG fall in neatly with the authoritarian theme of these games with their response.

"[...] we are in the process of finding out who should have been in the seats and why they weren’t there.”

Quite an ugly undertone there, I thought. What are they going to do? Start issuing fines? Punish those who are not overwhelmingly positive with a blacklisting for future sporting events? Send someone round to put the frighteners on?

They've obviously never heard of the proverb "no crying over spilt milk", as investigating who should have been there and why they didn't attend is hardly going to fill seats for an event that has already taken place, is it?

Yes, I'm aware it's merely a kneejerk public relations exercise prompted by the screams of outrage from disgruntled fans who were not able to procure tickets, but they perhaps shouldn't have been in that position in the first place.

For example, search eBay for Olympics 2012 tickets - and I mean ones which have yet to be used - and you won't find any as they've been deemed a banned item. I'm sure eBay would have been happy for users to list them so must assume that re-selling has been frowned on by LOCOG and pressure put on sites which could re-allocate tickets to those who really want them.

I know this because, unbeknownst to me, the boy little P put himself into a school ballot for tickets and managed to get two for the basketball. I had no inclination to arrive - according to the accompanying literature - two hours prior to the event to ensure I passed security, as well as not relishing spending seven hours being ripped off for refreshments in a non-smoking venue where there is no re-entry (you leave, you stay outside) to watch one of the few sports I don't understand and couldn't give a chuff about. So he is going with a couple of friends and their parents, leaving my ticket unused.

Someone, somewhere might really like to use that ticket, but I'm not allowed to know who they are as I can't sell it by the usual method of finding a happy recipient of junk I don't need.

What is valuable to me is not the same as what is valuable to someone else. That's how the free market works.

There is much angst that the tickets being unused could be corporate freebies, but they're not free. They've cost the corporations much more than most people would be prepared to pay for them, and if they result in empty seats, so what? If LOCOG demand that they should be returned, are they going to refund the sponsorship they received for the privilege? I'll let you make your own conclusions on that.

So what's the reason that tickets aren't allowable on eBay? Almost definitely because they don't want them going to those hideous people who can afford to pay a lot of money for them. The inevitable result of such ideology is the empty seats that social media users are getting right upset about. But what's the difference? If they were corporate tickets, they were unavailable anyway - the fact they weren't used is irrelevant.

What did they expect? Businesses to pay top dollar for them only to give them away gratis? And, even so, how are the companies expected to know if those they have given tickets to are going to attend or not? Are they to be as dictatorial with their terms as LOCOG?

Excluding the free market from ticketing arrangements is quite obviously going to result in empty seats. If you receive tickets for an event you don't fancy, you'd try to shift them to someone who does. If that fails, and you're not allowed to sell them, the bums don't reach the seats.

If LOCOG wanted packed stadiums for every event, and if Olympics fans wanted a better chance of being able to secure tickets for the spectacle, perhaps those who were organising London 2012 should have been less righteous and at least given the free market a chance.

Not doing so seems to have left just about everyone unhappy.

London 2012: An Anthem

On the eve of the glorious London 2012 Olympics^TM©, so kindly given to us for nine billion of our tax pounds by our benevolent government, here is an anthem with which to greet the world as they converge on our fair nation.

I present The Beer Olympics, a thing of beauty crafted by The Lancashire Hotpots for the cost of go faster stripes on a Ford Focus and a slap up breakfast at Fat Boys' caff.

From the album A Hard Day's Pint featuring other classic tracks including Lets's Get Leathered, The Barmaid's Baps, and The Girl From Bargain Booze.

Righteous Advisory Warning: Not safe for those of a joy-challenged disposition.

H/T That there red-topped Nat

A Gold Medal In Misery For Mike Daube

The eagle-eyed NannyingTyrants has spotted former ASH UK Director, Mike "slippery slope is my living" Daube, further exhibiting the latest creep of the tobacco template. This time, with a joy-vaccuumed article on Olympics sponsorship.

Reading it, you could be forgiven for thinking that the overwhelming enjoyment of popular consumer products has ceased to exist.

What does the Olympics stand for: is it the inspiration for a healthier, sportier community? Or is it just another way to sell junk food and booze to an ever-fatter, ever-drunker population of couch potatoes?

Yes, it's one of those type of articles. Dripping in archetypal public health wild exaggeration and miserabilism, and - of course - as many references to children that it is possible to crowbar into the word count.

Nobody could doubt that kids as well as adults are being targeted – Coca Cola’s own marketing materials include activities and competitions for children, alongside promotions that make full and creative use of social media.

Drinks that children enjoy - and are able to buy legally - being advertised to the kids who drink them? Quelle horreur!

Both [Cadbury and Trebor] are already promoting their association with the Olympics through marketing materials, such as the Cadbury Australia “Cadbury Catch Up at the Olympics” competition.

All this at a time when obesity is one of our most pressing public health threats. More than 60% of adults and a quarter of our children are overweight or obese.

Err, our children, Mike? When did the public health industry purchase them?

Heineken UK is the “official lager supplier and sponsor of London 2012”. Heineken is also active in all media, including online,and through massive outdoor displays that will presumably be magically invisible to children.

Marvellous veiled straw man there. They're not invisible to children because we (currently) assume them to be clever enough to understand that the ads are not directed at them. Their being banned by law from buying the stuff may give them a clue. Plus, an ad exec would be rather stupid, anyway, to commit resources at an age group which isn't able to reciprocate by, you know, spending money on their products.

Still, it helps crank up the emotional blackmail, which is the entire point of the article. And also a major plank in Mike's determination to waste his precious time on this Earth preaching doom and death to a largely happy public.

Why would the IOC not want to protect children and young people from exposure to promotion for beer and wine as well as for spirits and other alcoholic products?

Probably because the IOC - unlike Mike - doesn't get paid for advancing bans on ads for products which people like to buy.

If previous Olympic Games are a precedent, media coverage of the Olympics will be associated with a tsunami of direct and indirect promotion for junk food and alcohol.

A 'tsunami'? Laying the terminology a bit thick by comparing mostly benign products with natural disasters which instantly slaughter innocents, isn't he? Perhaps something to remember next time his kind object to the 'health nazis' tag for being a hideous parallel to draw.

Oh yeah, and did he mention the word 'precedent'?

By the time the next Olympics come around, perhaps the IOC will have taken a more responsible approach to promotion of its wonderful product, and will consign all association of sporting success with alcohol and junk food to the promotional graveyard where tobacco sponsorship now resides.

I do believe Mike is invoking a precedent here. Or I would do, except that current ASH UK Director, Debs Arnott, insists that there cannot possibly be one for banning advertising of alcohol. So, former ASH UK Director Mike must be just pulling our leg. Right?

Still, even if the public would de deprived and the Olympics would be massively poorer, I suppose Mike would be blissfully happy if the companies involved were to voluntarily remove their association with the games, yes?

Probably not, no. You see, this BBC article contains a telling quote which tells you everything you need to know about the tedious depression-peddlers who plague 21st century life.

Last year, ministers launched a responsibility deal which involved a series of pledges by drink firms as well as supermarkets and food producers about how they would make their products healthier and act more responsibly.

But committee chairman Stephen Dorrell said the industry should not receive credit for this as it was their "civic duty" to act responsibly.

And this is the impasse we are faced with. The tobacco template doesn't have a clause in it about industry 'doing their bit'. The only thing they are supposed to do is to succumb to pathetic sad-sacks like Mike and be demonised into pariah status. They don't want us to drink less, they want us to stop drinking full stop. They don't want McDonald's to be more 'responsible', they want them to cease to exist. The whole exercise relies on painting drinks, food, and chocolate suppliers - along with every other popular producer - as evil and not to be listened to.

They don't want the public to enjoy what the public likes to enjoy. Instead, they wish us all to have a miserable life while Mike and his pals get paid handsomely out of our taxes for burbling this shit.

In such circumstances, these businesses should have only one goal in life, and that is to make the lives of people like Mike as miserable as possible by not backing down. Appeasement, as we have seen, simply encourages them, so best to not even consider it. In fact, industries concerned should be getting in the faces of public health bores like Mike and fighting them as sternly and dirtily as is humanly possible.

They would have the overwhelming support of the sane majority, too. We're heartily sick of boring, whey-faced, turgid, finger-wagging, depressive, weapons grade misery-mongering chimps like Mike Daube.

Olympics 2012: Cocaine, Ecstasy In - Tobacco Out?

Don't ever accuse this blog of not being topical.

OLYMPIC athletes who test positive for cocaine and ecstasy should not face an automatic ban from competing, the British anti-doping agency has said.

Professional sportsmen and women currently face a two-year ban if they are found to have the illegal substances in their system during competition.

But in a document seen by The Times, UK Anti-Doping, the agency responsible for random testing of British athletes, says the sanctions are disproportionately harsh. Regulations on recreational drugs and medications including asthma inhalers should be relaxed in time for the London Games, the report says.

Drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine are judged by scientists to have no performance-enhancing effects in most sports.

Meanwhile, where tobacco is concerned, the opposite is being mooted.

[...] smokeless tobacco products are of growing popularity in sport owing to potential performance enhancing properties and absence of adverse effects on the respiratory system [...] considering the adverse effects of smoking on the respiratory tract and numerous health threats detrimental to sport practice at top level, likelihood of smokeless tobacco consumption for performance enhancement is greatly supported.

Sadly, the full text is behind a paywall, but a kindly fellow jewel robber furnished me with the benefits attributable to nicotine claimed therein.

"Promotion of related positive reinforcing effects results in vigilance, reduced stress, mood modulation and lower body. Interestingly, nicotine also triggers a significant increase of pulse rate, blood pressure, blood sugar and epinephrine release owing to simultaneous stimulant and relaxant properties. As a consequence ... smokeless tobacco is a very attractive drug from a doping perspective.”

So, let's get this straight. There are no benefits to tobacco consumption whatsoever ... unless such benefits can be used against it. Yep, that's about the consistency of information we've come to expect.

Sit round the athletes' villages of the future socially puffing waccy-baccy and you'll get a rap on the knuckles, but stick some snus under your lip? Don't even go there, Sven!

Presumably, they'll be coming to strip Hestrie Cloete of her medals soon enough, too.

As an added bonus, here's the mightily popular Shirley Strong doing rather well for GBR in Los Angeles 1984.

You shouldn't need to ask why that's relevant.