It seems like we are not getting sufficiently excited about having an extremely expensive sports event and hundreds of thousands of people descend on our densely populated over-crowded strip of SE BC.
So we now have media ads featuring our Canadian athletes extolling us to support them, we have a news radio channel (official radio station of the Olympics) telling us how many great jobs are opening up in serving and bar tending. We also have the workers at Whistler being taught by some person from Disney University (yes it exists) and how to be a gracious host. Even Gregor Robertson was all excited about the Olympic Village today and one athlete was telling the media how great it was to be able to stay in luxury accommodation. Bob Rennie was reassuring them that the city wont be on the hook for the 1100 units. lets hope he is right.
Enough already!
There are some of us curmudgeons who really didn't want these games. We cant get around the city as it is. We think affordable housing is a better use of money than big ice rinks and Multimillion dollar ski runs. We don't want Hundreds of Millions spent on security. As for the athletes, we wish them well, very well, but the cost of hosting it here could have been better spent on them..help them train, buy them equipment AND have the whole event somewhere else.
Anyway we are stuck with it and all the inconveniences and it will bring. But please VANOC and major sponsors, spare us the..'we-are-doing-it-for-athlete's' BS. The developers and speculators have done VERY well out of this event. The politicians will feel important for a couple of weeks, and the Olympics have just become a contest of tallying who has the most medals which seems to me to defeat the purpose which is...what is it again?
So we now have media ads featuring our Canadian athletes extolling us to support them, we have a news radio channel (official radio station of the Olympics) telling us how many great jobs are opening up in serving and bar tending. We also have the workers at Whistler being taught by some person from Disney University (yes it exists) and how to be a gracious host. Even Gregor Robertson was all excited about the Olympic Village today and one athlete was telling the media how great it was to be able to stay in luxury accommodation. Bob Rennie was reassuring them that the city wont be on the hook for the 1100 units. lets hope he is right.
Enough already!
There are some of us curmudgeons who really didn't want these games. We cant get around the city as it is. We think affordable housing is a better use of money than big ice rinks and Multimillion dollar ski runs. We don't want Hundreds of Millions spent on security. As for the athletes, we wish them well, very well, but the cost of hosting it here could have been better spent on them..help them train, buy them equipment AND have the whole event somewhere else.
Anyway we are stuck with it and all the inconveniences and it will bring. But please VANOC and major sponsors, spare us the..'we-are-doing-it-for-athlete's' BS. The developers and speculators have done VERY well out of this event. The politicians will feel important for a couple of weeks, and the Olympics have just become a contest of tallying who has the most medals which seems to me to defeat the purpose which is...what is it again?
