Beijing 2008

Great Britain has done much better than expected in the Beijing Olympics, but we have done even better than almost every other country if you look at our population. Let’s take a look at the top four-

Great Britain- 47 medals (19 golds) = 1 medal per 1.3 million people (1 gold per 3.2 million)

China- 100 medals (51 golds) = 1 medal per 13 million people (1 gold per 26 million)

USA- 110 medals (36 golds) = 1 medal per 2.8 million people (1 gold per 8.4 million)

Russia- 72 medals (23 golds) = 1 medal per 2 million people (1 gold per 6.16 million)

There are many other factors to consider such as opportunity, which many countries do not have, and some countries do much better than the UK by populations. No matter what, it has been a very successful Olympics for the UK and we should all be proud!

Minette Marin

Gary Glitter – mad, bad or just dangerous to know? is a good read at The Times which tries to explain this most sensitive of issues. I’m a liberal, but I still say kill them all!

“Gary Glitter is a most unlikely martyr. With his white goatee, hinting at shameless, perverted goatishness, he has been convicted of some revolting paedophile crimes, both here and abroad, including the sexual assault of two little girls in Vietnam.

The details the tabloids have luxuriated in are loathsome and even if the motives of the home secretary – in hastily proposing a populist “Glitter law” to restrict sex offenders’ travel – are not disinterested, there is nothing wrong with her suggestion. Child abusers should be restrained. Few people can doubt that Glitter should be put on the sex offenders’ register for the rest of his life and closely watched, or that other countries are entitled to keep him out.

All the same, Glitter is suffering media martyrdom far beyond his deserts; he is a latterday St Sebastian, lashed to the post of public contempt and pierced again and again with the furious arrows of misdirected indignation…”

Loved by non-Americans

Why do most people outside of America like Barack Obama so much? Is it because he is black? Is it because he is the stark opposite of George Bush? Is it because John McCain is too similar to George Bush? Or is it simply because he appears to be highly educated, articulate and able to carry out the office of President?

I suspect it is a mixture of all of these reasons, but I for one would feel more confident about the future if he was in power. He has already proved that he can reach out to other nations and that he can command the respect of foreign populations. Just maybe he is more like us Europeans and that is why we like him- he seems to be quite liberal by nature and could well bring many nations closer together than Mr Bush ever managed to.

Many of us outside of Europe cannot understand why ‘one person’ is given so much power, especially when they get that power through raising money, and it seems bizarre that 250 million people are commanded to uniquely by one individual who has the final say on many crucial matters.

I find it hard to believe that Obama will not be the next President, but I have a huge amount of hope that he will prevail.

Nothing to smile about

Gordon Brown must be the most hated man in the UK at the moment- we have house prices dropping sharply, inflation increasing, more people out of work, the credit crunch and lots of other bad news in areas that the media just loves to jump on.

I must be in a tiny minority, but I actually think he is by far the best man to be running the UK. He is incredibly well educated, has proved time and time again that he entered politics for the right reasons and easily demonstrates the ability to deal with multiple issues when needed. The media in the UK is quite frankly a joke at the moment- there have always been newspapers like The Daily Mail which slants every possible news item into a right wing slamming of anyone who appears to be even remotely liberal. It revels in the number of people coming to the UK from abroad and plays into the basic human instinct of protecting one’s homeland. It cares not that we need many of these people from abroad and has continually failed to produce a ‘news’paper worth reading because it loves to add it’s own ‘distateful’ opinion to every item.

The BBC (which many people call left wing, probably correctly) is no better in it’s ceaseless quest to promote bad news. When the FT drops 200 points in a day the world is coming to an end, when it creeps back up over the next 2 days to a level higher than before it dropped we see nothing from the BBC at all. Petrol prices rise and all hell breaks lose- they drop back down and not a word! No matter what the story, if it is centered around the UK economy the BBC is at the forefront of skewing the news over time to paint a much more negative picture than reality shows.

Some of the issues affecting people in the UK are of course government created such as the removal of the 10p tax (which labour brought in), the dreadful state of dentistry in this country and many other issues, but there are some highlights as well. The NHS as a whole performs better now than ever before, the UK economy is still better placed than almost all other major western countries and the help given to new parents has grown substantially in just a few years.

No matter what happens, Mr Browm will almost certainly lose his job at the next election (probably not before) and David Cameron will be our next Prime Minister- does anyone with a brain really think he will do a better job!