Are the Brits going to master English?

Loved the sign I saw in Central London and wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

Funny they wanted cars in the lane instead of out of it

What caught my eye was the implied obligation. Why did traffic positively have to use the games lane? And just what were the authorities going to do with the rest of the road?

So, back in the same place today, it was fascinating to see a completely different sign.

Getting it together with the English, but no cigar yet

That’s an improvement, isn’t it? At least the sense of obligation’s gone.

Of course, it doesn’t actually tell us anything we didn’t already know. It’s obvious that any car could use the lane, the only question was whether the driver would collect a fine for doing so.

Ah, well. Who knows. One of these days the London authorities might really learn their English and start to use the word ‘may’.

Then we’d be really motoring.

That's it for my Olympics

Well, that’s it. My last day in London, barring accidents, for the period of the Olympics. Two blessed weeks of working from home while Olympians and Olympics fans struggle through the traffic without me.

The whole thing doesn’t officially kick off until tomorrow but I had a couple of good Olympic experiences today. 

The torch came along Oxford Street this afternoon, two or three minutes walk from the office, so although I’d studiously avoided being sucked in by all the hype before, I tramped down with my colleagues to spend fifteen minutes standing around in the sun (yes, we’re getting some these days, after months of rain) for a glimpse of the flame going past. It was being borne aloft on the top deck of a bus (a bus! I'd expected a runner at least) and the historical moment lasted seconds and seconds.

See the torch? At the front of the bus?
And this is what we were waiting for?

The best moment of the experience came when a woman joined the crowd and asked, ‘have I missed it? Has the torch already gone past?’

‘Yes,’ I felt like answering, ‘I’m just hanging around here because I like standing in the sun in the middle of Oxford Street, and the rest of the crowd feels exactly the same.’

A while later, heading home, my eye was caught by a street sign. As you no doubt know, a number of London streets now have designated ‘Games Lanes’ running along them. Some people have re-christened them ‘ZiL Lanes’ in honour of the great Soviet tradition of keeping large chunks of roads for the exclusive use of members of the leadership in their ZiL limousines.

Granting permission or issuing an order?

What amazed me about the sign is that it seemed to be inverting the whole process.

Were they really saying that all traffic had to use the Games Lane instead of keeping out of it? In which case, what were they planning to do with the rest of the road?

Fortunately, that’s not something I have to give much thought to, as I start my break away from the madding crowds and the frenzy of the capital.

Happy Olympics, everyone. I intend to enjoy them to the full.

By keeping well out of the way.

So you want to know what's going to happen in 2012?

As a public service, here are my predictions for the new year:

• There will be a lot more talk about the likelihood of the Euro failure. It will either fail or it won’t fail. The Eurozone will still be in crisis at the end of the year.


• The London Olympics will take place. Everyone responsible for organising them will describe them as an outstanding success. Everyone caught up in the jams in London will describe them as a major pain in the backside.


• Obama will be re-elected to the White House in November. Or he will be beaten by Mitt Romney. The US will still be in crisis at the end of the year.


• The ratings agencies will make a whole series of baseless judgements about different national economies. Because the people who make the markets will slavishly follow the ratings, they will all be proved accurate. Governments will continue to allow the agencies to dictate their policies.


• The Chinese will discover the hard way that ‘overheating’ really is a phenomenon and you can’t sustain unsustainable growth indefinitely. Or they will have another boom year and that painful but salutary lesson will be postponed again.


• Germany will win the European football championships. Or they won’t in which case one of the other teams will. It might be Spain but then again it might not.


• In other football-related news, a leading star, faced with his 25-year old supermodel showing her age, will make a fool of himself with a seventeen year old mesmerised by his figure - the athletic one he shows on field and bedroom or the one in his bank account. He will try and fail to block publication of the story. Eventually he’ll find it cheaper to pay off the teenager, who will make the easiest 300 grand of her life, and the wife will stand Tammy Wynette-like, by her man’s earning potential.


• The Queen will celebrate her diamond jubilee. It will all be jolly wonderful. People in countries round the world who take joy in poking fun at the British monarchy will be glued to their TV screens to enjoy the pageantry. 


• David Cameron will do all he can to take credit for the jubilee as he’ll have no other achievements to his name. He’ll get a three-point bounce in the polls.


• The pope will piss off the followers of one of the World’s great religions. It might be the Catholics.


• The Tea Party in the States will continue to delight us by achieving that ideal and elusive balance, sought by our best dramatist in some of their finest plays, between side-splitting caricature and and naked menace.


• Sticking with the States, the day of rapture will be announced, will be prepared for by believers and will pass without their leaders offering a word of apology or learning an ounce of humility.


• And on the ounce of humility front, starting in mid-December forecasters will tell us what’s going to happen in 2013 without the slightest mention of what they previously told us was going to happen in 2012.

Happy New Year!

The logo that spells discord

We’re getting terribly excited in London about the forthcoming Olympics, now less than a year and a half away. The place is being absolutely plastered with the logo.

Ubiquitous logo

Those Olympics are already proving a tremendous success. As is well known, the primary purpose of the Olympic movement is to foster discord between nations. These particular Olympics set the right tone from the outset, when the French had their noses put completely out of joint by not winning the competition to the stage them. I mean, then President Chirac knew it was in the bag for Paris, so he went round irritating other nations on the International Olympic Committee. For instance, he made some derogatory comments about Finnish cooking. After all, who cares about the Finns? Poor old Chirac. The Finnish delegation’s votes turned out to be pretty essential.

There was never any danger of our behaving that way, of course. I mean, given the traditional delights available in English cuisine, we were never going to cast aspersions on others. Not even on the Finns. Dried reindeer meat? Bring it on. It can’t be worse than smoky bacon crisps.

More recently, the Iranians have got upset about the logo itself. They reckon the it spells the word ‘Zion’. Funnily enough, the US television presenter, Glenn Beck, who has left no doubt concerning the moderation and liberalism of his views, agreed with them.

The Iranians feel that the logo demonstrates that the international Jewish conspiracy has been exerting its malign influence. Again.

Now this is obviously rubbish, and on at least three counts.

1. I don’t believe there’s any such a thing as an international Jewish conspiracy. Or if there is, let me just point out to the people behind it, that my mother is Jewish which automatically qualifies me for membership. So I deeply resent the fact that no-one has ever tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘hey, want to join this conspiracy?’ World domination – I’d be into that like a shot. I could become a banker and get paid a hell of a sight more for doing a lot less work.
2. If there were such a conspiracy, no-one with the brains to organise it would ever waste their time getting the word ‘Zion’ into the London Olympic logo. What? You think they might feel that words like ‘Zion’ and ‘Zionism’ aren’t getting enough exposure in the world press already? That Jews don’t get enough publicity?
3. The word is obviously not ‘Zion’ anyway. If it’s anything, it’s ‘Zior’. My guess is that ‘Zior’ is a word in some long-lost language meaning ‘bloody ugly logo’

The worst of it? It’s plastered all over London.