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It's the PC Olympics

I don’t mean to sneer, but which is more important: equality or inclusion?

Rod Liddle

Wednesday, 1st August 2007

It takes all sorts to make a diversity team, but which is more important: equality or inclusion?
Rod Liddle is shocked by a recruitment ad for an Olympics quango -- and the evidence it offers that Britain is being bombarded by vaipid, deluded and meaningless pieties

Like a good many of you, I imagine, I was worried that hosting the 2012 Olympic Games in London might send out the wrong sort of message, especially to our young people. The games have traditionally been an appallingly elitist and singularly competitive tournament of a somewhat exclusive nature. Certain people, unfairly selected on the shallow basis of their physical prowess, run, jump and throw things and the people who do best are rewarded while those who do poorly are labelled failures. This is regrettably true even of the more recent Paralympic Games, where the noble aspiration of making crippled people feel valued is undermined by the process of forcing them to compete against one another and awarding the ‘best’ competitors medals (with their distasteful military connotations).

But things are changing, thankfully. It is not just that for the first time the Paralympic Games now has equal billing to the Olympic Games (the lessons of positive discrimination suggest it should really have top billing, of course). The signs are that the games in London may at last be a properly commun-ity-based, consensual and democratic affair.

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Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

Rod Liddle

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out...

Fraser Nelson and Daniel Finkelstein

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts?

For a bit of perspective, try thinking Jurassic

Christopher Lloyd

The first takeaways originated about 150 million years ago, says Christopher Lloyd; global travel is pretty ancient, too. And as for democracy...

Putting criminals on stage

Danny Kruger

Danny Kruger explains how his theatre company helps offenders to go straight

The market crashes, but the gravy train rolls on

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Bryan Forbes lists the prime offenders who continue to fleece taxpayers, consumers, football fans and television owners even as the financial crisis bites. Shame on this Age of Greed

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Pay attention at the back of the class, Mr Balls

Prue Leith

Prue Leith talks to John Abbott, author of a new book which argues that teenagers should be challenged, coaxed into apprenticeship and lured out of the classroom

Never mind the Olympics — get set for the Jubilee

Robert Hardman

Free and open to everyone, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 will eclipse the London Games, says Robert Hardman — an unforgettable tribute to the monarch