The opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games culminates with a huge fireworks display over the Olympic park.
A two minute fireworks display formed part of the finale of the London
2012 Olympics opening ceremony.
But the pyrotechnics were just part of the spectacular culmination of Danny
Boyle’s opening ceremony with the best-kept secret of the night, the
lighting of the Olympic Cauldron, revealed well after midnight.
it was lit by seven young British athletes, each personally nominated by one
of the country’s greatest Olympians.
The Olympic flame was carried into the stadium by Sir Steve Redgrave, the
five-time gold medal-winning rower and the first of seven British Olympic
heroes honoured in the closing moment of the ceremony.
The other heroes were: Lynne Davies, who captained the British Olympic team in
1980 and 1984; Duncan Goodhew, who won swimming gold in 1980; Dame Kelly
Holmes, who won gold at 800m and 1500m in 2004; Dame Mary Peters, who won
gold in the pentathlon in 1972, Shirley Robertson, who won gold for sailing
on 2000; and Daley Thompson, the decathlon champion of 1980 and 1984.
( By Dan Hodges )
Which is good. But not good enough. Seriously, what does a
Nazi-uniform-wearing, Olympic-opening-ceremony-politicising,
ethnic-minority-smearing MP have to do to get sacked around here? We
invite the world to our party, and then a Member of Parliament comes
staggering out of the kitchen, bellowing “Get out of my ruddy living
room, foreigners, I’ve got the moves like Jagger”.
( By Dan Hodges )
To be honest, after the first couple of minutes I had my
head in my hands. The sheep. The Maypole dancers. Kenneth Branagh. The
eyes of the world were on Britain, and the world was thinking, “are
these guys for real?”
Fortunately we were.
The twee vision of ye olde England was dramatically, and deliberately,
brushed aside by the power and fury of the industrial revolution, and
for the rest of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony we scarcely had time
to draw breath, never mind look back.
A few months ago I wrote a piece saying Englishness – and
by extension Britishness – was impossible to define. Well, Danny Boyle
managed to define it, in a madcap, eccentric and gloriously self-aware
way.
With the words “Good evening, Mr Bond” the Queen secured
the monarchy for the next thousand years. Those scared by the thought of
a cycling monarch can relax. We now have the world’s only stunt one.
David Beckham has achieved many things in his sporting
career. But no last minute free kick for team GB could ever have matched
the iconography of him escorting the Olympic flame by speedboat down
the river Thames. Cool Britannia has never, and never will be, cooler.
The climax, the literal handing over of the flame to a new
generation of Olympians, followed by the creation and ascension of the
Olympic cauldron, bordered on the spiritual.
And then, in amidst the pride and the glory, in blundered Aidan Burley.
“The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen – more than Beijing,
the capital of a communist state!”, snarled the Conservative MP from
Cannock Chase. “Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on
from leftie multi-cultural crap. Bring back red arrows, Shakespeare and
the Stones!”, he added.
OK, Aidan Burley is something of a unique political specimen. Last time he appeared on the nation’s radar was after he hired an SS costume for his friend’s stag do, and chanted “Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!” during dinner.
On that occasion he lost his ministerial bag-carrier job,
and by yesterday evening Downing Street was already hurriedly trying to
distance itself from Burley’s comments: “Clearly we don’t agree”, said a
source. He was also slapped down by his colleagues, including Tory MP
for Croydon Central Gavin Barwell, who himself tweeted “With respect, us
Londoners are rather proud of the diversity of our city”.
Personally, I can live with the boorish moans about
multiculturalism. And the paranoid ranting about Reds lurking under the
beds of Danny Boyle’s Great Ormond Sstreet montage. But what makes me,
well, sick to be honest, is the way people like Burley couldn’t manage
to switch off the politics for just three hours during an event that
comes to this country once every 60 years.
The truly great thing about yesterday, and actually the
mounting excitement of the last week or so, is that there really has
been a feeling of the country uniting. A sense that just for the next
fortnight we may actually all be in this together.
But no. The Aidan Burleys of this world have to try and drag us all back into their petty political ghetto.
Though in fairness to the Hon Member for Berchtesgaden,
he’s not alone. Labour’s NHS spokeswoman Diane Abbott also used her
twitter feed to get into the spirit of the evening. “And now the
sequence Cameron wanted cut. Whole section in honour of NHS #olympicceremony #savetheNHS” she tweeted, followed by “Wonderful tribute to the NHS (including 300 children) Eat your heart out Andrew Lansley”.
In its own way Abbott’s Cameron jibe is almost as offensive
as Burley’s. The “NHS section” was primarily a section on children,
hence the specific focus on Great Ormond Street. The Prime Minister’s
wife, Samantha Cameron, is actually a patron of Great Ormond Street, the
hospital where her and her husband used to take it in turns to sleep by
the bed of their son Ivan. The Camerons don’t need lectures on the
importance of Great Ormond Street from Diane Abbott or anyone else.
For the next fortnight let’s just knock it off. The
Olympics are here for 16 days. After that we’ll have months and years
and decades to slag off the evils of multiculturalism, and the barbarism
of the Tory NHS reforms.
The world’s come to London for a party. It’s time to park the politics and join in...
Source : The Telegraphy UK
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