Friday 26 July 2024

The Olympics Opening Ceremony, 2012

I remember the 2012 opening ceremony. 

Being English, I naturally thought it would be an embarrasment

I was so wrong. It was so wonderful. It made you happy to belong to this country. In touch with its (decidedly varied) past. Friendly, inclusive, able to make a joke about itself.

I would like particularly to give the credit for the subsequent retreat into a suspicious, mean, cruel, often vicious media environment to the Mayor of London in 2012. A man who put his own brief, ignominious time in power above the good nature of the country. A man who partied while people's grandparents died.

But  one day we will be proud of this place again. In a day when we are once again driven by kindness, love of our landscape, an understanding and a reckoning with our past. And not by fear and hate.

We will get there.

"Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not."

1 comment :

  1. Thankyou O Archdruid. Having read the interview in the Grauniad this morning with Jess Phillips, I'm thinking you, Jess and Angela Rayner in midfield behind Sir Keir could be a good formation. By the way, does anyone else think that having a 'Sir' as leader of the Labour party is a bit weird?

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