back to article Where there's brass, silver and gold ... there's also muck

“Danny Boyle wants to give the impression of 'British countryside' at the opening of the Olympic Games, but he appears to have missed out a few items,” writes Ann McLachlan of South Lanarkshire in the letters page of the Daily Express. “Where is the graffiti-decorated bus shelter? The burst mattress at the field gate? The …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. keithpeter Silver badge
    Windows

    cubic litres?

    "She is in charge of 22,000 contractors, delivering 14 million meals between June and September and removing – stat attack! – 712 cubic litres of horse manure."

    I guess that is cubic metres. Otherwise useful maths lesson material.

    1. Code Monkey
      Headmaster

      Re: cubic litres?

      * 415846 DD-cup Bulgarian funbags or 0.2845 Olympic-sized swimming pools

    2. Chris Miller

      Re: cubic litres?

      Cubic litres is the standard volume measurement in the version of string theory I'm working on that has 9 space-like dimensions.

    3. Ru
      Trollface

      Re: cubic litres?

      As you should know, a cubic litre will naturally take up less space than (say) a spherical litre. Due to the difficulty of packing spheres, a spherical litre effectively takes up the same amount of actual volume as 1.35 cubic litres.

      You'd need to know this if you were going to be the olympic street-sweeper-in-chief, clearly a lofty position you are not cut out for.

      1. Kubla Cant

        Re: cubic litres?

        How do they make the horses shit cubes?

        1. hplasm
          Boffin

          Re: horse shit cubes?

          Feed them on oaty bars.

  2. Silverburn
    Happy

    Wow!

    It's clean enough to satisfy the Swiss!

    Almost.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wow!

      I was at a swiss train stations, a bulb had popped.

      A man in an immaculate boiler suite carrying a step ladder and a bulb came to fix it.

      up the ladder, remove the light fitting lens with a screw driver

      change the bulb

      wipe the new bulb with a cloth

      wipe the lens

      replace the lens

      wipe the lens again

      wipe the screwdriver

      and then wipe every step of the ladder on his way down

      The Swiss like wiping stuff

      1. Matt Williams
        Coat

        Sorry, this is irrelevant...

        How many Freudians does it take to change a lightbulb?

        Two. One to change the bulb, the other to hold the penis. I mean ladder.

        1. Arrrggghh-otron

          Re: Sorry, this is irrelevant...

          Q. How many G4S security staff does it

          take to change a lightbulb?

          A. Six soldiers and a policeman.

      2. Silverburn

        Re: Wow! - Swiss bulbs @ AC

        One thing I've alway pondered...in a tunnel, even ones 4-5km long, the roof centre is lined in continuous line of strip lights.

        Yet none are ever popped. Or even flickering.

        Who replaces them? And when? (the tunnels are rarely shut) And how?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          Re: Wow! - Swiss bulbs @ AC

          The 'burn' time on any bulb is pretty consistent. If you replace them at the right time which I guess the Swiss do, you get the effect of all the lights working.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Wow!

        I went to the Zurich Street Parade a few years ago. By midnight the normally immaculate city was a sea of rubbish. By the time I staggered home at 6am the streets were nearly clean, and when I awoke the city was spotless again.

  3. proto-robbie
    Childcatcher

    Doesn't anyone

    grow roses these days?

  4. xyz Silver badge
    Devil

    When I leave stuff outside my house...

    ....the Albanians have it away in about 5 minutes. Can't we just get them in, the place would be spotless?

  5. J P
    Coat

    We read the Express so you don't have to?

    Please don't bother on my account; you'll only encourage them to keep writing it...

  6. wowfood

    “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

    So 150 variations of pie, fish and chips and fry ups... That's about all we have over here isn't it?

    Beef pie

    cottage pie

    shepherds pie

    steak pie

    steak and onion pie

    steak and kidney pie

    steak and ale pie

    Actually maybe its just 150 different meat pies.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

      Lancashire hot pot, stew & dumplings, roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, more cakes than you can shake a stick at, more ways of cooking chicken and rabbit than you can imagine...

      Rat-onna-stick?

    2. Silverburn
      Stop

      Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

      You forgot eel pie. And all the dessert pies.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

        Pork Pie and Black Pudding.

      2. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

        Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

        > You forgot eel pie.

        Pieel eh? That's Italian innit?

    3. Sean Timarco Baggaley
      WTF?

      Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

      Oddly, the concept of the closed pie is unheard-of in Italy. Italians have no direct translation for the British pie: they have to use their word for 'cake' instead.

      The reason the British don't drown their meat in ridiculously overwrought sauces is because the meat actually tastes good on its own. Gravy—made from the meat's own juices—is more than sufficient.

      Meanwhile, despite all the ignorant pointing and laughing at Wales' national dish, the Italians have umpteen variations of, basically, "stuff on toast". Including one that's basically four cheese on toast: "Quattro Formaggi" pizza.

      The French are famed for touting the kind of foods that peasants only ate out of desperation to idiot gourmets who are happy to pronounce bits of snail smothered in sauce to hide their blandness as worthy of being considered a national dish. Meanwhile, the rest of the population is more than happy to eat roast beef*, sandwiches (using French bread; bloody wonderful) and a myriad of pastries.

      * ("Beef" comes from the French word, "boeuf". Meat used to be very expensive, so only the most toffee-nosed of ponces got to eat roast beef with all the trimmings at first. And those ponces were, for a very long period, speaking French. If this had been a peasant dish, it'd be called "roast cow".)

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

        Also, spaghetti hoops on toast.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Pint

          Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

          Curry Pot Noodles, Prawn Rings, Turkey Twizzlers, Beef and Tomato Pot Noodle..... when you think about it there is a whole load of high quality traditional British Food. Nearly forgot Pork Scratchings mmmmmmmmm

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: “will showcase the great diversity and quality of British food

        You can't compare what we consider to be "Italian food" with traditional "British food".

        Identifying the many historically complex sociogeographic areas known as Britain as an individual entity with it's own cooking style is almost as silly as identifying the many historically complex sociogeographic areas known as Italy as an individual entity with it's own cooking style.

        Particularly as anything we'd recognise as pizza only started in the mid C19; pasta, C18.

  7. Jonathon Green
    Trollface

    Could this be the largest turd-polishing attempt in history?

    1. Julian Bond
      Trollface

      Glitter

      The largest turd-glitter-rolling attempt in history, surely.

  8. r3ality66
    WTF?

    Sound familiar....

    ......a temporary collection of leaky mobile homes a few hundred metres from the Olympic stadium. Ten people share a room, 25 a toilet and 75 a shower unit.......

    Welcome to the Armed Services, only you cant decide to go home!

  9. LinkOfHyrule
    FAIL

    internationally bitchslapped

    I feel sorry for anyone who lives there - not because of the mess - because you are being internationally bitchslapped by the Olympic whatsit-called committee and various corporate arses. All your regeneration are belong to us! Few weeks time it won't just be old buildings laying derelict either! Bitch, prepare for an Olympic legacy!

  10. Chronos
    Pint

    Again with the Olympricks?

    This huge smorgasbord of money making for fat cats on Olympic committees and commercial sponsors ceased to interest me, oh, let's say a day after it was "awarded" to London. It was probably sooner than that but let's give it the benefit of the doubt. It's costing the taxpayer millions and we're going to see very little from it. Worse, it angered me that some poor sod legally and innocently riding his bike got ape-mauled and slung around by the idiots who think that somehow a symbol is more important than civil liberties. We should leave symbols to the symbol minded.

    Beer. Too much of that makes you sick, too.

  11. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Guess

    now the sales of Street Cleaning Simulator will go through the roof!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lessons from Vancouver

    Interesting coment that she went to Vancouver to observe impact there, the British press were pretty pissy about Vancouver when they hosted the Winter Olympics meanwhile the London Olympic committee were running around learning from them, will be interesting to see the response for the London Olypmics.

    Given that Vancouver invested in increased transit capacity for the games (and ran some services at peak levels for most of the day throughout the games) will be interesting to see what happens to a London transit system already creaking at the seams.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lessons from Vancouver

      http://www.youtube.com/embed/CwrTTbfsCtQ

This topic is closed for new posts.