Brisbane Olympics 2032

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... n-brisbane

I've been following this slow moving disaster for a few months now. It's 8 years off but i reckon it'd be a good long term bet that the Brisbane Olympics will not happen. Not that i care, i despise the event, although i wouldn't despise it as much if they held it in the same city, or a small group of cities, every time. What i can't swallow is the colossal waste of money put into building infrastructure that often ends up being useless once the two weeks running and jumping is done with. It's obscene and depressing.

Brisbane don't have anywhere near the required infrastructure for this event. They have to build, or 're-develop,' multiple facilities and stadiums, at eye watering costs. Consider the disruptions associated with major constructions - the traffic, the noise, the light pollution (because they'll need to be building at night). But the joker is that Brisbane is hopelessly susceptible to extreme weather events and we know that it is only going to get worse. The city will almost certainly, at some point, be hit by a weather event that will require massive amounts of cash and effort to clean up, chaotic disruptions to everyday life and inevitable delays to building (sorry, redeveloping) giant fucking stadiums. The inevitability is almost comical, in fact.

It's not even relevant to mention the corruption of the IOC, the question is who the fuck thought this was a good idea to begin with, besides fucking John Coates? And i note today that there's even a plan to build a 15,000 seat soccer stadium in Toowoomba? Who is going to use that in 2033? It's great to know though that toontown's existing community infrastructure (swimming pools, libraries, community centres, childcare facilities and schools) is in such a healthy condition that it can afford to build a 15,000 seat stadium to service it's many hundreds of soccer players. That's a model town, right there.

It would take a bold politician to suggest it, but years of angst and generations of debt for the entire state could be avoided by just withdrawing the bid, now, before too much is pissed into the flooded Brisbane river. Not holding my breath though. This will likely be a long chaotic soap opera...in between floods, cyclones and fires.

I know people love the olympics and i don't want to sound like a grinch, but just do them in places where existing facilities can be used. It seems like such a simple solution. Too late for brisvegas though.

[stylofone]

I've come to accept that my blanket dislike of sport is peculiar to me, a result of my semi-contrarian nature and my exposure to sports-related torture at boarding school. So I try not to hate sport, just ignore it. Obviously people who like it don't share my experience.

There have been exceptions, I used to quite enjoy the Olympics, but recently they seem to have been pretty much consumed by politics, nationalism, corruption, drugs, commercialism. I think 2016 was the first games where I tuned in and found nothing whatsoever to enjoy about the entire event.

So naturally I agree, hosting the Olympics is like a dose of clap. It might not mean much because I'm a hater who's gonna hate. But it could be especially bad for Queensland, because parochial pride could have motivated the bid: if Syd and Mel can do it, so can we!. They had to wait until now to "come of age" as it were, but now hosting an event like that is a poison chalice compared even to the innocent days of 2000. Of course 1956 was anther universe.

[Irrev-Black]

I have a copy of Olympic Babylon somewhere in Big Shed.

https://books.google.com.au/books/about ... bylon.html

I might zap in a few quotes if I dig it out.

[stevebrooks]

I've come to accept that my blanket dislike of sport is peculiar to me, a result of my semi-contrarian nature and my exposure to sports-related torture at boarding school. So I try not to hate sport, just ignore it. Obviously people who like it don't share my experience.

I never watch sports, ever, for any reason, olympics, football, cricket, and that's exactly what you here when someone asks what team I follow re any random sport they happened to be interested in...crickets, team? I play darts, but I don't sit in front of the TV and watch it, in fact sitting in front of the TV and watching "stuff" seems to be a waste of time to me, I sit there sometimes when I have lunch or dinner and watch an hour maybe of a show I find interesting, but sitting for hours of an afternoon just staring at it seems to me to be....well bizarre. I have no doubt there are people who disagree with me, but my level of caring whether they agree with me or not is zero, so it doesn't bother me at all.