Here are the Olympic-related links we’ve been looking at over the last week from July 12th through July 17th:
- Sam Fraser: The Torch Relay – The Olympic Ideal in Flames– And then arrives a convoy of coaches. One badged with Samsung logos, bearing pretty young girls waving and texting on Samsung phones. Next, a coach in the livery of Lloyds TSB bearing pretty young girls waving. No sign of any thanks for the bail out. Finally, a huge red float sponsored by Coca Cola, featuring a team of pretty girls waving and holding Coke bottles. They head up the drive where the coaches turn around and let all the pretty girls out for a loo break.More police. More throbbing. Another convoy arrives. This time it’s a bus load of bewildered looking people in white pyjama-style outfits that might otherwise indicate that they were on day release. They are the torch bearers. Our torch bearer smiles wanly.
Eventually, after the sponsors force their branding on us again, the torch bearer makes her way along the drive. Disappointingly, she doesn’t run. We have no idea who she is; she isn’t local. The air is filled with the smell of fuel and flame. She looks nervous;
- Olympic legacy? ‘If you don’t seize the chance it’s your own bloody fault’ | Local government network | Guardian Professional – We created a new website called Birmingham Our Games, which has lots of information about the relay and other events and also gives the community space to tell us how they’d like to get involved. It’s very much a community-owned website that has been developed to be a long-term legacy. There hasn’t been a legacy budget, but we’ve tried to work with our networks to maximise goodwill.
- Olympic torch relay, Samsung social media and getting connected with the kids– Anyway at the end of the act Twist (or Pulse – you tell me 🙂 ) went on about how these were the “connected games”. All the dancers took out a Samsung phone and started to take photos of the crowd. Twist was elevated onto a platform and took a photo of the entire crowd. That’s 9,999 people (should have been 10,000 but my youngest son was playing cricket – beat Scunthorpe U12s by 10 wickets!).He then told us that the photo had just gone live at Samsung.com/takepart. People were then encouraged to visit the page to tag themselves using their Facebook ID. I did this – you can see me here (somewhere).
Think about this. The torch is visiting 70 locations. If there are 10,000 people on average at each location then that is 700,000 people being encouraged to engage with Samsung online. Everone who tags themselves are effectively providing Samsung with valuable social media marketing data.
- Olympics: ‘I don’t know if guards speak English’, says G4S chief – Telegraph – The chief executive said the shambles will cost the firm between £30 million and £50 million, including a fine of between £10 million and £20 million for its failure to deliver its contract. The rest of the costs will be paid to the military for drafting in thousands of soldiers to man security at the Olympics.
- Details of Work Programme (et al) Referrals for Liverpool Sea Odyssey & Olympic Torch events – a Freedom of Information request to Liverpool City Council – WhatDoTheyKnow – Please supply details of the number of individuals that
participated in the Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular & the Liverpool
Olympic Torch events that were referred by/from:Jobcentre Plus
Work Programme
Community Action Programme
Mandatory Work Activity (MWA)
Work Experience
Sector-Based Work Academies
Youth Contract - The battle with the Olympic censors | The Spectator – A few weeks ago, I was emailed advice – not from our lawyers, but from someone else in the magazine world – that The Spectator should not refer to the Olympics for the duration of the Games otherwise we ‘could be taken off newsstands (and also liable to prosecution)’. It’s worth reprinting the rest of the advice:
