Opening ceremony seems to be going to be a bizarre misrepresentation of modern Britain: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18392025 Good idea or what? I suspect it's an attempt to say to the visitors from abroad that Britain is not really like this sh**hole (East London). Yet, if they were to get out and about to visit the the people of our country in their natural habitat in places like B'ham, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Bradford, Glasgow, Newcastle, Bristol, Liverpool, Belfast, Cardiff, etc, etc they would soon see that it is like the immediate environs of the stadium! A joke.

Opening ceremony seems to be going to be a bizarre misrepresentation of modern Britain: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18392025 Good idea or what? I suspect it's an attempt to say to the visitors from abroad that Britain is not really like this sh**hole (East London). Yet, if they were to get out and about to visit the the people of our country in their natural habitat in places like B'ham, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Bradford, Glasgow, Newcastle, Bristol, Liverpool, Belfast, Cardiff, etc, etc they would soon see that it is like the immediate environs of the stadium! A joke.

It looks like the place I live.

90% of Britain is undeveloped - you only have to fly over it to realise how green and pleasant it actually is.

You could say, does East London gang culture actually represent the majority of British life or is it really a tiny farction of what goes on and just used to scare middle class people to sell newspapers?

You really are a complete f*****g misery aren't you.

Has Danny Boyle actually read The Tempest?
Sounds like he's taken one line out of context and applied it to mean our green and pleasant land.

As the previous poster says, it is mostly green and pleasant, so I don't mind that representation of the country that much but it's not representative of where people live as 90% live in cities/towns.

But, then again, where is it written that opening ceremonies have to be representative?

It could have been worse.
It could have involved morris dancing.

Yes.

Jessica Ennis wrestling in jelly against the brazillian womens beach volley ball team

Boyle has been very clever, nobody was ever going to match what Beijing did, going for something more inclusive and "understated" is a good idea, I do wonder how much of the £28m the ceremony has cost is in Boyel's bank account though.

So it's just me that keeps thinking "Teletubbyland" when they see the model then?

The problem is whatever they do it's a colossal waste of money.

And whatever they do, there would always be people queuing up to bag it.

Given that we have the Olympics, and so must put on SOMETHING for the opening ceremony, the theme of "green and pleasant land" is to me as fitting as anything, since that's just what we live in. And even the roughest gangster from the worst parts of the inner city is within a short trip to the green and pleasant land if they were interested in visiting it - and it's free. Certainly for most visitors who see it, even from a plane, it is the lush green nature of the English landscape that makes the biggest overall impression.

No, that was the newspaper headline.

The big Olympic fantasy is spinning the fact that it's four times over the initial budget as coming in half a billion under.

The big Olympic fantasy is spinning the fact that it's four times over the initial budget as coming in half a billion under.