Today I am ashamed to say that I’ve spent the whole day in my pyjamas, watching the Olympics on the sofa. I haven’t moved. I love the Olympics – always have done. I suppose the thing that draws me into it is watching people who are at the top of their game, completely dedicated, completely obsessive. I find it quite compelling. I don’t really like the team sports, or anything that has a ball in it really, but everything else – I’ve been watching the swimming and gymnastics, and today I watched the whole of the women’s cycling road race. I also sat and watched the whole of the Olympic Ceremony, which I’ve never done before. There was obviously lots of activity on Twitter and Facebook throughout the ceremony – the saddest thing I heard – apart from the Tory MP who referred to it as ‘multicultural crap’ and who has been rightly lambasted for his comments, were people accusing a German official of doing a Nazi salute – to me it just looked like he was waving his athletes on – and would people have thought that if he wasn’t German? I don’t think so. Anyway, it has emerged now that he was the Mayor of the Munich Olympic village and offered himself up in exchange for the Israeli hostages. A sobering thought, and one that warns of the dangers of just blurting out things on social media.
Going back to the Tory MP – even giving him the benefit of the doubt (which I actually don’t – I think he is showing his true colours – this is the same man who was present at a Nazi themed stag party after all) but lets be generous and say that he is not racist. All the time on this blog, on my Facebook, on Twitter, I constantly ask myself – is what I’m putting on here suitable for any pupils or parents of pupils, or headteachers to see? This is because young people are much more savvy than I am – if they wanted to find anything I put on the internet they could. As well as this, I run a Facebook group for my Junior Band, so I am ‘Facebook Friends’ with a lot of the young people I teach. This means that I do think before I speak, I consider things – I ensure I am not setting a bad example. This is not onerous or hard work – it’s just basic commen sense. And surely we should expect this from the people who represent us. The mind boggles – and more fool us for voting in someone like that.
In other news, the BBC seem to be obsessed with Britain winning medals, almost as if there are no other countries taking part and we should expect to get one just for turning up! It is very tiresome, and negates all the amazing work that the athletes have done just to get to this point.
Having had a good moan, I should reiterate that I’m loving sitting on the sofa watching it all!
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