Olympic Update 2: David Beckham’s Mystery Roles

There was nationwide disappointment last week as Great Britain’s football team manager Stuart Pearce announced that peculiarly bearded national lifestyle icon David Beckham, despite being a champion of the London Olympics, will not have the opportunity to become Olympic champion. When Pearce announced that Beckham, 48, would not be included in the Olympic squad due to there being younger, fitter and more traditionally facially-haired players on offer, a predictable outcry from qualified experts all over the country ensued. For instance, The Sun declared that over 78 per cent of its readers said that Stuart Pearce was WRONG to drop the former England captain. One reader went so far as to say "Shame on Pearce. This is a disgraceful decision. I was looking forward to the football and see Beckham play for GB” before adding “And where the hell is Gascoigne on the team sheet? I like him too,” in my mind.

 (A Sun reader yesterday)

But the country’s great thinkers can rest a little easier, as it appears that 1980s Olympic legend and former Tory twat Lord Sebastian Coe has big plans for Becks. The Evening Standard reports that Coe has in mind “two very clear roles” for the future king, but is keeping his Conservative lips tightly buttoned as to what these roles will be. It appears that among the reasons for this closely guarded secrecy is that he doesn’t actually know himself. In an earlier statement concerning Sir Becks, Coe wibbled that

"We are scoping a role for him at the moment. I actually spoke to him over the course of the weekend. We're working on it, but you'll have to watch this space."

 (Coe: clueless)

I don’t mind admitting that I’m struggling to swallow my daily vitamin C tablet with anticipation, such is the intensity with which I’m watching this space. It seems that it will remain a secret for a while as Coe scratches his sensible quiff and tries to come up with a job that will keep His Highness and the country as whole happy, in much the same way as a kids’ football manager puzzles over what to do with the assistant coach’s fat child. 

 (Beckham: likes Olympics)

In my humble opinion we should stop at nothing to engage Beckham on a sporting level at the London Olympics. I believe that we should introduce additional events to the London Olympics in order to give him a chance to compete at the top level without the restraints of his advancing years and retreating ability holding him back. One quintessentially British pass-time in which Beckam could excel is Pooh Sticks. Now, I do not intend to make an obvious gag regarding our hero mistakenly throwing his diminutive wife over a bridge into the river during this event because that kind of cheep and easy humour is something only your mum would find funny. Your mum who is a tramp.

But if chucking wood into running water proves too challenging for Dave Beck, I think I have stumbled upon the perfect solution: how about sniffing snuff?   

 (Mmm...snuff)

If the athlete above is anything to go by I think it can be assumed that Dave’s flamboyant facial fluff could be advantageous to him in that it will absorb a large quantity of the nasally enjoyed tobacco before it even reaches his Olympic standard nose.

If not, what about darts? Anyone can do that, right?   

Olympic Update 1: Polishing a Turd

Good news. Waltham Forest News, Waltham Forest’s happy family propaganda spewing rag – free to all citizens fortunate enough to reside in the borough that excreted one of the finest groups of classically trained musicians the world has ever known – has recently been proud to report on the regeneration of some of the borough’s less handsome locations. Apparently:

“As part of plans to give residents better streets, twenty sites in the south of the borough have been given a little extra care. The locations range from parks to planters and streets to car parks, with the Council’s environment team trimming back overgrown hedgerows, re turfing bare patches in green spaces, scooping up litter and planting new flowers.”

Wonderful. It does seem odd, however, that it was not considered necessary to “give residents better streets” until the Olympic mafia rolled into town. Presumably the residents of Leyton were only too happy to live in a shithole prior to the arrival of Greatest Sporting Event in the World. Still, now that the work is complete, fortunate residents taking a stroll along Leyton High Road are now able to enjoy this magnificent vista:

Whoa! The people of Venice must be green with envy. (In case you are wondering what Leyton High Road looked like before the work, it was just like this but without the tacky beach hut-style paint) But it’s not just the parks and main roads that have been treated to this frankly amazing transformative treatment. No, rumour has it that some of the area’s ‘orphan sites’ have been regenerated too. Good news for the borough as a whole, even better news for the local tramps that use these sites to defecate, drink petrol and copulate in. What luxury.

(A delighted local street person celebrates his good fortune with a hearty lunch)

However, it’s not just north east London’s Esso clubcard holding, urine-soaked, transients that are cheered by the transformation, Waltham Forest News reports that

“Residents, businesses and, yes, journalists, [are] all cock-a-hoop for the way this part of the borough looks."

Well, you really can’t ask any more of a regeneration project that leaves you feeling cock-a-hoop, now can you?

The Blinder Leading the Blind

My line manager is one of those people that you occasionally meet in life whose stupidity is of such a seemingly boundless nature that it is to be marvelled at that they actually manage to feed themselves. Moreover, she is one of those people who likes to regularly attempt to impress those around her with what she perceives is her vast knowledge about everything concerning anything. In doing so she treats me to tantalisingly disturbing glimpses of how the human brain, given the right conditions, can devolve and decompose through lack of use in much the same way as a ball of Blu Tack will dry up and harden into a diminutive ineffectual hard lump if not exposed to occasional active stimulation from the outside world. Among the numerous examples of her minuscule mental capacity can be counted the fact that she feels it is acceptable to Capitalise in the middle of Sentences for No apparent Reason, and the recent incident in which she cut her lip when she managed to fall up a hill.  

(An artist's impression of my manager’s brain prior to advanced decomposition)

And yet she is in a position of management in a front line service of a London local authority. I was initially perplexed as to how this situation could have come about, but, after absently contemplating the question for some time whilst rhythmically scratching myself at my desk, it occurred to me that she is in that position not through merit (clearly), but simply because she wants to be . She has climbed the ladder (and subsequently descended quite a few rungs if her tales of past glorious seniority are to be believed) through sheer wilfulness and the ability to irritate those who have been duped into employing her to such an extent that they inevitably recommend her for positions of advancement, or at least sideways ‘experience building’, in other departments or services. They then act as enthusiastic referee for her in order to ensure that she is successful in her unwitting quest to be shoved as far away from her current department as possible. This negates the need for her superiors to engage in the lengthy and thorny process of dismissing her for her frequent acts of colossal incompetence. It then occurred to me that just in the local authority for which I work alone there are dozens of middle managers who have found themselves in the similar position of earning a decent, if not exceptional, living by being incompetent enough. And if this is the case in the borough in which I work, it is highly likely that this situation is duplicated elsewhere in all other boroughs, including the borough in which I live.

So there you have it: London is not only crawling with, but its local authorities are also managed by, dribbling morons who, if the mood takes them, will literally defy the laws of gravity in order to fall on their faces.