Olympics Schmolympics

By now most of you will probably be aware of the ghastly 2012 Olympics logo unveiled by Sebastian Coe this month. It really is awful. It vaguely resembles a shoddy graffiti tag--an already out of date concept which will only seem more irrelevant in 2012 made particularly annoying by its supporters insistence that it will appeal to the "youf". Yeah, "Seb", writing "London" with a lowercase "l" is really going to be enough to bridge the gaps between the aristocracy, sporting elite and sink estate hoods (which is what these people are invariably referring to when they talk about "young people", in the same way that when the BBC references "youths" it actually means "ethnic minority criminals aged somewhere between 9 and 30") .

The government and people in various committees whose jobs could be done without have of course leapt to the logo's defence, talking down to the majority (who hate it) and throwing out soundbites about it being a brand that will carry the nation into the future, it will send out a message to those irascible "young people" that hey, these are "Everyone's Games" and this isn't just about the sporting elite (it's the Olympics. Of course it is. That's the point), and the ever-nonsensical chatter about the need for a logo which is "relevant"--but it isn't really the blatant disregard for the will of the majority or the childish and "for the sake of it" break with decades (arguably centuries?) of tradition that has my back up in this instance, it's the waste. For you see, this logo cost four hundred thousand pounds. How? How did they manage to run up this price? It's just a picture. The colouring is simplistic. Any moron with a laptop and photoshop could have cooked it up after an absolute maximum of maybe a day, asking maybe ten other people what they thought of it before sending it in.

I'm struggling to bring this entry to a concise close, to be honest. What conclusion is there to draw from the fact that the government is ploughing four hundred grand into almost universally opposed drawings besides the stereotypical "the world has gone mad"?