This week’s #DigitalLunch will consider what we’ve learned from #London2012?
For Helen Kearney Paralympic equestrian medal winner on RTE this morning, “It’s really about your ability and not your disability”…
And, was there something in Michelle Obama’s first talking point about what wounded veterans still have to offer (“they are not only going to walk again, they’re going to run and run Marathons” informed by US experience of #London2012?
In a typically acerbic blog this morning, Alastair Campbell thinks there is a political theme arising from #London2012 that the current government have gotten wrong:
I loved the Olympics and if anything I love the Paralympics even more. Yesterday I saw massive queues to watch blind men play football; a packed stadium watch disabled women from Sweden and Australia hurl a ball at each other; a wheelchair tennis match as skilful and exciting as anything I have ever seen at Wimbledon; a man with no arms swimming faster than most of us could even dream of swimming; and of course David Weir careering round the track with the force and power that only great athleticism and human endeavour can bring. And I really do wonder if any other country in the world would have so many of its citizens clamouring to be part of it.
The government has missed the point of these Games, and missed the moment. The reshuffle takes the country backwards not forwards. It takes us closer to the America we don’t like and away from the America we do like.
And all because Mr Cameron does not have a clear strategy for the country, so focused on a strategy for his Party of throwing a few bones to the Right.
Thirty two years after Daly Thompson became the first UK black athlete to to win ‘the Big G’ for GB, we want also to ask, amongst other things, whether London2012 the beginning, or the end of something?
It’s genuinely open question, and as ever we’re asking for your questions over at Google Moderator, or put them in the comment zone below…
Join us for Lunch on Friday at 1pm?
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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