please empty your brain below
(Bastards)
I lived near an Olympic venue and also the marathon route during the Sydney Games. Admittedly I had NO interest in the games whatsoever, so maybe I was just being a party-pooper, BUT the impact on residents was ginormous. It included - extra security, parking restrictions, road closures, bus route changes, being advised to work from home, needing to take an extra half hour at least to get to and from work, etc. And this was before September 11. I can't imagine what the security will be like now - or, actually I can. I was in Sydney for the Pope's Visit and although the duration was shorter it was certainly more intense. We are talking strange people patrolling areas, seeing what looked like snipers on roofs, choppers constantly overhead, and all the road closures etc., as mentioned above. Remember that although the marathon is a short-ish event the route is mapped out in advance and runners practice along it.
So whilst you have been snubbed if you value peace, privacy and the ability to do basic things like get to work you may have dodged a bullet.
Each to their own though... and I can certainly understand the feeling of being snubbed.
I've lived on the route of the London Marathon since it started and it's one of the best days of the years - a real community party which gets people out on the streets. It'd be great for the East End to get a bit of this, and for LOCOG to even think about denying people in Bethnal Green, Bow and Stratford their big day raises huge questions about their judgement, and whether they can be trusted.
Surely the massive roar mentioned by Annie is good enough reason to keep the route.
Blinking incandescent about this!
CF
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#Distance
Putting my enormous helmet on for a moment, The Mall is really not a great place for a marathon to finish. Policing it is a ball-ache as it means St James's Park is cut off on three sides (the footbridge over Spur Road was a total fucking joke this year).
I've no doubt the Royal Parks Agency will stare at LOCOG, cry a bit, and then accept that if they don't agree to it they're going to look like miserable bastards trying to spoil everything. And no doubt I'll end up hand-holding a bunch of pricks from Ealing Borough whose first instinct when confronted with a crowd is to draw their baton. Woo.
I have your rss feed on my main internet home page, and when I clicked on the rss feed's link for your "snickers" article half an hour ago, I got this huge warning box from Norton Internet Security saying that the link's destination had been found to contain a bad thingamajig (some kind of tracker or something) and Norton also shut all of my IE windows down immediately due to the detection of some kind of attempted data intrusion breach (which seemed to be related to my attempted opening of your link, but maybe it was a simultaneous but unrelated occurrance -- I did several things on the internet in the 30 seconds prior to Norton's going crazy). I rarely get something like this, and obviously I don't think that YOU had any malicious intent, but I just wanted to let you know that something about that particular hyperlink set off Norton's alarm bells, at least on my computer (I have NIS 2011). The "feedproxy.google.com" first part of the "snickers" link seems a bit unusual -- but I've never paid much attention to the exact addresses of your rss links - I just right click and open them in a new window. Never had a problem before with doing that.
Apart from containing swear words, there's nothing unusual about this post. I suspect it's Norton being wildly overzealous (I wouldn't have Norton on my laptop if you paid me).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Olympic-Swindle-Jennings-Andrew/dp/0684866773/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285311669&sr=1-5
It's not about swear words, I think.
Norton is a pretty widely-used programme, and rated highly generally (on cnet, etc.), so even if you do not like it, some of your potential readers are probably getting the same warning that I am, and it could negatively affect your traffic, which is why I let you know about this.
The warning message still comes up today. In case you are interested, this is what it says:
"Malicious Web Site Blocked
You attempted to access:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/HcFb/~3/I5DMtPNiZGE/snickers.html
This is a known malicious web site. It is recommended that you do NOT visit this site. The detailed report explains the security risks on this site. For your protection, this web site has been blocked."
"Threat Report
Total threats found: 1
Drive-By Downloads (what's this?)
Threats found: 1
Here is a complete list:
Threat Name: PHP.Backdoor.Trojan
File name: c:\documents and settings\user\local settings\temporary internet files\content.ie5\jhzq3mya\quotes[1].htm
Location: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntegraisNoOnibus/~3/h1ykeRoyf4g/me-engana-que-eu-gosto.html"
Now, the problem might be with the feedproxy.google thing, because the rss feed for "Caroline's Miscellany" blog is also showing me a similar warning today.
That "me engana que eu gosto" thing seems to have set off Norton and seems not to be related to either you or Caroline, but obviously I'm not a blogger and don't know about the technological details of linking. Hopefully this has been helpful to you.
TridentScan | Privacy Policy