Friday, 24 June 2011

Olympic Ticket System Working Well

Well, I didn't get any first round tickets (like nearly everyone else).

However, I did get invited to the second round.

So this morning I set an alarm for 0550, had my computer all ready to go, was logged in way before 0600. I listened carefully for the pips (and as backup, had a GMT count down linked to an atomic clock), pressed F5 (to refresh the options).

The session I wanted moved from "Not Available" to "Available", pressed Checkout then Submitted my details.

Because I'm not a cretin, I was able to read the rules, which said that your order was listed when you pressed "Submit", not when they were in your basket, so I didn't dick around with other stuff.

Apparently, shortly after this the site slowed down and people were unable to log in (I was one of them when I tried to log in again 15 minutes later). Well, maybe the idiots should have got out of bed earlier.

Of course, I'd also like to thank my exceptionally fast Gaming PC, LAN (rather than the laggy wifi) and my Virgin 50MBs cable Internet connection.

I'll let you all know if I was successful when I do. I figure the email confirming the order at 0601 is probably a good sign though!

Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Britain is a sexist country

As you may have seen from my earlier post, I'm back! And, what better way to restart my budding blogging career than a nice piece of analysis.

Like many (well, most!) people who applied for Olympic tickets. I failed to get any. Sure, I only applied for the cheapest I could and for the most popular events but the end result was that I didn't get any.

Luckily, not all events were sold out in the first wave and there are some tickets on sale in a "first come, first served" fashion (Browsers to F5!). The organisers have put out a handy guide of all the events still available and it actually makes quite interesting reading.





It also leads you to the unmistakable conclusion that Britain is a fundamentally sexist country.


We've all been told, time and time again, that men are equal to women. Women's sports are just as worthy as Men's sports (Afterall, the Women's champion at Wimbledon will earn as much as Federer (Or Nadal)). The problem is that the country appears to disagree.

I've shown a typical sport below: Table Tennis! For your convenience, I've highlighted the Women's only days (and by logical implication, highlighted the Men's only days).


Nearly all the availability is in Women's only days. People seem far more keen to watch Men wave their tiny bats around than women.

Of course, there is an exception. I'm going to give you one guess what possible Olympic sport is more entertaining to watch women do than men... Go on..

Freestyle Wrestling?! OK, you'd think that if it came down to watching two sweaty people roll around on top of each other in a ring, it'd be a damnsight more fun to watch the ladies rather than the gents but no. As with almost every other sport, men's days are more sold out than women's.

No clue? Well, apparently the only sport where people want to watch women is Beach Volleyball! Imagine that, the one sport where women have maximum clothing requirements and suddenly everyone wants to go see skimpy dressed women.

Overall, there are 32 sets of events. Lots are completely sold out - of those that aren't: 11 have more availability for Women's events than the Men's events. Only Beach Volleyball is the other way around.

Clearly we live in a country populated by Sexists. The British appear to prefer seeing Men compete at the top level than women. Is this because the entertainment provided by the women athletes is less? Does this apply to other fields of life?

As always, please comment below.

I'm Back!

OK.

It's been about a year now since I last blogged. I can't promise daily updates (work has been and remains hellish) but I'm going to try and resurrect this blog.

I'm going to stick to much the same topics as before:


  • Ridiculous government decisions, particularly on spending or defence,

  • Piss poor reporting in the media,

  • Bloody awful jokes,

  • and a few articles that are mainly aimed at winding someone up.
Why did I stop writing? Well, the election was won/lost simultaneously and it wasn't just as much fun laying into the Tories as it was Labour. I think that's why a lot of the right leaning bloggers faded gently over the last year.

Well, I re-read some of my old posts a few weeks back and rather enjoyed them. I also enjoyed writing them at the time, so I'm going to try and make a bit more time to re-start blogging.

Hope you enjoy the up-coming posts!