It's Buntin Britain

Admittedly, I have been a scrooge about the Olympics. As a Northerner it is easy to become bitter about things going on in London, it seeming that the South gets all the glory and money and the North gets filed away with the butter pies (who's complaining?). However, England is not like, for example, Italy. The south of Italy sees a very strong contrast to the cosmopolitan North with a huge division of wealth. Therefore, we  Northerners do not have it worst, then again when has that ever stopped any British person from complaining? However, despite my distaste of the sponsorship choices made and general impartiality to sport (impartial sounds better than lazy), I thoroughly enjoyed the Olympic Opening Ceremony!

Bond shenanigans

Danny Boyle has done well indeed! He ought to have done, seeing as the ceremony did cost £27 million. Regardless, the boost to public morale can be seen as priceless. He focused on what Britain is to people everyday, not what is happening politically or financially. His attention to the everyday and important was fantastic. He really highlighted the NHS as something for our country to be proud of, something which many other countries wish they had. Attention to music and film was paid as well as demonstrating Britain's evolution from a nation of town dwellers through industrialisation and the Urban Sprawl. And, although the ceremony left many, certainly me, feeling patriotic, it didn't portray Britain as a nirvana or idealistic. Much of the countryside was destroyed by industrialisation and, rather than focusing on the financial benefits of rapid industrialisation, Boyle highlighted how the workers suffered and how it was a dark period in British social history.

Man of the Hour, Danny Boyle

 The Queen even got stuck in, cracking jokes left right and centre! The past few years have really been good for the Royal family. The press has been favourable and Royal celebrations have been received well, in fact there seems to have been a sort of public mania for the monarchy. So, why shouldn't the Queen let her hair down and have a little giggle with Daniel Craig? She is a woman after all, and Daniel Craig is supernatural puller James Bond. Overall the ceremony felt like a gift to British people rather than an advert to the world. It felt personal and all inclusive rather than selective and self-conscious. At a time when the working class is feeling dissatisfied with its wealthy countrymen, bankers have rode into the sunset and politicians want the shirt of our back, it is nice to appreciate the constants in Britain; music, literature, Bond and the home.