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Boris Johnson is a moron Children will be banned from watching shooting events under Boris Johnson’s Olympic ticket giveaway.
London schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.
The sheer idiocy of this speaks volumes of the rot at the heart of British society and its decadent political class. A different take on this can be found here.
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I agree with you that this is silly, but if anyone’s a “moron” here it’s whoever wrote that headline in the Standard. As I read it, children aren’t being “banned” from the events, they’re just not getting free tickets. (Why the City of London is giving away a huge number of free tickets to schoolchildren is another matter. Ticket sales not going well?) If the children (or their parents) purchase ordinary tickets they’ll be perfectly free to attend the shooting events.
Calling this a “ban” is akin to claiming “censorship” when the government declines to subsidize someone’s (putative) art. A complete misuse of the word.
‘A source said: “We decided it would not be appropriate…'”
That is condescending towards children to say the least. Good that the Ticketshare Scheme missed banning boxing and wrestling.
You’re right, Laird, but you’re missing the point. Headline aside, this story reveals the moronic thought processes of people like Boris and “Communities Against Gun and Knife Crime”.
Well raised kids learn to shoot at an early age. It teaches discipline.
Stood half a meter away from him on the tube yesterday. He was holding his stupid bicycle helmet.
BJ has made a chump of himself. Rather than demonising people who use guns, we should teach young people to develop a healthy, responsible attitude to firearms. When I was a Boy Scout, our scoutmaster – who was a cop – took us to the range several times.
Admittedly, I come from Suffolk, in East Anglia, which is inhabited by farmers and other normal people.
Exactly so. Frankly I could not give a rat’s arse about the damn Olympics, that is not the point at all 🙂
Apologies for the irrelevance of this message to your article (which is spot-on incidentally) but I’m confident you will appreciate its sentiment. I am trying to propagate the message of the excellent Pat Condell who, if you haven’t heard of him, is a bit of a YouTube star (he has the most subscribers of all political channels on the whole of YouTube). Check out this video castigating the EU and if you agree with it pls help spread the message http://www.youtube.com/user/patcondell?blend=1&ob=5
We have blogged Pat (PBUHH) many times as it happens… but please stay on topic.
Yes, I was taken to a firing range to go shooting when I was in the boy scouts, too. I suspect they don’t do this any more.
Most children are not interested in the Olympic games, just like most adults.
Does anybody know anyone who is looking forward to the games?
Pete: I do, but none of them live in London…:-)
Since my Son&Heir failed to make the U.S. Olympic shooting squad (by 12 points!!!), I’ve rather lost interest in the thing. (He needed to place top 8, placed 9th in the National Championships last month.)
Aaaargh.
My late father taught me to shoot when I was 5 years old; I still have the BSA Meteor I learned with. Pre Hungerford, I used to shoot .22 long rifle at University; I can attest to the fact that responsible target shooting is a very relaxing discipline (as it’s necessary to be very relaxed in order to be any good at it), and should be encouraged for its mental discipline.
If Boris has a downer on children seeing shooting (which would also give kids the opportunity to be inspired by the excellent design and engineering which goes to make the modern competitiion firearm), might I also suggest – reductio ad absurdum – that he also withdraw child discounts for the following sports:
fencing (promotes knife crime)
martial arts (promotes common assault)
boxing (promotes GBH)
sprinting and hurdling (promotes means of resisting arrest)
shot-put and javelin (promotes vandalism; see throwing action)
I’ll take my tongue out of my cheek now, and say simply – and in the Mayor’s own vernacular – that he’s dropped another whopping clanger with this one.
K98, age 14.
And in another day he will be praising WW2 warriors.
Perhaps they should substitute street rioting for shooting sports; something British youth are familiar with.
Do they still need men’s and women’s restrooms in London or do just women’s do?
Maybe the shooting sports are the only money maker in ticket sales and they do not have tickets to give away?
Why jeopardize that?
A once-great people
Dave Walker: you missed out archery!
I’ve always assumed though that most sports at the Olympics relates in some way to war.
If kids saw guns used in a safe and effective manner, they might doubt or disbelieve the propaganda that teaches them guns are dangerous.
My ex-wife is British and she was solidly convinced, at the age of 23, that guns possessed hair-triggers and were as likely to go off sitting on a table untouched as they were in the hands of a trained marksman. She believe this because the enemies of liberty who managed to seize control of her nation’s culture had carefully taught her and everyone else to believe this.
Lee: Yes that sounds exactly like the kind of thing a properly socialized Brit would believe. Similarly a properly socialized Brit also believes that a top down centrally planned healthcare system run by the state is the only way to prevent people dying in the streets en masse, and tax funded television is a core part of his national identity.
To be fair, this is hardly news. Boris Johnson has been a pointless, floppy haired moron since…. as far back as I can remember him being a public figure.
His first stint as a presenter on HIGNFY may have been the only thing he was ever good at, and that was only because he was so spectacularly and hilariously incompetent.
Fortunately it looks like LOCOG has either seen sense, or never really held this position. Either way(Link), kids can watch the shooting events for free. No idea why they’d want to – very much more fun to do than to watch IMHO…
In a word: denormalisation.
Also, an unarmed population are easier to suppress and less able to rise up. Insurgencies are for abroard, don’t you know.
At first, I thought this was great news! If a moron can become Mayor of London, then there’s hope for the rest of us! then i tried to think of a politician who was NOT a moron…. Can anyone help me out?
Even owning a pistol is legally difficult in Britain – so honest sportsman often have to train outside the U.K.
Of course criminals have no problem getting firearms.
“There are still far less shootings in Britain than in the United States”.
There were when firearms were legal here.
Indeed even in the early 1900’s (when millions of British people owned firearms and the British National Rifle Association was much bigger than the American one) shootings in Britain were rare.
Just as shootings are rare in such places as Vermont and New Hampshire today.
The real causes of violent crime have nothing to do with firearms being legal – but the ruling elite do not like that said.
Lots of them are not morons, Nuke. My grandmother used to say about such people ‘stupid for others, smart for themselves’. But yes, there are lots of morons too. People don’t go into politics because they are smart or stupid, they go because they crave power.
Not so, Alisa, they enter politics to ‘serve’. See comments above.
Silly me.
And, Alisa, I noticed that you also could not give me the name of any non-moronic politician! Family anecdotes are not data!