During our time away, we re-discovered our love of tennis. When you can't stand Tim Henman or Andy Murray, it's not always such a pleasure to follow British tennis coverage. But with a particularly good Wimbledon and the Olympics this year, it was too hard to resist the lure of some old (and new) favourite players. Between June and October, we must have collected a good five thousand pictures from the various tournaments. It was a big job, but we've now uploaded the vast majority of them to the site. Today's update is therefore tennis themed, but there are plenty of other goodies further down the page for those of you who - for some odd reason - don't like to look at Spanish beefcakes or girls in short dresses who don't mind grunting loudly in public.Firstly, we've added four new pages to...

You can download the full paper that we gave at the ITSA conference in Shanghai by clicking here.   You can also view our presentation below: Posted in olympics, regeneration, Tourism   Tagged: 2012, conference, cultural olympiad, memetics, olympics, paper, shanghai, Tourism   ...

After Beijing’s Olympics, which were both funded from and designed to promote the nation’s economic surge, London’s Olympics look set to reflect a country deep in recession, as well as those in Vancouver, Sochi, and anywhere else for the next decade. Tessa Jowell, Olympic Minister aka Minister For Disappointment, said on Tuesday that Britain wouldn’t have bid for the Games had we known a recession would hit. After that vote of confidence she went on to say the Games were a “counter-cyclical investment” that would fight against the recession by providing jobs all over the country. Just funded from the public purse rather than the private, presumably; as investors can’t see when and from where they’ll get their money back, the government is...

BY: Ricky Ray Taylor Every once in a great while a match-up catapults to the surface that gets us salivating at the mere thought of it.  Although this weekends contest is about 5 years past what it could have been, in most boxing circles the JONES-CALZAGHE duel is no exception.  In August of 2003, Jones was proudly sitting on top of boxing’s pound-for-pound list.  He actually was there for so long that his bones were beginning to creak. Jones had absolutely destroyed everyone in his path for 6 1/2 years in fights that were sometimes so lopsided that it left the casual Boxing “fan” questioning the abilities of his opposition.  Nobody had a clue or seemed to pay attention to the fact that the combined record of Jones opponents within this 6 1/2 year run was 417-22; and...

I am just back from a study tour looking at the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in LA. This was a mix of the old (a bust on a stall in Santee Alley selling fake Chanel bags) and the new (talking to the studios about how they plan to compete with peer-to-peer file sharing). I'm not sure if it was because the tour was organised by the French Embassy but fake Chanel bags ended up being a theme of the trip. We witnessed boxes of Chanel fakes (including some baseball caps whose bad taste would cause heart attacks at Chanel Design Central) being opened by Customs and Border Protection agents at the LA-Long Beach port complex. The scale of the challenge they face is immense - the port handles 5 million containers annually, which represent 45% of the US total and are...

Eventing world champion Zara Phillips breaks her collarbone at a cross country event...

I will be giving a paper at the 2nd ITSA bi-annual conference on “Globalisation, mega-events and tourism”, 6-9th November in Shanghai.  The paper is the latest output from the research I have been carrying out with a colleague, Nikki MacLeod, into the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  In this paper, we set out our memetic framework for the conceptualisation of the Cultural Olympiad and the paper’s abstract is below:     “This paper proposes the development of a memetic framework for analysing and evaluating the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  A review of grey literature has revealed five recurring themes or memes (units of cultural transmission) associated with the Cultural Olympiad and the authors...

So MPs could be moved out of Parliament for up to three years while a major refit of the Commons takes place.It seems that the Commons chamber is just falling apart. For example there were 33 leaks from hot water pipes in the past month and there is also a problem with asbestos, which needs to be removed. I'm guessing that it must be the asbestos that is the tipping point in that case - given that Portcullis House has more leaks than that in the average month and repeated problems with the heating system.Although in fairness to the Commons chamber it hasn't seen such major repairs since it was rebuilt in 1947, after the Second World War - unlike Portcullis House, which was completely rebuilt in 2001, and is still a total disaster.Of course, when the Commons chamber was totally rebuilt...

Thought this was worth highlighting :Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter NormanWhen Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave a gloved Black Power salute on the Olympic podium in October 1968 it sent a shockwave through sport. But what happened to the other man on the platform?Forty years ago, two black Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, won gold and bronze medals in the 200m final at the Mexico Olympics, and used their time on the victory podium to protest with a Black Power salute.The photograph of the two men with their heads bowed, each of them with an arm raised in the air and a fist clothed in a black leather glove, is one of the most striking images of the 20th Century.Their actions caused havoc at the Games, ensuring the pair were ejected from the US Olympic team. But three men won...

Chris Hoy leads Britain's Olympic and Paralympic athletes on a parade through...

What Britain's medallists did...

The International Olympic Committee will retest 5,000 doping samples from the Beijing Games to check for traces of a new blood-boosting...

This morning I visited the Olympic park with representatives from Bromley's winning London Youth Games team. It was great to see the work pressing at a pace and I think that the young athletes were quite excited about the project too. I am increasing less worried about getting the sporting facilities built on time and to a great standard, I'm still not happy about the funding for the...

About 500 Olympians and Paralympians are to celebrate their Beijing success in London on 16...

Understandable uproar in Wales, and particularly the Welsh Blogosphere about the alleged comments of Seb Coe in London's press, covered by Ian James Johnson, Miserable Old Fart, Amlwch to Magor, Ordovicius, Up the Valleys and Peter Black.As Damon Lord sums it up:It is also covered by Nick Webb, who justifiably asks did Coe really say it?There is further mystery to the story, however. Did the paper actually print the story? I don't doubt Ian James Johnson's comment that he saw it on page 5 in the paper, so here's a link to a jpg of thelondonpaper's story (Hat tip to Dougthedug'scomment on Welshfootball.net).The article however has now curiously disappeared from thelondonpaper's website, and also from the Metro's site, but I've managed to track down an online cached version of the Metro...

I was at the Olympic flag raising ceremony this morning, the weather stayed clear and fine with just enough wind to make sure the flags fluttered. Boris was on good form, equating the five Olympic rings to the five hoops that London would have to jump through to deliver a top class set of games. I was then lucky enough to attend a reception with some of the Olympians from the 1948 London...

Just in Shanghai to talk with a group of business people who were looking ahead at China's next year. I thought that you might be interested in the conversation. 2008 had been an extraordinary year. Snows in February, Tibet riots in March, worldwide Torch relay in April, Taiwan elections in April, Sichuan earthquake in May, the Olympics in August and Paralympics in September, and now the milk scandal as we moved towards the October national holiday next week. Underlying this turbulence, and triumph, there were some reasons for confidence, and some for uncertainty. On the plus side, the relative resilience of the Chinese economy, the stability of the political leadership, after the last big change in personnel last October in the Party and in March this year in the Government, and China's...

Members of the Welsh contingent of the Great Britain Paralympic team will be attending a welcome home celebration in Cardiff Bay today. At the games, Dave Roberts equalled Tanni Grey-Thompson's record of 11 golds by winning the 50m freestyle; and 13-year old Eleanor Simmonds, won 2 gold medals and achieved a World Record in the pool. The event will take place outside the Senedd building in Cardiff Bay at 12 noon, with a procession to the Senedd led by a traditional Chinese Lion. Another excuse to pop down to the bay for a lunch-time...

Beijing 2008 closing ceremony Paralympic games video...exclusive..New...

FridayMy unfortunate experiences in Peking notwithstanding, I have to admit that the Olympics were great fun. The important thing now is to continue to interest our young people in all these new events we have discovered. With this in mind, I have agreed to act as a consultant to the British Yngling Board.You must know yngling: it’s the sport that is sweeping the nation. I would go so far as to say that, at a party, if you wish to mingle, a good opening gambit is “Do you yngle?” I intend to build upon this with a poster campaign; I envisage a picture of a worried man with the caption “Still single? Yngle!” and another showing a sporty young lady captioned “I tingle when I yngle”.Add to this a new snack named Pryngles, an event at Dungeness under the title “Yngle by the...

There is a downside on having dual citizenship: there could be conflicting loyalties, deep cultural differences or you could end up feeling let down by two countries instead of one. In my case, I can’t help feeling a big resentment towards the fact that, both my countries, have or will be hosting the Olympic games. And I am even more disappointed about London hosting the Olympics next, after the fiasco of the Olympics in Athens, where, an obscene amount of money was spent on needless security measures practically imposed on the country by the USA, dozens died in building sites due to lack of health and safety measures- mostly immigrants working around the clock to complete the delayed works just in time for the games, and the stadia and other centres now left to rot because they are...

Save the planet by cutting down on meat? That’s just a load of bull. Look, I hate to be rude to the UN. I don’t want to seem churlish in the face of advice from a body as august and... [Visit boris-johnson.com for the full post and more information about Boris!]...

Bud Parr has several reasons why we should boycott Amazon: “Unless I see something from Amazon proving that this is somehow justified (using strong-arm tactics to push up publishers’ discounts) I hereby boycott Amazon.com and suggest you do too.” * The tiny community of Harrold, in the far north of Texas, has recently approved a local decision to allow it’s teachers to bring firearms to school to protect against possible shootings. * An American book prize has blacklisted Random House following its “cowardly self-censorship” of Sherry Jones’s novel The Jewel of Medina, which is about the child-bride of Muhammad. A spokesman for the prize said Random House’s decision not to print Jones’s novel represented “a threat to all...

Don’t worry, I’m not back yet. However, with the opening ceremony today, I think it’s appropriate to cross-post one of my own blog entries from before I left the land of the internet. So today, we’ve all seen Boris collecting the flag and the end of the 29th Summer Olympiad. There’s big a huge party on the Mall, and all thoughts have been turning towards the London Games in 4 years time. But not mine. Not yet at any rate. Since I first saw the Summer Paralympic Games at Atlanta in 1996, I’ve always preferred them to Olympics ‘proper’. Olympic athletes are obviously proud of their achievements - and winning an Olympic gold is something all will be proud of. Even the tennis players. But, for a paralympian, finishing the race is a tremendous...

Once again at the Olympics, Germany shows its complete superiority over other nations at the art of cheating swimming…...

While the rest of Britain celebrates our greatest Olympic medal haul for a century, a senior Tory in Boris Johnson's Mayoral team has launched a disgraceful attack on our athletes, claiming they have 'blood on their hands'.Controversial Boris appointed the even bigger loose cannon Coleman to run London's fire and rescue service - despite being fully aware of his less than impressive record of gaffes. Coleman hit the headlines earlier this year after claiming a massive £600-plus in one day for taxi fares - and racking up an expenses claim for taxi that was bigger than all the rest of the members of the Greater London Authority put together - including the Mayor. Coleman's huge taxi-bill on the rates was despite being given a free pass on London Transport.Cabbie Coleman, an openly gay...

  There has been widespread anger across Britain as the public belatedly realise that sport is more interesting if you win things and is therefore worth bothering with after all, but the sudden interest in exercise has coincided with the end of summer and much shorter evenings.   It is a well known fact that exercise is dangerous when undertaken in the dark, and therefore is not to be attempted after 4pm during winter months, and not at all in north Scotland.    Many have asked the Olympic Committee why the games had to be scheduled to finish at the end of August, when it would be too late for British people to make the most of it.  The overwhelming response was that most people didn’t expect Team GB to win enough to inspire anybody.  So far this comment has not been disputed....

If you’re bored at work and itching to get yourself through the day then you know the drill! Rather than surfing around trying to keep yourself occupied before you make a quick sprint to the door when it’s home time; catch up on stories that have been causing a storm on the social network sites this week, right here and right now.. Why not share the fun by use the social bookmarking feature. Here’s our Top 5 Social Friday Stories 1. Intel cuts electric cords with wireless power system - Intel on Thursday showed off a wireless electric power system that analysts say could revolutionize modern life by freeing devices from transformers and wall outlets. 2. Your printer is lying to you - Out of ink? Already? When Farhad Manjoo’s Brother printer abruptly stopped zipping out...

I think it’s safe to say that after last week, gold medallist diver Matt Mitcham has graduated from gay icon to outright superstar, and it’s fascinating to see. I have seen a number of bloggers complaining about his attention, that his sexual orientation is and should be irrelevant, that his gold medal win was somehow run of the mill and that his story didn’t matter. I couldn’t agree less - he deserves all of the attention he’s continuing to generate because he’s allowed us to get to know him and share his journey. Not only did he come back from a premature retirement from diving in his late teens, but he suffered from depression and anxiety too, before he took the massive step of coming out publicly (risking his sponsorship) and going to the Olympics...

Many people in the Embassy, along with just around everyone else in Beijing, were involved with the Olympics in some way. And most of us have been trying to find a chance to have a quick rest, because the Paralympics, the world's second largest event, will start next week. For Team GB, this was an astonishing Olympics. Best performance since 1908. Chris Hoy's three and Rebecca Adlington's two great golds. Some heroic individual stories, and extraordinary discipline from very determined athletes. On the Embassy side, we had just under 2,000 guests at events in the course of the Games - to welcome the athletes, promote trade and inward investment, London 2012 and our training facilities across the country. Seven high level visitors came, culminating in the Prime Minister's visit for...