SCREEN AT YOUR FINGERS

London is promised an exercise in authoritarian elitism to rival Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union. The people’s games have been turned into the apparatchiks’ Olympics. The stadiums and arenas will overflow with politicians, bureaucrats and corporate sponsors. More than 1m ordinary families have failed to secure a single ticket even to the opening stages of the most obscure Olympic sports.

Civil liberties are to be suspended for the duration of the games. David Cameron’s government is promising draconian penalties for anyone who dares jeopardise the exclusive rights of commercial partners such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Advertising sponsors have been promised what is chillingly called a “clean city”, handing them ownership of everything within camera distance of the games. Wear a T-shirt expressing a preference for Burger King and Pepsi and you may be thrown into the Tower. The crackdown extends to what the Olympic Stasi call “advertising on the human body”.

All this is to one purpose: to make life comfortable for the 40,000 Olympic bigwigs, national bureaucrats, commercial sponsors, hangers on and politicians who are preparing to slip into all the best seats at all the best events. These oligarchs of sport will whizz from their Park Lane suites to the Olympic venues along 100 miles of dedicated Zil lanes carved from an already congested road network. Traffic lights will be programmed to turn green as the limousines approach and red again as they pass. Ordinary folk who inadvertently stray into the reserved lanes will face draconian fines.