To be disgusted at Danny Boyle for using live animals in the Olympic opening ceremony!

[balotelli]

According to reports on todays news live sheep will be used in the Olympic Opening ceremony. Its supposed to depict 'rural' England!

Poor sheep will be scared shitless. I am horrified that these poor sensitive creatures are being exploited for entertainment.

No animals should ever be used as entertainment.

Disgraceful.

Does your dislike of anything which involves animal entertainment extend to, say, best kept guinea pig in a village fair, or to the orang utan preserve in Borneo, or the breeding programmes of endangered species at zoos?

ewe cannot be serious

Why does everyone keep saying it is British. It is not remotely, by any stretch of the imagination British. It is English to the core, a leek and a thistle on top of a fecking maypole doesn't make it British.

I don't mind that the opening ceremony only depicts England, after all it is the London Olympics, but please stop pretending it is British. British does not equal English, there are some other countries in Britain too.

You have sheep in Wales !

Isn't there sheep in Scotland and Wales... ???

The sheep in Wales are far more attractive - so the locals say anyway !

A touch of foot and mouth would add a bit of realism....Christopher Timothy with his arm up a cow's arse rotating a calf would show the rest of the world what we Brits are made of.

I did think Spinal Tap when I saw it but I think it's going to be brilliant. I love Danny Boyle, he knows what he's doing. We can't compete with Bejing (and someone would then be moaning about the cost if we did) so let's send it all up.

Getting, How the F does the preservation of endangered spiecies count as entertaianment or sport?

Freshletticia; what a crap argument!

Regardless of how sheep in cattle markets are treated that is not sport or entertainment and it still does not excuse sticking dozens of sheep, cows, horses and goat in a very alien environment with ridiculous amounts of noise and flashing lights!

FWIW I would ban cattle markets too, Being a Vegan I would be very happy to ban the sale, and eating of animal flesh in all its forms but thats another discussion and fuck all to do with the Olympics

Graham if I was a female I would happily have your children!!!!

Thank you.

www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_living2703 for more honest, rational information.

honest and rational?

hmmm not quite so sure about that, given the bias of the site.

Yes, Scummy, Our Opening Ceremony will reflect nothing but shear incompetence and woolly mindedness.
Someone needs to contact D Boyle and ram this message home.
Or we'll suffer national humiliation like lambs to the slaughter.
Baaaa humbug to the whole thing.

Whine whine whine - Edinburgh had the Commonwealth in 1970 and Glasgow hosts in 2014. If the Welsh would like to step up to the plate.

I think it sounds rather lovely. Very relieved we're not trying to out-spectacle the Chinese. Something kooky and English (not poarticularly British i agree - but that will teach the Scots to keep threatening to leave...) will just hit the spot.

So... The English have a monopoly on the UK's cows and sheep . Interesting, I must have spent my entire childhood hallucinating then

How is it not bloody British? Please someone explain this to me.

Also there are Olympic sites for the football in Scotland and Wales.

Well we all know Aberdeen Angus beef is actually from Surrey.

Why do people think sheep and cows do not exist in Scotland? Scotland has a huge farming industry!

I think it's this business about the theme being based on 'Jerusalem' and 'England's green and pleasant land'.

The 'Jerusalem' thing is wrong-headed, IMO.

Blake meant it ironically. The answer to the questions in the poem (did Jesus come to England/was Jerusalem built in England etc) is emphatically NO. His point is that England has made a hell for itself by industrialising and creating 'dark Satanic mills' and there's no point waiting for a visit from Jesus to sort it out; England must build its own 'Jerusalem'.

This was a call for social change and justice, here and now, challenging the orthodox Christian view that everything will be made right in the next life if you are a good Christian in this. It irritates me that this song is now understood instead as a nostalgia-fest about a 'green and pleasant' England that, at least for all those working and living among the dirt, poverty and squalor of industrial areas, didn't and doesn't really exist.

Sorry. Just suddenly needed to get that off my chest.

How about Danny Boyle reuses the steam engine from his Frankenstein and it runs amok, crashes into the royal box and lays waste the whole royal family in a oner?

balotelli You've ignored my question - why should we trust your opinion over that of the RSPCA?

What do you know about animal welfare that the RSPCA doesn't?

Are you a vet perhaps, or a sheep farmer? Or some other expert?

The RSCPA are not against the killing of animals and use of animals for food or other products though.

Animal rights motivated vegans have different standards to that and therefore don't condone plenty of things the RSCPA think are humane. Not just the olympics. So I'm guessing the RSCPA doesn't have high enough standards as a rule for the OP...

If the RSCPA are involved, its good enough for me.

I'm sure they'll be a bunch of protesters shouting outside the stadium so its good for them as they'll get a whole load of publicity... TBH, whatever Danny Boyle did it was going to enrage someone, and someone would use the opening ceremony as an opportunity to protest, such is the nature of our country and our democracy.