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Its still amazing how there is still this obsession amongst Indian forumers to compare venues and the Games in general to KL, MAN, and MELB. I mean really....pave your entrances, fix your ceilings, and paint the walls before you even begin to make some sort of comparison.

Beijing did some morally questionable things, but to my knowledge there was no use of child labour. How could the Federation have let this happen in Delhi? They should have issued an ultimatum to the organizers over a year ago and pulled the games if there was anymore evidence of more child labour. I feel a sense of shame living in a commonwealth country. If this is India trying to show itself on the world stage, it must understand that developed nations don't exploit children and we take workplace safety very seriously.

When a country hosts an international sporting event, they make a commitment to the athletes to produce the best facilities possible, to secure that they will compete, train, and reside under the most secure, healthy, and safe conditions possible. This is important stuff, people! The Games are for the athletes. Not just stoking national pride. And these Games are putting both at risk.

I reckon that the organisers can call themselves damn lucky if there won't be just a single athlete who catches diarrhea or worse by those hygienic conditions and just a single construction collapsing during the course of the Games. I hardly believe that the Games will run without significant flaws but I also think that the media over-accentuate the negative aspects currently. That said, I hope that Delhi 2010 doesn't prove me wrong by turning into a major desaster.

No one ever wanted these Games to fail. To the contrary. Most would have loved to see them succeed and place India in a glowing light...and position it as an Olympic New Frontier. Just like how we wanted the Greeks to succeed in 2004. Just like how we wanted South Africa to succeed in 2010. And how we want Brazil to succeed in 2014 and 2016. But the IOC and FIFA do what the CGF obviously fails at doing...they keep on the backsides of the organizers and make sure these events are pulled off. Countries use these kinds of events to demonstrate that they have "arrived" - just as China did in 2008, Korea did in 1988, and Japan back in 1964. India wanted 2010 to be its moment to show off - at least in front of the old Imperial overlord and sisters of the Commonwealth. But what is obvious is that the resources and opportunities wasted on these Games were just that...wasted. The country should have invested in its own infrastructure and practices first. What these poorly prepared Games are saying is India is "delayed".

Hmmm. I know it's not always a popular opinion, but I certainly have no qualms about the likes of Beijing being awarded the games. Again, I would have enthusiastically voted for them if I'd been an IOC member, and wouldn't have apologised for doing so. I do go by the notion that the Olympic are the games for the Youth of the World, not just the youth of the western liberal democratic world, and it would be a huge double standard to say to a country; "Yes, we'll let you compete, but don't even think about asking to host until you have a government that more suits my tastes and inclinations". Plus, if it comes to how to deal with a totalitarian regime, I believe it's better to engage with them, and hopefully lead them that way, than to isolate them. It's not like China, Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany came out of their games smelling of roses - I'd say in those cases the games raised awareness of issues like Tibet and censorship, the invasion of Afghanistan and the oppression of the Jews moreso than if those editions had been Barcelona '36, LA '80 or Toronto '08.

Just in case anyone gets all warm and fuzzy about the supposed progress being made with the remediation on the village, read this story and consider why the feck these games are going ahead at all: Indians everywhere as well as the CGF and even athletes should feel remorse and disgust at having this farcical and redundant event which has lurched from crisis to crisis with no value whatsoever mounted on the backs of such egregious exploitation and neglect of children and the poor. If this was occurring in any of the countries most of us come from we would be wanting and hopefully seeing parliamentary investigations and criminal court cases proceeding, and we would be ashamed to have such an event come at such a cost. However the elusive Kalmadi, Dipshit and the rest of the Indian boosters seem to have no remorse, no morals, no ethics. Disgusting...

^ Or this is the order of the parade of nations: India

They are a failure already, get over yourself. India is a joke.

And I suppose that just reminds me of why the CWG will never raise in stature. Even I, coming from a place many would consider "developed", perhaps even more developed than England itself according to some Englishmen, would not make statements like that. It reeks of arrogance, insensitivitiy, ungraciousness, and ignorance, and I thought we have people here (including myself) who were disgusted by the arrogance of the people in charge in India? I am becoming utterly sick of the opportunisitic few who appear determined to see this games fail just to ram home the point that the CWG should just cycle through the white developed countries.

Let's get one thing perfectly straight; the prime responsibility for these games descending into the farce that they are are the Indian authorities who have consistently and blatantly avoided deadlines, ethical work practices, safety concerns, responsibilities to their own citizens as well as the thousands of overseas visitors who have been planning to attend these games. The Indian authorities have demonstrated time and time again a breath taking capacity to dissemble, obfuscate, boast and deny whenever they have been asked to actually deliver something that we in the developed world would take for granted. They are the ones who have turned the 2010 games into a disaster, and you can't expect their criminal ineptitude to be then rewarded with people attending and being polite about how nice the stadiums look. There are times when you need to call a spade a fecking shovel and say that the games should be at best delayed and at worst abandoned. It is the moral thing to do, it is the right thing to do. If everyone just blithely accepts the farce and attends they will be just as culpable in allowing the morally bankrupt politicians and organisers involved in Delhi 2010 to get away with murder (both figuratively and literally). And before you argue that it is an insult to the work of the Indians and their hospitality take a look at this: If the locals have such a loathing for these ruinous games then why should anyone in good conscience support their continuance? You can excuse the pursuit of bread and circuses in societies where there is the some degree of social conscience and a capability of the economy and the polity to meet most if not all of the needs of the people. However if anyone can justify these CG's continuance in terms of it making the average Indian's lot better they will be superior in intellect and ethics than the combined attendees of a MENSA conference

If please if this kind of stuff is going to mean the games get cancelled, than the Beijing Games would have collapsed once the little girl started to sing mime.

What twaddle! None of this is about looking to have the CWGs cycled endlessly through white developed countries. The complaints have all been focused on the betrayal of the very principles of the games and the most vulnerable members of Indian society. There have been numerous citations from Indian sources in previous posts about the inequities of these games and if you actually look back at some of my posts from 2 or 3 months ago you'll see citations referring to Indian social welfare and political groups voicing the same concerns. And if it smacks of arrogance to be proud of a country or a system of government that abhors using 3 year olds in manual labour then hell, I'm arrogant. This is not about race, creed or colour, this is about not allowing the exploitation or degradation of the human rights of people in a developing country because the rich upper classes and ruling elite want to pander to jingoistic bigotry.

No, We haven’t seen any pictures of the food hall as we are only being fed the bad news , Which tends to be the way with news channels, There have been specific problems like the flooding , which would delay the completion of parts of the village, hence the problems we have ,and the bridge collapse the course of which we don’t know, A Crain could have fallen on it, we don’t know. This sometimes happens in the uk to. None of this is the news you would want a in the weeks before the games is duo to start. But it doesn’t mean the whole event will be a disaster. The security risk of travelling to India in general has nothing to do with the commonwealth games.