Sinead Keegan

Or Why The Medal Table Tells Us Nothing An insane claim! Obviously, Sinead knows nothing about sports. Fair enough, I don't know much, but my calculator skills are amazing and thus I make this claim. In the past six weeks, Ireland has taught the world a very important lesson: That Ireland is a sports powerhouse. Olympic rings at the London 2012 Olympic Park I know, I see you scratching your heads in confusion thinking, Yeah, Katie Taylor won gold...but that's about it... No. That's not even the half of it. Firstly, I must admit that this post is very much inspired by the work of my dad and brother who ran a couple of numbers and discovered that, per capita, Ireland is pretty much the best sporting nation in the world. OK, fair enough, that's probably not true, but Ireland is kicking the USA's from here to Stratford. The US topped the Olympic medal board with a whopping 46 gold medals, 29 silver and 29 bronze, whereas Ireland came in at a respectable, bu...

In an exciting development, I am thrilled to introduce you all to the very talented Lisa Davison today. She has been as swept up with the Olympics as I have, but has an interesting take on it all. I hope you all enjoy her guest post today. If you do, check her out on Twitter @LisaJaneDavison . If you'd like a taste of her excellent fiction, you can get your hands on her very creative prose response to Wendy Cope's 'After the Lunch' as part of the Ripple 2012 Anthology . And now, on to her Olympic ruminations. Sin éad *** As the warm glow of the Olympic Games continues to pulse and talk of capturing that fuzzy feeling on a more permanent basis buzzes around politicians and media, something about all this has started to bother me: David Beckham.

It's all over. No more Olympics. The medals have been won, the tears have been shed and the BBC has set it all to a never ending soundtrack of Chariots of Fire. We saw Jessica Ennis, the showjumping team, Mo Farrah, Sir Chris Hoy and over 20 other athletes win gold medals while Victoria Pendleton, Christine Ohorougu, Rebecca Adlington and over 30 other athletes won silver or bronze medals. Wow. That's a lot of medals for Team GB. Over 65, in fact. Were there any left for other countries? You probably can't see, but, I promise, it's Jessica Ennis. Well, from the way the BBC covered it, no. In fact, the way it's been reported, it seems like the only reason for the other countries being here at all was to lose to Team GB.

As we wandered through the Olympic park in yesterday's afternoon sunshine (I know, awesome, right?) the other half and I were stopped by a man from a US radio station. He asked us the following question: "The US basketball team beat Nigeria by 83 points last night do you think that was in the spirit of the Olympics?" My very kind, polite and infinitely fair other half said, "Well, you never want to humiliate anyone, but I think you still have to play your best." How balanced, how fair, how well-spoken on the fly. I, on the other hand, blurted out, "Well, it's better than not trying at badminton." So what does it mean to embody the Olympic spirit? Do tactics have a place? Does mercy? With the benefit of a little time to think it over, I think I have some slightly less flippant thoughts on the matter today. Olympic flame, symbol of all that the games represent...and hidden in the stadium

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with sports. I love playing sports, but I'm generally mediocre at best. I love going to sports events live, but generally hate watching them on television. When it comes to the Olympics, I love the sports, I love the international celebration, but I hate the corporate nonsense. I've never lived in an Olympic city before, but it seems particularly bad here in London. All sorts of things have been banned in order to protect the corporate sponsors of the games (I won't say who they are, but they're not necessarily well-known for promoting good health or active lifestyles). Local businesses aren't allowed to use any advertising containing "2012", "London", "Olympics", the Olympic rings and the list goes on. I'm not upset about the IOC protecting their name, their brand, their logos, but 2012? Really? It's the bloody year. London? It's still the name of the city where I live. Surely if we ...

It has been a shockingly long time since my last post, so apologies for that. Since then, we have seen a great many changes, including Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs being called to account for this outrageous phone hacking scandal. I'm thrilled that they're being made to answer for their actions and lack of actions, but it all seems a little trite and perhaps the news it's generating is a little too "good." They are key players in an ongoing criminal investigation, so, naturally, the members of parliament questioning them didn't want to compromise any facet of that. Instead, we got hard hitting inqueries such as, "What happened?" and "Do you bear any responsibility?" Now don't get me wrong, I laughed as hard as the next viewer when Rupert Murdoch passed the buck down the chain. I'm not responsible, the people I trusted and the people they trusted are responsible. As though trusting someone relieves you of responsibility in your...