I know where you're coming from Evelyn re the narrative stuff but for me it was a confusing dog's breakfast of images.

It lacked power and broad TV appeal. Few in Asia or Africa would have had the foggiest idea what was happening. The use of video clips was something out of a second year RMIT media studies project.

Indeed, I thought the production so low that it completely blind-sided our athletes, who have been recovering ever since.

It did tell a story but it was a sad story of decline, lack of confidence and painted a picture of a nation slowing coming to terms with the idea that its best days are behind her.

Celebrating the NHS, is to champion citizens not freely supporting their fellow countrymen, but having their money forcifully taken from them and directed into pet projects that most people would never want to pay for in the first place....projects that have a higher cost but poorer health outcomes.

The ceremony's focus on multicultural Britain ahead of historical Britain is another sign that it has lost faith in itself and now awaits a radical cultural transformation, seeing Britain as a blank canvas that is destined to be painted with the cultures of the World while denying the founding culture any place at all.

You say that as if it is a bad thing, progressive pat.

>>It... painted a picture of a nation slowing coming to terms with the idea that its best days are behind her.<<

By "best days", you presumably refer to the time of the glorious British Empire that spanned the globe and coloured a whole lot of countries pink (at least, they were pink in the atlas they gave me at school).

In which case, you are absolutely correct. And I sincerely hope that the USA manages the process in an equally dignified and responsible manner, when it finally arrive at the reality that it is not the only country in the world, but just one of many.

Jingoism is a highly tainted and dangerous attribute in the twenty-first century. While it is not possible to turn back the clock, and undo the damage caused by the kind of global adventurism that ended with the bloodshed of India's 1947 partition, or with the "lines in the desert sands" that have caused so much pain in the Middle East, it is desirable that we don't continue making the same mistakes.

And anyway, you are reading far too much into a circus event.

Pat, the days of the British Raj and Colonialism are over, happy to say!

"The ceremony's focus on multicultural Britain ahead of historical Britain is another sign that it has lost faith in itself and now awaits a radical cultural transformation."

Too right, progressive pat… We wouldn't want anyone who forgets the storytelling of the past to have to relive it would we?

I failed to notice any Jutes or Angles, and if Frisians were remembered they were more likely to be cows than humans, also there was a distinct lack of Celts and Normans though I suppose some people in the opening ceremony were Saxons unless they favoured Caledonians amongst the performers which is unlikely because like the Taexail and the Venicones (and five other tribes) they were on the other side of the walls – both Antonine and Hadrian – speaking of which, what did Roman Britain ever do for us?

Plus I noticed the PC police ensured there was no mention of the Dane's in Britain and, given the opening ceremony's location was London, it's doubly ironic that 1688 was overlooked as if the Dutch never happened… typical.

At least there was no sign of Tom Jones or the Welsh.

Personally I'm more interested in whether the Queen was paid £1 as were all the 'headline' performers at the opening ceremony – and where did Daniel Craig disappear to?

With our doubt the worst of it's kind in many years.

It says a great deal about the funding of these things that such utter garbage could have been permitted. I think it is remarkable how many critics have been so kind. Says quite a bit about them too.

One of these days we will have to make these arty farty lot earn their living by selling tickets for their lousy work. It would be nice to see them work for a living, rather than vote for it.