I'm most certainly a very loyal Australian, without question.

However, there's something really nauseating that usually permeates into our culture, during such august events as the Olympic and/or Commonwealth Games, and that's this continual jingoism we seem go on with.

Just about every minute we hear from some individual in the media recount details ad infinitum of some event, and how magnificently we've performed, seemingly at the total exclusion of just about every other competitor or contender. And frankly it drives me mad !

Why can't we be just normally patriotic, rather than engage in this dreary exercise of excessive nationalism. Surely we're better than that !

Yes, the widespread concern over the "gold medal gap" is rather embarrassing, particularly to those Australians who don't give a rat's about Olympic medals. However, I have strong feelings in regard to the amount of taxpayers' money squandered on the entire circus and after the current "failure", even more of our money will be wasted. Privatise the Olympics.