QUOTE:


Why 'Team GB' is capitalism's final victory

David Mitchell The Guardian,

Saturday August 23 2008

I hate "Team GB". Don't misunderstand me, I'm very glad that Britain has won so many medals, but the term "Team GB" is infuriating. Where did it come from and why the hell do we need it? Do the French Olympic squad call themselves "Equipe F"? Why do we have to give our squad a twee little name? The country's called "Great Britain", at least for Olympic purposes (I don't know how the Northern Irish feel about that, but then they're never any trouble), so the squad doesn't need a name beyond that - unless Britain's Olympic bosses are trying specifically to exclude those of us who, even though we're from Great Britain, aren't part of the Team. Well that's just not on! They have to let us share fatly in their triumph from the comfort of our sofas, or next time we won't give them 235 million quid.

The truth is that a chunk of the £235m was handed over to a bunch of parasites who then came up with the whole Team GB branding. It may have been a trivial sum in the overall scheme of things but every penny of it was wasted. Logos and branding in the private sector are there for a reason.

If Coca-Cola didn't spend money on their logo, they'd sell less sugary liquid and make less profit. But when public money is spent like this, as it is whenever a government ministry changes from being the department of something to the department for something, it is just being pissed away for no reason. Branding our Olympic squad Team GB has not in any way helped it win more medals and those who would argue that it has, perhaps citing some bullshit about the homogeneity of the team, are either morons or they think our athletes are.

At the very least the money would have been better spent providing a few more puncture repair kits for the cyclists.

The obsession with giving non-profit-making organisations the same branding paraphernalia as private companies that actually have a use for it is capitalism's final victory. Even when people aren't motivated by financial gain, as Team GB certainly primarily aren't, they have to ape the mannerisms of those who are. It's nothing more or less than playing shop, it's pathetic.

And, worse than that, it's been ineptly done because the Team GB logo is crap. It's like something I might have knocked up on an Amstrad PCW for the school drama society. The word "team" is lower case, pointlessly and incorrectly, and it slightly overlaps the "GB" in a way that looks like a mistake. Below the words is a drawing of the top of a lion done in the colours of the Union Jack, which is OK but I think is nicked off the logo for one of our presidencies of the EU (maybe that means we got it cheap), but this time the lion's head and top of its back are stuck on top of the Olympic rings, as if the lion underwent a horrific accident and now has to drag itself around on a huge Olympic logo-shaped roller skate, presumably mewing about British sporting glories past. If they were relying on this, rather than national pride, to appeal to consumers, they'd be screwed.

But what most annoys me about calling our athletes "Team GB" is that it's been so universally adopted by the television coverage. It's not about "another gold for Britain" any more, but always "for Team GB", as if Team GB is the name of the country - which is incidentally how Britain appears on the medal table displayed on the Team GB website.

Maybe we should just accept that and be done with it. After all, Team GB feels so much more contemporary than "Great Britain" or "the UK", and has the added advantage that in the blinking of an eye it will sound incredibly dated. But it's very now, it's got a lower-case logo, it emphasises teamwork, albeit in the most blindingly obvious way, so let's go for it, let's change the history books. "Napoleon was advancing unopposed through the low countries until his army was engaged by Team GB." "The Greek government were proving truculent when the foreign secretary of Team GB sent a gunboat into Piraeus harbour and threatened to flatten Athens." "And if Team GB should last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

And who better to lead this new country of opportunistic cyclists that the most opportunistic cyclist of all, David Cameron, or "man DC" as he shall henceforth be known. Finally, in the new nation of Team GB, Norman Tebbit will get his way.