A Daily Mail hack enjoys the Paralympics

[Jaded]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2197345/London-Paralympics-2012-Is-sport--Laura-Williamson.html

See - I even put a warning in the title.

I wasn't reading the DM, this was a link from the BBC site.

[mmmmartin]

pish. Badly written, poorly argued nonsense. To say the Paralympics is not about elite sport but merely sport for disabled people is the sort of utter tripe we have become accustomed to the Daily Mail printing.

[Jaded]

I doubt my comment will be put up.

The ‘brave new world’ of disadvantaged media on home soil began with many of us feeling very uncertain, even unsettled, about what we were about to see.
How would we feel watching a journalist with no feelings or a disinterested editor?

Have these papers sold because fans are genuinely excited about reading disadvantaged media, or do they just want to see where the quality press is written; to feel a part of it all?

On the tube home after reading Laura Williamson’s piece people were talking about ‘the Daily Mail girl who managed to get an article printed’. Not Simon Barnes, Hugh McIlvanney, Martin Samual or Michael Atherton, but ‘the Daily Mail girl’.

Most didn’t have a clue who Williamson was and, quite frankly, they didn’t care and they had no desire to find out. They were just happy to see a disadvantaged journalist squeeze some words out on the podium, ready for the cleaners with the squeegee to swoosh them off to the drain.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

66 'step free' underground stations? Nah. That's step free from entrance down to platform.
Out of the 250 Tube stations something like 33 are step free from entrance onto train.

And 8 500 buses - yes they have ramps, but still many have ramps which do not work, or ignorant drivers refusing
electric wheelchairs, or not allowing disabled people onto the bus when there is a baby buggy in the space.

[Ham]

What utter tosh, and from someone who has actually been to the games.

What he singularly fails to understand is that this is not the equivalent of sunday league or street kickabout vs the premiere league, this IS the premier. This is human sporting endeavour at its highest, and more and more people have come to realise that. Yes, there is no reason that a fully mobile person would play basketball in a wheelchair, or footy with a blindfold, or cycle with one leg, but that's what these athletes have and so they just get on with it. A high jump of 1m74 with one leg? That is incredible,  much more so than the world record, a whole 70cm less than that with two legs.  (and only 26cm less than the record with two legs back in 1912). a 500m TT on a bike with one leg at average over 50kph? Let's see him do that on his bike with two legs (ok, he's a DM reporter and probably wouldn't be seen dead on a bike, but still)

And, what's more, it is bloody entertaining to watch.

At the risk of self promotion, I had a picture & post on just this subject on my blog today http://londondailyphoto.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/this-is-not-freak-show.html (image links to a larger version)

[Pancho]

Click-fodder. The DM's favourite style these days.