As more than 20 million viewers tuned in to the BBC to watch Usain Bolt win the 100 metre final Sunday night, you can be certain that one Northern man wasn't watching the celebrations...
Former Smiths frontman Morrissey has made his views on the Olympics very clear in a post on his fan site True To You, including comparing the current spirit around Britain and the Games to that of Nazi Germany.
He also complained about the royals being given too much media coverage at the Olympics and the "foul patriotism" that has taken over England.
In a statement on his website, he said:
I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness.
As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the 'dazzling royals', laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.
His comments are hardly out of character. He recently blasted Sir Paul McCartney for accepting a knighthood from HM The Queen.
The famously anti-royal rocker is adamant he would turn down any offer of an official honour from the British Establishment, insisting that such awards are intended to make rebellious celebrities "trot into line".
