Praise be to the sporting gods. It is not only Matthew Syed and myself who have had a gut-full of Olympic hype. Marina Hyde writing in the back pages of The Guardian 26/08/10 gets right down to her bare knuckles and lays one fair and square on the nose of the IOC, while landing a sharp kick to the FIFA groin whiles she’s at it. I send her my hearty congratulations. Just cast your eyes over her opening salvo to get a taste of what she has in store. Is there a more titanic rivalry in modern sport than that between Fifa and the International Olympic Committee, whose efforts to be considered the most repulsive organisation in world sport dwarf all other contests?

I’ve always felt the IOC edges it, though you may hold alternative views, but we can all watch spellbound as these parasites benefit at the expenses of the host organism. Forgive me, the host nation. Now that is what I call journalism. The picture of the IOC and FIFA as parasites feeding off their respective host nations stayed with me for many a day. Nothing could better describe the relationship between these self appointed corporate fascists and the sad and pathetic nations desperately trying to win their favour. There is no act of debasement so low that these contending applicants for host status will not stoop to. And for the winning country the grovelling has just begun. National laws and statutes must seemingly give way to the all encompassing IOC and FIFA dictates. Even this article is probably in contravention to a dozen or more Olympic sub-clauses. Fleshing out the details, Hyde elaborates:

It’s obviously important to protect advertisers within reason. But depressingly, London 2012 has gone as far as South Africa, where the FIFA-cowed government made ambush marketing a criminal rather than civil offence.

Hyde continues her expose of IOC bullying by explaining that under IOC governance:

‘police will technically be able to arrest a taxpayer for entering a 2012 venue wearing a Pepsi T-shirt, in order to protect the monopoly of corporate sponsor Coca-Cola, which will be raking in the usual eye-watering sums for selling and promoting its products therein.’

But the sinister and all-pervading powers of the IOC go much further. Hyde explains:

‘One might expect the 2006 Olympics Act to ban the unauthorised use of the Olympic logo and phrases like official sponsor, as it does. But it goes on to make it illegal to combine words such as ‘games’, ‘summer’, ‘gold’, ‘London’, ‘medals’, or ‘2012’ in any form of advertising or marketing.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. George Orwell’s 1984 starts to look pale in comparison. But there is more. Perhaps most troubling though, the Olympics Act grants not just police, but Olympic officials, power of entry to private residences. They may use ‘reasonable force’ to remove not just unauthorised advertising, but so-called advertising of a non-commercial nature, which liberties campaigners warn could include protest placards.

Thanks to the investigative journalistic skills of Ms Hyde, I will now make sure my laptop is safely secured each night as I await the midnight knock on the door. Seriously though, a thoughtful conclusion by Hyde should make us all take a long and sober look at where these corporate games are taking us. Soon Brazil will be in the spotlight and one wonders just how many slum dwellers will be swept out of sight to appease the visiting VIPs from FIFA and the IOC. Hyde ponders the future:

The question is where it all ends. When each new major commercial sporting event brings ever more draconian laws, one can’t help wondering how much violence should be done to a nation’s statute book to appease the IOC or FIFA or whoever is dictating terms. It’s bad enough infringing centuries old liberties in the alleged interests of ‘national security’ and the misdirected fight against terrorism. But infringing them in the interests of not pissing off McDonald’s would seem to be a new low.

Marina Hyde for Home Secretary.