Over at Reason, Nick Gillespie is dancing with his usual gusto on the grave of that uniquely dull (beach volleyball excepted) spectacle known as the Olympics (copyright, trademark, yada, yada, yada).

This passage, in particular, is well worth repeating to a pompous US Olympics Committee that is, apparently, so enamored of its brand:

“The most disturbing of the political controversies was undoubtedly the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich games by the Palestinian group Black September. The terrorists’ violence was compounded by the speech given by International Olympics Committee head Avery Brundage. Brundage declared that the games would continue—a controversial if defensible position. But in saying that the games “must go on,” Brundage, who had enjoyed a warm relationship with Adolf Hitler during the ‘36 Munich Games, refused to plainly mention the killings. Rather, he bemoaned the fact that the Olympics had suffered “two savage attacks,” a euphemistic reference to the murders and a campaign underway to expel Rhodesia, then a white-supremacist nation, from participating in the games.

Meanwhile, in other Olympics news, the eccentric, but occasionally entertaining UK Independence Party is doing its bid for London’s bid to host the 2012 games.

It’s announced its support for Paris.

The EU Referendum Blog has more on this, including a few details of London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s reaction.

“Mayor Livingstone also announced haughtily that 70 per cent of Londoners supported the Games and the investment, jobs and development they would bring to London. Subsequently, the figure became 81 per cent, then went back to 70 per cent. But one thing remained constant: no evidence of any poll was produced. So we still do not know how the figure was arrived at and who was asked.”

It seems that a trouble with numbers is something else that Livingstone shares with poor old Nurse Bloomberg, an enthusiast, of course, for bringing the Olympic plague to his city.

UKIP is also suggesting “that, as London taxes will go up enormously to pay for the bid, the Games and the fall-out afterwards, the people who live and run businesses in London should be asked in a referendum whether the bid should go ahead after a full and clear statement of the costings had been made.”

That’s a good idea. New Yorkers should insist on the same.