Pocket Changes: the UK’s 2012 Olympics 50p Athletics& 2000 50p Libraries Coins

In the United Kingdom, the 2 pound and 50 pence coins — perhaps because of their size — are used as bill-boards for commemoration.  Today, I point to two coins.

     

A COIN FOR THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

   
I am amused by the UK’s 50 pence coin commemorating Athletics, one in a series of 2012 Olympics coins.  Olympic coins have started to show up in my change.

This coin, mind you, comes from a country that amuses itself with the irony of hosting the games despite its poor chances of medal winning, or, at least its poor showing in recent past games.

I presume that the depicted athlete is to be seen in motion, rather than simply upside down.  The still depiction, however, … the open mouth, the wide eyes make it seem that this athlete is in trouble.

It should be noted that this design was selected from among designs submitted children.  Other 50p Olympic coins have more realistic, more heroic designs.

More to my amusement is the symbol of London 2012 resting over the wobbly kneed athlete.    Some Iranians have suggested that the symbol spells out the word "Z I O N" and that London 2012 is the Zionist Games.  Art, particularly abstraction, is in the eye of the beholder, I say.  In abstraction, it reminds me of the Chinese (both simplified and traditional) character for the English word “Mix” ( 混 ) as in the Chinese word 混乱 meaning “Chaos” or literally “a random mix”.

I hope neither the image nor the symbol foretell the UK’s medal winning chances in 2012.

This coin is part of a series of London 2012 coins available from the UK’s Royal Mint.  Please buy the coins.  The Games are costing the UK a mint in a time of austerity.

     

THE PUBLIC'S LIBRARIES

   

Also appearing in my change is the 2000 50 pence coin celebrating 150 years of British Libraries.  I am less amused.

Who could have imaged that 11 years later, in the face of deep deficit reduction measures, the UK’s Public Libraries would be facing MASSIVE, nation-wide closures.

More than 80% of the UK’s Public Library circulation is to children learning to read with the aid of literature for children.  Closures will leave the children of the poor without assistance.  It is the children of the poor who most need Public Libraries to become literate, to reinforce reading, study and research skills, to subsequently sustain if not grow the British economy.  Without access to literature, It will be more difficult for British children in future, to secure a good education and a job that keeps them and Britain off the dole.

I know that everyone must be austere in a time of austerity, but this is false economy.  It pains me that no austerity has been spared forward thinking here.

This is going to come back to bite British society in the ass . . . as surely as change in my pocket when I sit down.

Doggie Bags

For those of you watching my FLICKR “Lunchboxes for Lourdes” set grow, Lourdes has verbalized a profound concern.  It’s one that I share: as I stalk Kiddie Toy Stores in search of the perfect lunchbox for Lourdes, might I be in jeopardy of being nicked as a potential child molester?

Yeah, I worry about stalking kiddie stores too, especially as I make repeat trips in search of new merchandise.  But, here in the United Kingdom of the moment, no one seems to worry about child molestation.  At least, not as Americans would know child molestation.  Sure, there are now laws here requiring background checks for anyone working with or supervising children, but the generalised paranoia of the American public hasn't yet reached British shores.

Parents, relatives and boyfriends are too busy beating their kids to death.  In the past month (January 2009), there have been two high profile cases of infants beaten to death, for example.  That and the news that Britons consider children animals leads me to suspect that I’m beyond suspicion.  Anyway, people who beat their children senseless aren’t doing it in public.  Well, mostly not, some YouTube evidence to the contrary.

Minibeasts used to be a term used here to mean small creatures from bed mites all the way up to cats and small dogs.  One 2008’s year end commercials depicted the formation of a hunting party. As one Briton later, off topic, explained “you can’t kill anything here”, referring to the annual Boxing Day Fox Hunts of yesteryear.  So, seeing this commercial was intended to shock the British public.  But, regardless one’s cultural frame, seeing it to the end was, well, …when, at the end, a child out past curfew is revealed in the gun sights.  I began to wonder if I might have landed in Brazil rather than Britain.  There reports of the nightly killings of street children has persisted since the early 1990s.

The commercial was launched by a group calling itself “Believe in Children” - its “Children in Trouble Campaign”.  Though it persist on the Internet, it was quickly pulled when subsequent research suggested that folks were actually considering forming hunting parties, though not nearly as violent as that depicted.

In any case, frequenting kiddie stores to photograph lunchboxes is nothing to worry about.  “My child is very particular,” I’ve explained to one store’s clerk, “I have to photograph lunchboxes to ensure that they’ll pass muster.”  Lourdes is very picky about her lunch boxes.

With all of this wilding youth about, you’d think I’d feel less safe, now, here in the U.K., wouldn’t you?  But, the worst wilding that I’ve seen so far is one little girl pulling her pants down on a residential street to take a pee, and, two little boys discretely but publicly defecating.  Mind you such things are not at all common.

I was outraged the first time I was witness to it.  I was walking the dogs, and we surprised the first little bugger and his father coming up from behind.  What a sweet view was that!  Potty boy and the falling Plasticine jowls of poor old dad, out-ed, encouraging the boy.  I’m sure that there was good reason for it.  The presence of public toilets here is nearly naught and always requires payment of 20 pence or, as I like to think of it: ten times to pee.  And, it’s just about that long too, because 20p buys about 30 minutes of privacy.  Dad can put gas in the tank at nine dollars per gallon; but, he can’t put 20p on the tank for tiger?  Anyway, I was outraged because I have to use pooh-bags for dog-dew.  But, little boys and girls could leave their happy little turds - my British spell-check is correcting me: faeces - where they grace the ground. 

No wonder sweet little Britons are gaining a wilding reputation.