National team? Then sing the National Anthem!

Exactly

ellenaitch how I agree with your husband!! Team games have no place in the Olympics. New sports keep being added and the whole thing has become thoroughly unweildy. It wouldn't hurt to pare things down a little so that perhaps smaller countries would be able to afford to hold the games. The main point is though that individual achievement should be the aim.

Of course, it should be Team UK (we've discussed that earlier) but that doesn't mean Great Britain has ceased to exist as an entity. (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

Piers Morgan is a pretty loathsome individual but it just goes to show that even the worst of us can have some redeeming feature.

Piers Morgan , just get me started , cannot find anything remotely pleasant about him . He is on CNN when we are in the STates and DD who thinks he"s the bees knees , insists on watching , we are usually in an hotel room so THERE IS NOWHERE TO RUN , NOWHERE TO HIDE [SAD]

annobel you're forgiven![saintly] emoticon

Oh, what a wonderful opportunity to part that odious creep from some of his ill-gotten gains! And in a good cause, too!

I think I read somewhere that Piers Morgan [?] is giving £1000 [?] to GOSH each time one of our team actually sings the National Anthem.

Sorry jeni, I must have been having some kind of hallucination.

I don't think the world stopped calling us Great Britain some years ago. La Grande Bretagne, Grana Bretagna, etc. are all still commonly in use. True that the US tends to refer to Great Britain as England, as in "We're go to visit Scotland in England" but they are not always very smart about world geography. Perhaps the rest of the world that the great in Great Britain is not a compliment but a geographical description, while Brits themselves are sometimes confused about this.

It should be Team UK. The world stopped calling us Great Britain some years ago.

(by the way if the Scots don't like singing The National Anthem Wiki has an alternative verse :

God bless the prince, I pray,
God bless the prince, I pray,
Charlie I mean;
That Scotland we may see
Freed from vile Presbyt'ry,
Both George and his Feckie,
Ever so, Amen.)

I agree, Annobel. It's as though they felt they had to get the word Britain in at whatever cost....

The NI Orange Order is just about the most patriotic of all the Queen's subjects. I don't agree with all the marching and some still refuse to integrate but surely NI deserves to be mentioned? Maybe most people assume NI is included in Great Britain as is Scotland and Wales.

What have I said?

No, jeni - for example, the rower, Alan Campbell is from NI and so. of course, is the great Mary Peters. What was bugging me was that the title 'Team GB' ignores the contribution of NI athletes. The country is, after all, the United Kingdom of GB and NI. So why not Team UK?

It seems to me that the medal winners are mostly too overcome with emotion to sing and many are struggling to hold back the tears.
Well done all of them.
I am just watching the GB girls cycle pursuit gold medal ceremony. The girls are beaming with pride, but they are not singing the anthem. They have proved how patriotic they are

I don't think the GB team excludes N irish does it?
Cavendish is from the Isle of Man and there are team members from NI, and the channel islands. I think the point is the terminology.
Sometimes the british athletics team is referred to as great britain and northern ireland. But not this time - a branding decision by the Olympics association.

www.teamgb.com/our-greatest-team
This shows where the team are from.

Really , hope u don"t mind me asking Jeni , but are u off on a cruise in the not too distant future ?

They were also the only women allowed to make wills!

But in my case , it begins at 60 , there I"ve used S word,oh dear

Did you know that the saying "Life begins at forty" comes from the lives of Vestal Virgins? Girl children between the ages of 5 and 10 were taken to train as priestesses at Vesta's temple. They were committed to this (and to chastity) for 30 years. Then, they could choose to stay or choose to go. Some went and got married – with the blessing of the pontifex (the person who had been in charge) who gave the bride away.

Useless piece of information No. 459. Don't ever play Trivial Pursuit with me.

I can remember as a child we used to compete to see who could dash out of the cinema at the end of the programme so that we did not have to stand up for the "queen." It was half the fun of the outing!

There is an article in the times literary supplement by Mary Beard in which she does admit that the games were roman almost as long as they were Greek!
Sorry, but I can't do links! If you google Olympics vestal virgins it's under a dons life!

I doubt that I was ever a Vestal Virgin...fell off a chair [hanging Christmas decorations] in primary school. Did myself a serious mischief!

Roman depictions of Vestal Virgins showed women who were much more covered up than those soppy Hollywood-looking creatures in the flame-lighting Olympic ceremony. Any Vestal Virgin who let the flame go out in the first place (and there was no flame at the ceremony to begin with) would have been executed by being buried alive. Jeni You're right that Vestal Virgins were allowed to watch games and other perfomances – they were, in fact, revered guests at such occasions. They didn't have anything to do with Olympia and the temple there.

Yes jen they certainly looked like vestal virgins when lighting the flame