Olympics Association Right and London Olympics Association Right
Olympics association rights and the London Olympics Association rights are often referred to as intellectual property rights but as their purpose is to raise revenue from corporate sponsorship and broadcasting they have rather more in common with the monopolies peddled by James I in his attempt to govern without Parliament. The sale of such monopolies was bitterly resented and was arguably one of the underlying causes of the Civil War which led eventually to the execution of Charles I in 1649 (the scene of which is depicted in the well-known woodcut above). It is ironic that the king was put to death at Whitehall Palace, not far from where scantily clad young women have been prancing around a sandpit patting a ball over a net. Happily, nobody is likely to lose his head nowadays but there is plenty of resentment against the modern equivalent (see Andreas Whittam Smith "In our race to win the Games, we lost our dignity" Independent 26 July 2012...