Quote of the day

"To look out of the back side of 10 Downing Street and see a venue having been constructed, knowing that athletes will be carrying out their activities almost in the back yard of the prime minister is really quite an accomplishment."

As attempts to backtrack go, Mitt Romney's climbdown was pretty embarrassing - to say nothing of the terms in which he phrased it. Not only was there the unpleasant image of "the back side of 10 Downing Street" (David Cameron, presumably), but he also managed to conjure up the thought of the world's most elite athletes using Cameron's garden as a public toilet.

Still, nice to be able to point and laugh at a gaffe committed by a non-Brit, after Wednesday evening's North Korean flag faux pas - one day into the Olympics and we were already guilty of a politically provocative gesture towards a dangerously unpredictable nation possibly in possession of nuclear weapons. Clearly someone at LOCOG has picked up a joblot of unused Twenty Twelve plotlines...