All I've watched of it so far was the Rugby 7's from Ibrox Stadium yesterday lunchtime. Not really that into it myself tbh; the main sporting event of the summer for me was the one that finished a fortnight ago last night.

COUNTRY        POSITION       TOTAL OF MEDALS

Australia            1st                87

England             2nd               74

Scotland            3rd                33

Wales                8th                22

N Ireland           16th              2

Isle of Man         17th             1

..............................................                  

COUNTRY        POSITION       MEDAL TOTAL

Australia             1st              101

England              2nd              93

Scotland             4th               37

Wales                 9th               27

N. Ireland          18th                2

Isle Of Man        20th                1

Country         Position     Medal  Total

ENGLAND        1st               107       38  Gold

Australia           2nd              107       35  Gold

Scotland           4th                39

Wales               11th              27

N. Ireland         22nd               2

Isle of Man        23rd               1

Just occasionally a star in the making comes along. They're quite rare but 16 year old, 4'7" Claudia Fragapane is already close to being a world class gymnast. I've no doubt she will become one.

Any event without the Yanks, Chinese, Russians, Europe and others, is of course not going to be taken too seriously by the top athletes.

The BBC coverage of this is way OTT

LOL, you mean like boxing and especially cycling? I don't think anyone has done a study but there are a number of events where the best are actually in Glasgow.

I see we've now overtaken the convicts in the medal table

Indeed, the convicts weren't happy even before we overtook them.

http://www.theage.com.au/commonwealth-games-glasgow-2014/commonwealth-games-news/commonwealth-games-is-england-about-to-end-australias-golden-reign-20140730-zydsh.html

That'll be ample revenge for last winter's Ashes series.

Taking the train back north to Glasgow tomorrow.  Don't have tickets but it will be great to soak up the fantastic atmosphere and perhaps catch one of the giant screens.

After the penomenal success of these games I dare say that other UK cities will be queuing up with bids for future ones, but how many are suitable?  Remember that last weekend alone there were 700,000 additional visitors to Glasgow.

My job takes me all over the UK.  My previous perception of Glasgow was largely based on watching Taggart re-runs on Dave, but I now consider it one of the most beautiful (more green space than any other UK city) and vibrant cities we have.

The UK does have 'dumps':  Stirling (I blame the students), Lancaster (likewise), Birmingham (a given), Leeds (sad to say), Bristol, Swansea, many parts of London, but Glasgow certainly ain't one of them.

BTW Expect more fictitous Bolt type media reports this weekend.  As soon as national team heads starting saying the organisation was better than the Olympics there was bound to be a backlash from the London based media.

Ike

Hope you enjoy it, Ike. When they were held in Manchester in 2002, I had no great hopes they'd be anything special, but the atmosphere in the city was amazing.

WRT dumps, much of Manchester is terrible, although much-improved from the position in the 80's/90's. I recently found the centre of Bristol to be really nice. Leeds quite a bit like Manchester: good in parts, horrendous in others. Bradford, on the other hand, is just plain horrible. Agree with you on Birmingham (and much of the urbanised W Mids).

Depends where you end up in that city!!! And I suspect that most of the Commonwealth 'buzz' will be confined to the nicer parts.

 COUNTRY         POSITION          MEDAL   TOTAL

England                  1                          126

Australia                 2                          114

Scotland                 4                            43

Wales                    11                           28

N. Ireland              23                             3

Isle Of Man            25                              1

Good grief, England win a penalty shoot-out.

Hopefully the money generated by these games will go a long way towards helping the run-down parts of Glasgow and all those living in those areas. I live in a neighbouring local authority just to the NE of Glasgow which is quite a respectable place and reasonably well-off generally. As for Glasgow itself, the west end is probably the most prosperous area of the city just now and has been for a long time, quite a contrast to the east end of Glasgow really where life expectancy is semmingly pretty low.