Culture

The Mayor Of Rio Is Responding To Australia’s Accommodation Complaints With Some Cracker Gags

Just keep making jokes about kangaroos to distract them from all the gas leaks.

by Sinead Stubbins  25 July 2016

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The preparations for the 2016 Rio Olympics are not going that well. Today the Australian Olympic team have stated that their accommodation for the games is so bad that it’s basically “unliveable”. This isn’t a case of fussy athletes wanting more plush surroundings either — apparently the village is plagued with basic plumbing and electricity issues, with Australian Olympic Committee leader Kitty Chiller saying that at this stage, there’s no way that her team is moving in.

“For over a week now AOC staff have been working long hours to get our section of the village ready for our athletes,” Chiller told Fairfax. “Problems include blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors in need of a massive clean.”

“In operations areas water has come through the ceiling resulting in large puddles on the floor around cabling and wiring.”

I mean, that sounds pretty bad. Even really rotten hostels are usually free of random puddles of water gathering around exposed wiring. When the AOC conducted a “stress test” (i.e. turning on the taps and flushing the toilets of a few apartments simultaneously) water started leaking everywhere and there was a “strong smell of gas”. Oh, boy.

One could only imagine, that if you were the Mayor of Rio and the Australian Olympic team was saying that you’ve basically invited them to live in a house of horrors that includes about 27 things that could easily kill them, you’d be fairly stressed. However, you’d be wrong! When talking about the issue with Brazilian news outlet Folha De S.Paulo, Mayor Eduardo Paes commented that: “I almost feel like putting a kangaroo in front of their building to make them feel at home.”

What a ripper call! That’ll shame those pesky Australians, those spoiled princes and princesses from down under! These ridiculous Crocodile Dundee-loving drongos are bang out of line for wanting things like ‘running water’ and ‘to not be electrocuted’! Good gear, Eduardo.

Eduardo wasn’t done, however. Local Rio media reported that he also mentioned that FYI, Rio’s Olympic village was much nicer than the ones in Sydney in 2000, which must mean that the village in Sydney was literally made up of cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other with gaffer tape. It’s unclear whether this shady discourse will result in concrete improvements. Eduardo Paes did say that appropriate “adjustments” would be made, but there’s no word yet confirming if they’re actually getting a kangaroo in to finish the bulk of the construction.

I hope there are a lot of Airbnb’s in Rio. The Olympics will start on August 5.