From its immediate impact on the host-city to the global reverberations, listen to the full audio recording of openDemocracy’s debate ‘Culture, Liberty and London after the Olympics’. Join the debate and help shape the Legacy of the 2012 Games. 

The Olympics have revealed once again that the British are fascinated with themselves and how they feel about who they are, now that they are a multicultural country that is no longer the centre of an Empire. Here we see some of the shifting responses detailed in polling responses run by the new think tank, British Future. 

As London 2012 draws to a close the questions of Legacy and how to measure the Games' impact emerge as present tense issues. In this week's Friday essay Phil Cohen challenges the starting point of these discussions: the assumption that the population who use and will come to use the space all share the same vision as the narrowly selected development committee. 

"Bread and circuses" really was the formula the Roman emperors used to buy the social peace needed to exercise their own power. And not just the Romans - every ruler in all time has always sought to bask in the divine glories of communal spectacle. Can't we grow up and reject these ostentatious vehicles of pomp and power?

Mark Perryman spent a day at the Olympic Park in East London and concludes that the Games are a good thing - but could be so much better. 

London 2012's opening ceremony paid tribute to Britain's rich history of political dissent. But outside the Olympic village, a group of peaceful cyclists on their monthly ride around the city were being kettled by police. One of the 182 arrested gives her personal account

It was an amazing opening ceremony. Danny Boyle and his team had the opportunity at the outset, to challenge some of the more dominant, ugly trends that have taken over the Olympics. Acknowledgement of the injustice of colonisation would have gone a long way to set the right tone for the games. They failed. But perhaps I expected too much, says Amal de Chickera .