Why is the Olympic logo so bad?

It seems that everyone agrees the new London Olympic logo is awful - and not just those of us who see it as Lisa Simpson doing something very rude.

Why is it so bad?

My theory is that it suffers from the modern paranoia about offending people. Or rather the "more right on than thou" games that are played on right-thinking committees. Whether anyone out there is really offended is often a different matter.

You might think that an athlete of some sort might be a good logo. But should that figure me male or female? able-bodied or disabled? which race should it come from? What if you tried to make all these points ambiguous but failed? Best not to go there.

So let's think about Britain. What comes to mind then is red, white and blue. But that also conjours up the Union Jack and the Empire, so best not to go there either.

The games are in London, so that should be safe. But even then there are no landmarks used. The best the logo can manage is an apologetic lower case.

It sort of says 2012, but presumably in a clumsy enough way not to offend those who employ different - but equally valid - calendars to our own.