If Johnnie Walker lived in China, the police would have knocked on his door by now: ''You, come with us.''
Because Walker bad-mouths the Olympic Games. Publicly, vocally. To park buses and other vehicles a year from now, organizers of London 2012 have requisitioned a dozen of his best soccer pitches from the amateur league that Walker runs. The chirpy Londoner is, in local parlance, mightily cheesed off about that.
''We're being pushed aside for three weeks of elitist sport,'' says Walker, chairman of the Hackney and Leyton Sunday Football League, founded in 1947.
The vast and boxy new Olympic media center to host journalists next summer, which Walker can see from his East London home, is also ''bloody awful,'' he said.
''I've seen better buildings pulled down.''
Sssshhh! You'll get into trouble!
That's what we might have said to someone such as Walker in Beijing in 2008. Had we actually seen and heard them, that is. Vocal complainers, impassioned protesters, critical and searching public debate about the pros and cons of an Olympics were largely notable by their absence in China.
The Olympic movement was poorer for it.
There was the brave soul I saw being marched away after he distributed leaflets outside Beijing's Olympic park that complained about games construction.
There were the labor camp grannies, Wu Dianyuan and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, ladies in their 70s who were threatened with prison after they showed that government promises were hollow and cynical.
Having said they would allow protests in designated zones during the Olympics, Chinese authorities refused all those who applied. The elderly women called the government's bluff, repeatedly trying for a permit, and were instead told they'd be sent to a labor camp for one year.
After the Olympics, Wu and Wang's sentence was revoked, but the list of people who were locked up or otherwise made to shut up was still too long for the games to leave a sweet taste, despite the feats of Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and other champions.
The London Olympics a year from now won't match Beijing for grandeur. Penny-pinching Britain doesn't have the money-no-object resources that Communist leaders marshaled, with minimal public scrutiny, to dress China in the best possible light for its Olympic coming-out ball.
London's Olympic venues won't be as iconic as Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium or its Water Cube where Phelps struck gold eight times. The terrorism risk in London could be higher. The city's groaning public transport system may not run as smoothly. The food won't be as good.
But these will still be better Olympics - in some ways, they already are - because London has the key ingredient that Beijing sorely lacked to host truly soul-searing games: freedom.
To feel comfortable, an enterprise as expensive, as huge and as disruptive as an Olympics should always be subject to the highest possible degrees of public scrutiny.
When taxpayers watching their wallets in tough economic times are having to fund a sports event that they likely won't even get tickets for, then they must be allowed to complain and be listened to.
Officials with control over Olympic billions should publicly account for every penny.
If you want to daub yourself in body paint and run through town in only your briefs and a cardboard sign reading ''Olympics(equals)hate'' you should be able to do that, too - without needing a permit first.
In Beijing, these essential elements were missing. The result was the instrumentalization of the Olympics. They became the expensive and elaborate propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.
The Olympics suffered in credibility and atmosphere as a result. In choosing Beijing, the International Olympic Committee bet that the games would spur significant human rights changes. Seeing the IOC cast around for excuses when the bet didn't pay off was unedifying.
A rare public critic of Beijing was internationally known artist Ai Weiwei. Initially a consultant on the Bird's Nest, he later disassociated himself from the design, calling it a ''fake smile'' to mask social and political problems in China. Chinese authorities struck back at the outspoken Ai this year, detaining him for nearly three months on tax allegations.
London 2012 is a polar opposite, operating under impressive levels of transparency and public accountability.
The Olympic movement - even a year before the flame is lit in London - is better for it.
London Olympic officials are regularly and publicly grilled about everything games-related.
Even expense claims filed by Olympic Delivery Authority Chairman John Armitt and other games leaders are published on www.london2012.com. Armitt spent, for example, 6 pounds, 70 pence on refreshments at London City Airport on March 1, 2010.
In their glass-fronted meeting chamber that symbolizes the city's openness, Londoners' elected representatives last week peppered 2012 coordination director Neale Coleman with questions that drilled down to even nitty-gritty issues such as the flags and bunting for the English capital.
And Walker got an hour-long meeting with Mayor Boris Johnson to tell him how unhappy he is about losing his pitches to Olympic parking.
Openness could backfire when inevitable Olympic hiccups arrive and thousands of journalists are here next summer to record them. Transport chaos or a terror attack could hurt London's image for years to come.
''A lot of this is about reputation management,'' London Assembly member John Biggs noted in the questioning of Coleman. ''Journalists will be looking for other stories about how crap the food is; how the buses don't work.''
That is good. Because mega-events like the Olympics and sporting bodies like the IOC are too big and too powerful to operate in shadows. They should continually have to justify their existence, especially amid belt-tightening when some people feel the money could be better spent elsewhere. And no Olympics should be an excuse for threatening to imprison elderly women.
Beijing had Bolt and Phelps and opening ceremonies so grand as to be unforgettable.
But warts and all London will be more honest, and feel better for it.
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John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org or follow him at http://twitter.com/johnleicester
