Pink Floyd fans witness redevelopment failure of the Battersea Power Station 35 years later

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A pig is flying over the Battersea Power Station, London again, 35 years after it flew there for the first time in 1977. On both occasions Pink Floyd released the albums with the floating pig shot on the covers, and even though the musicians did not attend the events in person, they once again brought desirable publicity to the derelict station.

The two covers, Animals in the past and Why Pink Floyd…? today,  can be easily confused, as this landmark site looks exactly the same as 35 years ago. This is in spite of the owners constant promises to renovate the station and “create an entirely new district for London“. The current development proposal aims to create the first zero carbon office space in Central London, “a stunning event space”, the river walk section, a green energy plant and a conference centre etc.

However, so far the inflatable pig is probably the only “cultural” mark at the station site, despite the cultural rejuvenation plans proudly announced on the Battersea Power Station Website . The power station has been unused since its closure in 1982, and is gradually falling to the ruin. In consequence, English Heritage described the conditions at the place as “very bad”, and included it on the Buildings at Risk Register.

The current owners,  Treasury Holdings, struggle to make the ends meet due to the Irish banking crisis. This might force the company to sell the station to another private developer willing to face those financial challenges, which the previous three owners failed to cope with. Further information can be found on the Spectacle’s Blog.

Perhaps real pigs will start flying sooner than the actual redevelopment will finally begin.

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Guantánamo – 10 years on

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The London Guantánamo Campaign is marking the illegal detention centre’s first 10 years’ existence with a series of actions in January 2012.

Including a candlelight vigil outside the US embassy in London on 12th January, these actions have been designed to highlight a decade where over 800 prisoners were detained, most of them without charge or trial and subjected to torture and abuse.

The US Embassy can be found on Grosvenor Square, London W1A 1AE (nearest underground: Bond Street/ Marble.)

The LGC has also launched an e-petition which will be forwarded to the US ambassador to the UK, Louis Susman, on 11th January 2012 calling on the US government to repatriate UK prisoners Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha.

Click here to add your name to the e-petition.

Anyone wishing to get involved or obtain further information in any of the LGC’s planned events can email london.gtmo@gmail.com

Further details on the LGC can be found here

 

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The true Olympic legacy: the debt starts here

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The Olympic village has been sold to the property arm of Qatar’s Royal family at a loss of £275m.

In alliance with British developer Delancey Estates, the two companies will be responsible for just over half of the existing 2,818 homes and for the development of a further 2,000 units on new land.

The partnership “creates the first private-sector residential fund of more than 1,000 homes to be owned and directly managed as an investment.”

For more on this story click here

 

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McDonald’s volunteers to find out their Olympic roles this week

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As initial offers for the volunteering roles during the 2012 Olympics are sent out this week, some successful 10,000 Game Makers have two weeks to accept them. McDonald’s anticipates the replies particularly impatiently, because the fast-food giant is in charge of providing training for the volunteers.

 

However, it is just the beginning of a long process of filling up all of the 70,000 unpaid positions for the Olympics. Over the next few months thousands of e-mails will be sent to applicants, aiming to inform everyone about the progress of their application by the end of this year. LOCOG officials also claim the last interviews are scheduled for March, 2012 and the last role may be taken even as late as April, 2012. All candidates have to undergo security checks before signing the final contract.

The first volunteers who received conditional offers are inter alia: Nader Mozakka from North West London who will be an NOC Assistant in the Athletes’ Village; Maggie Hendry from Dundee, Scotland who will be a Physiotherapist at North Greenwich Arena at Games time; Erin Morgan from Newry, Northern Ireland who will be an Event Services Team Member at the Olympic Park and Charlotte Evans from Caerleon, Wales who has been assigned a role as an Event Services Team Member for Wimbledon.

LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe stressed the importance of the offers made, as it marks the new stage of the Game Makers programme. He said: “It has been a privilege for my team to meet and interview so many enthusiastic and dedicated people from right across the UK who would like to volunteer with us and make the Games a success for athletes, media and spectators alike.”

Jill McDonald, UK chief executive of McDonald’s, added: “We aim to help provide the volunteers with the skills, knowledge and confidence to deliver an outstanding level of hospitality at the Olympic and Paralympic Games next year.”

The “McJobs” offered are perhaps not the world’s most desirable employment, although initially promised to be financially rewarding, will be unpaid for the 2012 Olympics. Spectacle has already covered McJobs, which can be found in the Olympics 2012 section of Spectacle’s Blog.

Unsurprisingly, the official volunteer t-shirts will not be the only place where golden arches will be seen at the 2012 Olympics, as McDonald’s also obtained a monopoly on food sold during the Games. This has stirred up a debate on public health and well-being, which could be argued as not being on McDonald’s priority list. This American meal brand plans to open the largest McDonald in the world in the Olympic Park, Stratford. It is also interesting to know that there will be no kitchens provided to athletes, who will be forced to dine in the dining halls catered also by McDonald’s.

Obviously, McDonald’s sponsorship is happily welcomed by LOCOG, but should their profit really overshadow the Olympic’s overriding goal of promoting a healthy lifestyle?

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How to sponsor the Olympics in 4 easy steps…

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Calling all Olympic 2012 sponsors!

Did you know that London can have that glossy just-out-of-the-showroom clean city look in four easy steps?

Consumers Spectators will get the chance to experience that special Olympic “feeling” by seeing your products on billboards all the way to each sporting venue. Not only that, with careful planning you will be guaranteed (yes, guaranteed!) maximum exposure in all other parts of the capital.

Here’s all you need to do:

1. Seek out people wearing clothes advertising rival products and either get them to wear them inside out or use masking tape to cover up the offending image so they’re not spotted on TV.

2. Rename well-known buildings  if they are sponsored by a rival brand (think O2 Arena.)

3. Book up as much billboard space as possible in and around the capital so your competitors can’t get a look-in.

4. Remove all of your rivals drinks and food from all “Olympic family” establishments so only your products can be consumed.

Simples!

To find out more click here.

 

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SSAC urges people to write to Cameron & Obama

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The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (SSAC) is urging people to write to David Cameron, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton  and William Hague to demand the immediate return of Shaker Aamer to his family in London. Aamer is the last Briton still in the Guantánamo concentration camp but was originally cleared for release in 2007.

The addresses to write to are:

David Cameron, Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AG;

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, King Charles Street, London, SW1A 2AH;

President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC, 20500, USA

Hilary Clinton, USA secretary of State, 22o1 C Street NW, Washington DC, 20301, USA

Further information can be found on the SSAC’s official website or their Facebook page.

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Olympic legacy – a potential disaster?

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Richard Caborn, the sports minister at the time London won the Olympic bid, will speak today raising his concerns over the potential failure of the Olympics’ sporting legacy.

In his keynote speech at the annual meeting of the Sports and Recreation Trust Association in Birmingham, Caborn will elaborate on his comments, quoted in the Guardian today, that there was a “danger of failing completely,” adding that there needed to be a “major change of direction in the strategy on this if the disastrous decline experienced by many of the sports is to be reversed.”

The latest quarterly figures from Sport England show that the target to increase the number of people playing sport three or more time a week by one million by 2013 is a long way off the mark with a more modest increase of just under 110 thousand from 2007-08.

Click here for the full article

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Eco-Towns under scrutiny of the Urban Design Group

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The Eco-Town concept, originally proposed by Gordon Brown in 2007, is yet to be carefully revised. This time the Bordon Eco-Town will serve as the case for the thorough examination of the Urban Design Group (UDG).

Jack Warshaw of Conservation Architecture & Planning will lead the debate with the Bordon community members on pros and cons of this controversial idea.The meeting, taking place on 21.09.2011 at 6.30pm in the Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ, will be video recorded by the Spectacle crew.

Although developing ‘carbon neutral’ Eco-Towns with over 5000 new homes and 15,000 new residents would presumably help to tackle climate change and housing shortage in the UK, some local communities have been strongly opposing this idea. Such issues as sustainability of the project, public engagement, and role of the local authorities are highly questionable.

Friends of the Earth said “…the Government is quietly removing the public’s right to have a meaningful say…”.

To counter the lack of discussion, Spectacle has started a project on Eco Town and Villages. To watch the interviews with Bordon Area Action Group committee members and local residents, visit Spectacle website for Eco Town and Villages.

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“News International Wapping dispute” exhibition opens in Liverpool

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The exhibition ‘News International Wapping – 25 Years on’ opens today in Liverpool marking 25 years since the sacking of 5,500 newspaper print workers during the bitter 1986 dispute between Rupert Murdoch and the print unions.

Occurring at a time when jobs, conditions and union organisation were being undermined in newspaper industry, it showcases the 13-month struggle the employees staged to try to save their jobs and protect their union rights.

Using the recent News of the World scandal as a poignant example of how corrupt newspapers can be and the damage they can cause, Paul Finegan, Unite’s regional secretary, stressed how important it was for Government to be aware “of the dramatic and negative impact on jobs that morally corrupt newspaper tycoons, working together with a government that are intent on reducing the rights of working people and their unions can have.”

When: From Monday, 19 to 30 September
Where: Unite, Jack Jones House, 2 Churchill Way, Liverpool L3 8EF

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Missed Opportunity for Olympic High Tech Legacy

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Back in March 2011 The Wellcome Trust made a £1bn offer to transform the Olympic Park into a ‘global hub for research and innovation’.

Yet the offer was rejected by the Olympic Delivery Authority who instead sold the Olympic Village to Qatari Diar and Delancey Estates for £557m, who will develop the site into a neighbourhood of over 2000 homes.

The Wellcome Trust noted on their website that the rejection was a huge disappointment for them, stating:

‘The Wellcome Trust is disappointed that the Government and the Mayor of London did not wish to take our proposals for the Olympic Park further. If our bid had been successful, our holistic vision for the Olympic Park and the legacy would have delivered a world-class centre for technology and innovation and up to 7000 high-quality new jobs, and it would have made a substantial contribution to the regeneration of East London’

The decision to reject the offer was initially founded on the basis that the £1bn bid made by The Wellcome Trust did not meet the amount that has already been invested into the Olympic Park prior to the bid and that their plans for the site would not provide taxpayers with sufficient value for money.

Yet both Saffron Woodcraft and Ian Birrell argue that this is a missed opportunity for an Olympic Legacy. Whilst The Wellcome Trust plan promised to provide 7000 jobs, the provision of social housing and ‘further social infrastructure’, this offer has been turned down in favour of investors who plan to transform most of the site into private housing, putting into question just how beneficial this decision is for the local residents and for taxpayers. Woodcraft and Birrell suggest that the International Olympic Committee’s decision is one based on short term rather than long term benefits. As Birrell argues:

‘…they are focussing on short-term profits by looking to sell the lucrative athlete’s village to the Qatari Royal family in conjunction with a private firm of property developers’.

This is just another decision, others including Greenwich Park and the new Stratford Westfield Shopping Centre, where the International Olympic Committee has put their interests and the interests of their sponsors before those of Londoners. Perhaps, as Birrell puts it:

‘Infrastructure is built to suit the demands of the International Olympic Committee, not the needs of the host city’.

 

 

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