Tag Archives: London Olympics

Olympian battle to get London’s transport fit for the Games…

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A guaranteed budget of £6.5bn has been set aside to get London’s transport network up to speed in time for the Olympic Games next year. Thanks to the Games, this budget is also protected during present austerity measures.

With an estimated eight million visitors expected in London during July and August 2012, Graham Stephens, the co-ordination manager for the Olympics for Transport for London said that transport was marked as a potential problem right from the start: “The first advisers for the London bid helped us a lot when they stressed right at the beginning of the process that transportation was a major issue.”

Speaking about the legacy, Stephens pointed out that the transport system after the Olympics will be “significantly reinvigorated.” In the meantime, Londoners continue to face delays and line closures while the transport system goes through its upgrade.

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Debt-The true Olympic legacy…continued

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Further to our earlier post, the Future Communities blog  points out that the recent riots “diverted attention from the  decision by the Government and the Mayor’s Office to reject a £1bn bid by the Wellcome Trust to transform the Olympic Park into a science and technology hub.”

Instead of creating up to 7000 new jobs, turning the Olympic village into a new research and innovation facility, its sale to Qatari Diar and Delancey Estates, the two property development companies who have recently acquired it for £557m (with a staggering £275m loss) is a shortsighted one.

Unemployment in the east end boroughs of London are among the highest in London and the prospect of creation thousands of jobs for local residents is yet another wasted opportunity.

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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.”

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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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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.

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Key routes shut or restricted for the Olympics

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Road restrictions for London 2012

Road restriction for London 2012

The full extent of restrictions on central London’s roads planned for the Games was revealed yesterday.

Yet, it seems that the majority of the road closures will not really be part of the Olympic-only lanes to get athletes and officials quickly to the venues, as they will be staying in the Olympic village.

The key routes that will be shut or restricted in central London will cover mainly the area of the hotels for the Olympic family (VIPs and sponsors) around Park Lane to let them easily reach Stratford and the Olympic venue.

Full details of the restrictions have been published on the TfL‘s website.

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UK’s Olympic win could leave London tourism a major loser

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The official agency behind promoting tourism for London has admitted that the 2012 Olympic Games could lead to a lull in visitors to the capital next year, which may have a damaging impact on the UK’s stuttering economic recovery.

London & Partners has acknowledged there “could be a problem” with people not wanting to come to London over fears, such as over-crowded transport, a lack of, or high prices for, hotel rooms, and the capital resembling a building site, from 1 January until the Olympics end on 27 August.

More on the Independent

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New Olympic legacy website: London-Rio: Olympic Cities

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Mega Event Cities

London-Rio: Olympic Cities

“Cities across the globe are using mega events to catalyse urban development and social, economic and cultural change. Here we present insights and analysis of these events, examining their impact upon city-building and exploring their contribution to the design and shaping of place.

Our research is policy focused and practical. Our approach is focused upon the social impacts and legacies of mega events. We use interdisciplinary analysis to discover new ways of comparing and thinking about the mega event city.

We are interested in receiving comments on the site and suggestions for relevant material or links to be placed on it. The site will be dedicated primarily to housing academic work on the social legacies of mega events, particularly those referring to London 2012 or Rio 2016. We would also welcome links to our site being placed in sites addressing similar themes.”

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Delhi Commonwealth Games Scam

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Suresh Kalmadi, the Chief organiser of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, will spend the next 14 days in Tihar Jail.  Kalmadi was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on 25th April for “for conspiracy to cause favour to a company in Switzerland while procuring timers and scoring equipment for the Games”.  A Swiss company was awarded a contract to manage timing, scoring and results during the September Games in India.

The CBI will file it’s first chargesheet for the Commonwealth Games which will name not only Kalmadi, but also Games office-bearers Lalit Bhanot (secretary general), VK Verma (director-general), Surjeet Lal (deputy director general-procurement) and ASV Prasad (joint director general-sports), besides Swiss Timing-Omega.  If found guilty, Kalmadi could face years in prison.

For more information on this story click here.

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Olympics could have negative effects on sports participation

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After London was announced as the host of the 2012 Olympic Games, Labour made a number of promises about using the Olympics as a way of inspiring people to be more healthy and get involved with sport and exercise. They planned to get a million more people playing sport three or more times a week and to get a million more people doing more general physical activity. Whether it is actually possible for mega events such as the Olympics to have this kind of impact is something which has been contested by a number of studies.

The BMJ set out to find any study that had ever been conducted looking at the real-world health and socioeconomic impacts on places which have hosted major sporting events. From the 54 studies they found,  there seemed to be no evidence to support the idea that events like Olympics have a positive effect on health or socioeconomic outcomes.

One of the studies looked at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games and found that sports participation fell after the games, and there became in an increased gap in participation between the rich and the poor areas of Manchester.

Another study in Manchester suggested problems arose because voluntary groups were being excluded from using Commonwealth branding and the new facilities built for the event tended to only benefit professional athletes rather than the general population.

The government now seems to be dropping any focus it had on its original plan to use the Olympics to get people involved with healthy activity and sport, probably having come to the realisation that they will never meet the large targets that they originally proposed. This goes to show that the government can make big claims when they are bidding to get these events but when it comes down to it, they don’t actually have to follow these claims through.

For more information click Bad Science

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