Tag Archives: Olympics

London 2012 Olympics saved from cuts in Comprehensive Spending Review

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Drapers Fields trashed for an Olympic depot

Grass roots sports lose- Olympics win

Schools and community sports will be the biggest losers under the Comprehensive Spending Review while the London Olympic project is likely to avoid major cuts to its budget or contingency. Losses of local sports amenities like Hackney Marshes and Drapers Fields as a result of the Olympics will now roll out across the nation as non-Olympic cuts hit.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport is understood to have reached a settlement with the Treasury that will see about 30 per cent cut from its annual £1.6 billion budget. However London 2012 will  escape significant cuts to its £9.3 billion budget, and is expected to have its remaining contingency fund left largely untouched, partly out of necessity and partly expediency.

It is claimed that most of the major Olympic contracts have been awarded, so it is too late for major savings. The games are predicted to be completed with surplus contingency of £700 million. However the DCMS and the Olympic bodies have argued that is politically better to leave the contingency in place rather than take it back, and risk having to pay out in the event of an unforeseen crisis in the project.

The cuts to the DCMS budget will make it unlikely that the government can deliver on its promise of an abiding participation legacy from the London 2012 Olympics.
Sports minister Hugh Robertson will prioritise protecting funding for elite athletes in the run up to the London Games, and grass roots initiatives and projects run by UK Sport and Sport England’s will be cut.
Shadow Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell who told the nation the Olympics would only cost £3bn when it was nearer £10bn now claims she is concerned school sports initiatives will be hit by the cuts. So clearly nothing to do with her.

The details of the Olympic funding will not be announced by the Government on Wednesday. The cuts are likely to be made public on Thursday.

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Glastonbury Cancelled Due To London Olympics

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Glastonbury 2012 has been cancelled due to the London Olympics procuring all available portable toilets in the south of England. In addition, the organisers have also been told that all the 600 strong police force which patrols the event will also be redirected to patrol the Olympics.

Michael Eavis spoke of a price hike in 2012 for any spare toilets due to their scarcity, which would also inevitably lead to problems. “I can see it getting very expensive,” he said. “So we looked at the timing and thought that a year off seemed sensible.”

Sadly, yet somewhat unsurprisingly, the Glastonbury Festival has become another casualty of the ever increasing collateral damage inflicted by the controversial 2012 Olympic event.

For the full article see Live4Ever.

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50,000 promised Olympic Jobs becomes 70,000 unpaid McVolunteers

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No Jobs only McVolunteers

No Jobs only McVolunteers

Countless employers are now facing the problem of dealing with twenty three working days without key employees come 2012.  The deadline to volunteer for the Olympics is the 27th of October, 2010. The London 2012 Olympics Organising Committee (LOCOG) have stated that 70,000 voluntary positions need to be filled, but more than 100,000  people have already applied. The voluntary roles consist of general and specialised positions, from desk staff, events stewards and drivers. Volunteers must work for a minimum of 10 days for the Games, and 20 for the Paralympic Games. Training is also mandatory for all participants.

There are also a further 8000 positions to be filled for the role of “London Ambassadors”, which would involve helping the vastly overstated and questionable increase of tourists and visitors in 2012 find their way around the city.

For more information visit.

These voluntary positions have been the source of much controversy. Back in 2007 London’s Employment and Skills Taskforce and the London Development Agency (LDA) were talking of the Olympics creating up to 50,000 new jobs in the Lower Lea Valley. Dee Doocey, chair of the Committee for Economic Development, Culture, Sport, and Tourism, the leading committee on the London Assembly for scrutinising the Olympics, commented on the announcement of a new ‘Living Wage’ for London of £7.20 an hour:

“The Mayor and Seb Coe signed an ‘Ethical contract’ with London Citizens before winning the Olympics, promising a Living Wage for everyone involved. Yet to date, no Living Wage has been included in the contracts allocated and Seb Coe told the London Assembly that ‘any of the issues about a living wage is a consideration, not a condition’. This is of great concern because LOCOG will be letting contracts for all the traditionally low paid jobs such as catering and cleaning. As for local businesses exploiting the games, as Coe had suggested, it is more likely that existing businesses will be endangered.”

The “workers” will be given Macdonalds meals and bus travel for the day, but are not even allowed free tickets for the events. To read more on this click here, here, and here.

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ETOA claims Olympics are bad for tourism

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The European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) has warned that the 2012 Olympic games would be harmful to Britain’s tourism industry. The ETOA has published research from cities who previously hosted the Olympic Games, which shows it has a “profoundly disruptive” effect on local tourism. They describe the official estimates for the number of visitors as “exaggerated”. The association warned: “Normal tourist businesses suffer during the Games period . . . The region around the Games can suffer more than the host city . . . The impression that everything will be overcrowded and overpriced blights a region . . . [and] these difficulties are exacerbated by exaggerated claims of the benefits derived from the Games.”

Meanwhile Boris Johnson is drumming up a further 8000 voluntary positions for the role of “London Ambassadors”, which would involve helping the vast increase of tourists and visitors in 2012 to find their way around the city. So no paid tourism jobs there.

They can perhaps help shepherd the 70,000 unpaid volunteers in McDonald’s regalia.

Job anyone?

For more information click here

For more information on 2012 controversy click here

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Unexploded bomb could lie underneath Olympic Stadium

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The Olympic Delivery Authority has dismissed claims that there could be an unexploded bomb lying beneath its Stratford stadium.

However, according to Government records, a German bomb dropped in a tip on the exact site of the stadium during the Blitz.
Records exist of bombings during the war, which state that a large hole was left in a rubbish shoot at the refuse site after an air-raid. Despite several searches throughout the 1940s, no bomb was uncovered at the site.

A report by weapons company BAE Systems for the Government in 2007 concluded that explosive material must lie beneath the site of the stadium of the intensity of air raids in the area during the war.

A spokesman for the ODA said that more than 3,000 searches for unexploded bombs had been carried out across the Olympic Park, including the Marshgate Lane stadium.

For full article click here.

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The Downside of Commonwealth ‘Jugad’ : Mega-Event Footbridges

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Grafitti Athens 2004

Graffiti Athens 2004

Images of the collapsed footbridge neighbouring New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru main stadium have made front-page news across the globe and shone unflattering light on India’s Commonwealth Games preparation. The Games, which are due to begin in under two weeks on the 3rd October, have been dogged by whispers of corruption, corner-cutting and a lack of leadership. Such whispers have recently descended into deafening shouts as concerns are voiced, by laymen and ministers alike, about the quality of construction efforts. Newly-erected buildings have been left in varying states of dilapidation due to annual monsoons, and the athletes’ village has been denounced as unfit for habitation.

It is possible that such a high-profile setback may become a symbol of the dangers of rushing regeneration into cities and societies unready for it, given that it has ultimately caused more destruction than good and more haste has resulted in less speed. Similarly, another footbridge closer to home, though still un-built, has also caused destruction. Manor Gardens in East London, a 100-year-old allotment, was wiped off the map for an Olympic footbridge, and though this footbridge may not fall apart, the loss of this historic and green site is perhaps a troubling indicator in itself of progress for the sake of thinly-defined progress.

If the concept, as well as the spirit of jugad is alive and well (the idea that things will get done, by hook or by crook), then organisers may be hoping that what is quickly turning into a Commonwealth debacle is only an exception that proves the rule.

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The Olympic Games – A Gift, or A Curse?

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Rohantha Athukorala serves the United Nations (UNOPS) as the Head of National Portfolio Development for Sri Lanka & Maldives based in Sri Lanka, and writes in The Island about the commitments a country should consider before taking on a global event such as The Olympics.

Since the beginning of the modern Olympic Games in …, man has come to believe that hosting the Games is one of the greatest privileges a country could have bestowed upon them.

With the Olympics, comes the promise of thousands of new jobs and business opportunities, the development of world-class sport facilities, and a chance to raise a countries profile-but when discussing this great opportunity, many seem to forget to mention the financial risk that comes hand in hand.

Back in 2004, Greece spent $12.5 billion on the games which subsequently led to 2% points being shaved off the GDP, with some even referring to this deficit as the trigger for the financial crisis in Europe. Now for the 2012 Olympics, the UK is investing $14.3 Billion despite it’s fiscal deficit of 12%, and despite industry think tanks stating that hosting the event is unlikely to have any substantial financial impact.

If the Olympics is to remain a coveted event, Rohantha Athukorala argues that a revolutionary approach is needed in order to minimise costs and maximise gains. The solution that we propose is to hold the Olympic Games 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, ad infinitum, in it’s original 776 BC home, Greece.

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Olympic organisers go for gold

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A quick glance at the NDPB top earners’ list reveals that 3 out of the top 9 earners’ are in fact on the ODA (Olympic Delivery Authority)’s ‘senior team’. David Higgins, chief executive of the ODA, is officially the highest earning civil servant in the land with a whopper of an annual salary of between £390,000 and £394,999. John Armitt, chairman of the ODA board also made it into the top earners’ list and these 4 along with 5 other ODA senior executives each earn more than the UK Prime Minister, himself on a comparatively measly £142,500.

With such a big pile of Olympic gold split up between the senior executives, one wonders why those 78,000 unpaid Game Makers can’t be given a slice of the pie. Considering these volunteers will not be given the pleasure of watching the games themselves during their ten days of unpaid labour and further three unpaid days of training, one would think it’d be at least courteous to offer them more than a few free McDonalds lunches and free travel on working days.

It would seem that the winning team have already been decided, they’re up in One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf it would seem…

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Number of McDonald’s Trained 2012 Olympic Volunteers Increases by 8,000

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Photo By Fakelvis

Lord Coe launched London organising committee’s Olympic volunteering programme yesterday. Since the previous blog post on the matter, the 70,000 McDonald’s trained Olympic volunteers have risen up to 78,000, as Boris Johnson embarks on his quest to search for an additional 8,000 to act as “the face of the capital” for visitors. Coe claims the 2012 Olympics to be the “biggest thing happening in his lifetime”, stating that everyone should attempt to be a part of it in one way or another. To attract candidates, Coe declares: “If you don’t volunteer now, you won’t volunteer. Make sure you know how you’re going to be involved.” He stresses the importance of acquiring the “best of the best” volunteers, as they are the first thing Olympic visitors will see as they arrive at the Olympic Park.

The first person you see when you arrive at the Olympic Park is likely to be a volunteer [wearing a Mc Donald’s T-shirt], the first person you see on the Javelin Train is going to be a volunteer [wearing a Mc Donald’s T-shirt].        Seb Coe.

Inevitably, it wont just be the volunteers’ faces the visitors will be greeted with- the volunteers will, of course, be wearing the famous McDonald’s t-shirts, providing the company with an easy way of free advertising. The question is, what do the volunteers get out of it (apart from carrying out the role of a McDonald’s advertising mascot)? They will first be going through 3 days of training, followed by 10 full days of work during the Olympics/Paralympics. Surely this grants them a ticket to the actual games? No. Or, at least, a so called “non-event” ticket allowing access to the Olympic Park without actually seeing the games? No. Instead, the volunteers receive meal vouchers (McDonald’s, of course), and free public transport on working days. This applies to general volunteers, as well as those with special skills, such as medics. Is a free lunch and a bus ticket really a fair method of payment, McDonald’s? This is starting to look more and more like 78,000 unpaid “McJobs”. Where are the promised jobs?

The medics might be volunteers but at least you know the burger flippers are paid professionals.

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TFL Confirms Cable Car for 2012 Olympics

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Cable Car in Rio de Janeiro. Photo by Phil Whitehouse

Transport for London (TfL) has confirmed plans to open a cable car in time for 2012 Olympics, operating 50 metres above water between the Greenwich Peninsula and Royal Docks. The cable car is to transport up to 5,000 passengers (cyclists and pedestrians) per hour, between the two Olympic venues (the O2 arena and ExCel exhibition centre). The duration of the trip will be approximately 5 minutes one-way, cars running every 30 seconds. According to the Guardian, the system will be privately funded, costing £25 million provided by a number of potential operators.

London Mayor Boris Johnson claims that “A cable car spanning the majestic Thames would not only provide a unique and pioneering addition to London’s skyline, but also offer a serene and joyful journey across the river”. “Passengers will be able to drink in the truly spectacular views of the Olympic Park and iconic London landmarks whilst shaving valuable minutes from their travelling time”, he continues. Johnson believes that the cable car will provide a much-needed enhancement of cross-river options to the east of the city.

Former Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone does not object to the idea, as a cable car would be a development for the area. However, he states that “what is really needed is a road bridge that would carry more commuters.” The other alternative types of river crossing , according to professors of transport, are a rail-only bridge, a new river-ferry crossing, a walk and cycle-only bridge, and a car bridge adapted to take more public transport. The professors claim that a cable car would be the most sustainable of these. The question here, however, is whether a cable car is the most realistic option? Or is this an attempt to keep up with other major cities of the world?

Barcelona, Cologne, Hong Kong, Lisbon, New York and Singapore are amongst the cities
 currently employing a cable car. Does TfL feel that London is lagging behind? After the Olympics, will the public want to use the cable car as an every-day mode of transport? Not only does it sound unrealistic to think that the public will choose to “take the cable car” to work, but the route (from one place in the middle of nowhere to another) seems extremely Olympics-centred. Will the cable car be purely used as a way to impress the masses of tourists organisers claim will visit London in 2012? (In fact most host cities experience a drop in tourism during the Olympics) Quoting Tfl analysts, it certainly seems so: “A cable car would bring excitement and iconic importance, which would generate interest in tourist visits.” Let’s go fly a kite.

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