Over the weekend plans were announced in the media for a cable car crossing the Thames between the 2012 venues The Dome and Excel Centre, perhaps in time for 2012. But it seems this isn't an entirely new brainwave from Bojo and his chums.

High Street 2012 is an initiative that will use the 2012 Games as a catalyst for improvements to the A11/A118 corridor through the centre of Tower Hamlets (taking in Whitechapel High Street, Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road and Bow Road) and on into Stratford in Newham. See also: Stratford High Street public realm improvements

Updated Background Papers are now available at http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/media_centre

Background Paper 1 - Impact (PDF) 170.23 KB

The Hackney Citizen reports:

Only one Hackney apprentice on Olympics site: MP Diane Abbott slams low numbers of opportunities for local people

After discovering that only one apprentice working on the Olympics site comes from Hackney, local MP Diane Abbott has called on the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) to address the low numbers of apprentices on the Olympic site as a matter of urgency.

A sizeable proportion of the Games' massive budget has been spent dredging waterways, to help move materials to the Olympic site. The plan was for up to a thousand tonnes a day to go by barge. But the amount of business so far is only a trickle compared with what was promised.

During his recent foray into East London with the cabinet Gordon Brown once again played up the job benefits of the Olympics saying "Thanks to the Olympics, thousands of jobs are being created and protected in some of the industries worst hit by the recession - and in some of Britain's most deprived areas." Back in January he claimed the 2012 Olympics would create 50,000 new jobs, a considerable advance on the Compulsory Purchase Inquiry in 2006 when the LDA was saying there would be 6,000 net new jobs arising from the Olympics. With a budget of £9.34billion and rising, along with more spending to come after the Games, there should indeed be some new jobs, but specifically how many, in what employment sectors and how many would have been created if the Olympics hadn’t happened? I decided to ask some Freedom of Information questions to see if the LDA could be more specific.

I came across this comment about the impact of the Olympics on the regeneration of the east end of London in a recent interview with Peter Hall. He is Professor of Planning and Regeneration at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College London. From 1991 to 1994 he was Special Adviser on Strategic Planning to the Secretary of State for the Environment, with special reference to London and South-East regional planning, including Thames Gateway and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. In 1998-9 he was a member of the Deputy Prime Minister's Urban Task Force.