The Olympics is that dream event, even when something goes wrong it goes right. Another accidental cycling legacy was discovered a while back by the hard legacy hunting British media. TfL told them that more people in London, 19 percent during the Olympics and 32 percent during the Paralympics, took to their bikes. Why? According to the Standard it was 'to escape packed Tubes and buses'. Of course, what is even more remarkable is that Londoners and out of town commuters had stayed at home or out of London for precisely the same reason, following the dire warnings from the very same TfL, and of course blond bomber Boris, of over-crowded public transport, leaving the Tube and Central London deserted during the first week of the Games. This had, of course, created the Miracle on the Underground when the system did not go into massive overload.

Students have vowed to continue their struggle against UCL's proposals for a Stratford campus after being forced to end their occupation in solidarity with residents of the Carpenters Estate in Stratford. They were served with an injuction after beginning the sit-in on Wednesday 28th after an inconclusive UCL General Council meeting, which failed to agree the University's plan to develop the housing estate at Carpenters Road, Stratford, as a new campus. Students and academic staff have been expressing concern at the plans and offering support to residents over the past months but UCL has pressed ahead regardless in its collaboration with Newham Council prompting the sit-in.

The mythical size of the 'Queen Elizabeth' Olympic 'Park' has entered a whole new dimension of hyperbole on the London Legacy Development Corporation's new marketing website noordinarypark.co.uk

When telling the story of Barcelona Professor Muñoz also made some interesting comments about the previous occupants of the docklands area which was cleared to make way for the new gentrified suburb. They were, he said, 'mainly women and squatters'. If I recall the number moved was 55,000, a lot of plainly undesirable women and squatters! Of course, as with the Lea Valley the allegedly derelict nature of the area was also rehearsed. It was after all a docklands area, rather like the industrial land cleared for the London 2012 Olympics, land deliberately used by the city for 'dirty' projects and providing services others preferred not to have on their doorstep but then condemned for those very purposes to justify its seizure. Professor Muñoz referred to the process by which the company redeveloping the site moved from being publicly controlled to privately controlled, as if this somehow justified the loss of housing for the poor. The Barcelona Olympics was supposed to deliver public benefits but failed to do so. As a public project it was for the city and national governments to ensure this occurred but they failed to do this.

Went to seminar on the so-called Barcelona model: Learning from History - Barcelona 20 Years On, which was being put on by the University of East London at the offices of the LLDC, with two speakers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Berta Cerezuela and Francesc Muñoz. Given the connection with the IOC and the LLDC maybe it wasn't surprising that this was strongly supportive of the 'success of Barcelona' theme.

One of the proudest boasts of those promoting the London Olympics was that they saw 'sustaining and supporting' local communities as a key objective. At Clays Lane the first thing the LDA did was lie to residents telling them their estate would be demolished even if the Olympics didn't come. At Leabank Square the ODA threatened legal action for defamation when residents made some pointed remarks about the performance of the community liaison officer on their own estate blogspot. At Wanstead Flats the Government overturned the Epping Forest Act in order to grab a piece of land for a police barracks.

It seems 'affordable' housing on the Olympic Park has taken another hit. According to Greg Rosenberg, who was speaking at the East London Community Land Trust AGM, the present target of 35% is to be reduced to 28%. Greg was giving a lecture on CLTs, with particular reference to Troy Gardens, a project he was involved with in Madison, Wisconsin. This was mentioned when he and some others from the East London Community Land Trust had a meeting with the Mayor's London Legacy Development Corporation to discuss the possibility of a land trust at Chobham Manor, formerly known as Clays Lane.

from Corporate Watch