Via @danhancox

"They just want to get us in prison for the Olympics" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCeMJPiBtiw must-watch film of young Bow residents

Transport for London has said in a Freedom of Information response that it will be enforcing normal speed limits in the London Olympic Road Network (ORN). It has confirmed that the expected time for a journey from Park Lane, where the Olympic ‘family’ will be staying, to Stratford is ‘approximately’ twenty-five minutes, but there will be no exemptions for those using the ORN should they not be able to get to the Games within this time window.

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson was surprisingly and admirably honest on Newsnight when she said 'athletes aren't really that bothered about legacy'. The former Olympic swimmer Karen Pickering also put things in perspective when she said that what mattered for sportsmen and women was that nothing, like transport to an event, should 'impact on (them) getting ready to perform at their best'.

The government was planning to abolish the Health Protection Agency in July 2012. They thought this was fine for us. But then they thought about the health risks to the 17,000 athletes and officials who were going to live at the Athletes' Village and other venues for a few weeks later in the summer. They will need protection from disease and food poisoning and possibly some public health advice. So Uturn and the HPA has been saved for another year!

London 2012 is claiming to be holding a consultation on its transport arrangements for the Olympics. Just to emphasise the vital importance of these arrangements, despite the enormous disruption this will cause, the webpage has Olympic athlete Karen Pickering saying 'Competing at a major event is stressful and nerve-racking enough for an athlete, we don’t want to have to think about transport and getting to our venues. Every little detail counts in an athlete’s preparations. When I was competing I knew exactly what time I needed to prepare, to get changed, to do my warm up, to get changed. Athletes need absolute confidence that the transport won’t let them down and impact on getting ready to perform at their best.'

Now, this isn't actually the Olympics, but part of the over-arching regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley / Royal Docks as part of Thames Gateway, and so clearly fits into the 'would have happened anyway category, but this tweet from Stop City Airport (SCAM) caught my attention:

Mike Weed is Professor of Sport and Society and Director of the Centre for Sport, Physical Education and Activity Research (SPEAR) at Canterbury Christ Church University. He also engages with #media2012, and was a speaker at the recent annual olympic and paralympic conference of PODIUM, the London 2012 Further and Higher Education Unit. Republished with permission here is a piece calling for a debate around 2012 sporting legacies which he asserts has been largely absent.

by Stuart Fuller

Here is a little secret for West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur awaiting the decision on who will get the Olympic Stadium next week. Whisper it quietly, but football fans rarely want to watch football in an Olympic Stadium. Why do I say that? Well a simple look at similar structures around the world, built for non-football events reveals quite a bit. The prospect of an Olympic Games being awarded to a city sends them into construction meltdown, over promising and in most cases under delivering on the legacy of the games. The whole story of whether a stadium will have an athletics track or not is not a new thing. We all know that at the end of the day politics will win the day, and we have seen all sorts of stories in the past few weeks about who will do what when/if they win the bid.

@ProfMikeWeed has entered outraged mode on that fast-vapourising sports legacy and those