Summary

The Olympic Delivery Authority’s programme is on track and within budget. The Delivery Authority’s management of its building programme has been exemplary. However, due mainly to significant increases in the cost of venue security, the likelihood of staying within the overall £9.3 billion Public Sector Funding Package is very finely balanced once the Department’s own best estimates of the most likely costs are taken into account. The Funding Package of £9.3 billion allocated to the Olympics does not cover the totality of the costs to the public purse of delivering the Games and their legacy, which are already heading for around £11 billion.

Peaceful non-cooperation: locals and supporters play boules on Sandy Lane Leyton Marshes

Oh dear. Olympics, LSCA, Conditional Grants? What does it all mean? http://leabanksquare.blogspot.co.uk

Press Release 23rd February – For Immediate Release

Today hundreds of BP signs across London were targeted by activists protesting against the company’s role as ‘Sustainability Partner’ of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Around the capital, protesters hit petrol stations, advertising hoardings, and BP-sponsored cultural institutions[1], disfiguring hundreds of the famous BP ‘sunflower’ logo. Advertisements with the company’s Olympic strapline ‘fuelling the future’ were altered with the addition of three asterisks to make ‘f***ing the future’.

Perhaps that fragile 'Legacy' shifts quicker than the underground aquifers round here: Some of the new cricket pitches (and what remains of the wildflower meadow) might want digging up for new flood protection (to protect the posh in those 'new neighbourhoods' downriver)?

Dear International Olympic Committee, London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and Commission for a Sustainable London 2012,

Given the recent controversy about the Dow contract, and following the resignation of Meredith Alexander from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, we are pleased to see that the CSL’s Chair has acknowledged that this has ‘raised wider questions about corporate behaviour, past and present, and how ethical issues are effectively factored into decision making,’ and that the Commission is going to address the challenge of considering ‘new approaches that incorporate a broader range of ethical issues into decision making’ in its forthcoming Annual Review, to be published in May.

A story of what happens when the Olympics comes to town. The Olympic Games and the attendant juggernaut of its needs will threaten an area rich in history and loved by its community and visitors from the rest of London. Hackney has its own unique qualities, a wealth of community projects and a history of great significance and symmetry with today and the prescience for the behemoth of the Olympics, steadily rolling into view.

What a difference a day makes! (The bulk of) those tickets won't be flying transatlantic no more; they'll now be shipped instead as, since Meredith Alexander's high-profile resignation, that 'Commission for a Sustainable London 2012' seems to have been stirred, if not actually shaken, into action.

Reproduced below is a press release from Nogoe2012 concerning the capacity of Greenwich Park. Greenwich Park's own 'Guidelines for Event Organisers 2010' refers to the Park having a capacity of 'up to 15,000', well short of the 50,000 tickets Lowcog has sold or the 68,000 referred to in its planning documents. Go to Nogoe2012 for more details.

London faces an Olympics overload. Transport is overloaded. Olympics travel chaos threatens London's transport system, London's motorists face £500 fines if they park in Olympic lanes, a £200 fine and a £300 fee to get their cars back from the pound, and the RMT is ticked off with TfL for not giving its Tube staff the same 'bonuses' as train drivers.