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

Background Paper 1 - Impact (PDF) 170.23 KB

The East Marsh site, to be used as a temporary coach park during Games, also contains two feasible locations for a further turbine (only one turbine is possible due to limitations on turbine proximity with respect to other turbines), subject to flood risk assessment. Figure 2 shows a constraints diagram for this area produced by Ecotricity. BH/EDAW have identified two specific locations within this area which are suitable for wind turbines

London's Olympic Park Energy Centre, flagship of its sustainability claims, is being built by a company described as "one of the worst and most violent companies in Brazil in terms of its social and environmental record". It will form part of a profitable portfolio of energy projects including massive dams in the Amazon rainforest that are being widely condemned for their ecological damage and social injustice.

Chemical discharge into the Old River Lea: July 2009, ©: Martin Slavin
On 25th of February 2010 the Hackney Gazette reported; “More than 500 people in the north-east of [London], ...including many from Hackney, [have complained]..that their water smells of faecal matter.” A week earlier it reported that one resident said, “The water smells like faecal material. If you taste it you want to spit it out.” Another complained of the water having, “an incredibly strong, acrid chemical, sour milk or sewage smell"..

From: Alex Hundert, Narrative Resistance

It was not out of place for us to protest the Olympics today, as one might potentially suggest, on the Global Day of Action against Climate Change. For one thing, the City of Kitchener was holding a pre-torch Olympic celebration yesterday on public property at City Hall. Second, because Olympic sponsor RBC and the country of Canada are using the Olympics as a greenwashing campaign, to cover up their true record on climate change and the environment.

2010 Olympic Torch Relay Starts Off Disgraced, Delayed, and Disrupted

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The Rail Freight Group is a company which lobbies on behalf of its members "to promote cost effective rail solutions for freight. Our members include customers, logistics providers, suppliers, terminal operators, ports and freight train operating companies." On May 22 2009 it published a paper 'A High Carbon Olympics at Stratford?'

Professor Bent Flyvbjerg took up his post as Chair of Major Programme Management at the Said Business School at Oxford University on April 1st 2009.

“In a landmark study, ....[he] analysed over 250 major transport infrastructure projects and found that 90% went over budget — and that the benefits averaged only half of those promised. This was so consistent that Flyvbjerg concluded it amounts to “strategic misrepresentation”, and that the culprits are politicians and bureaucrats competing for scarce public resources or seeking to get a suspect project off the ground to make political capital.“

UPDATE ON MANOR GARDEN ALLOTMENTS FEATURED IN BBC2'S 'BUILDING THE OLYMPIC DREAM' SERIES. By Julie Sumner

After belated planning permission was finally acquired, £1.3M hurriedly spent on building temporary plots, the ravaged Manor Gardening Society (MGS) had earth under their feet again. Perhaps the hope that bursts through with the first broad bean shoots would begin to heal the wounds.