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2012 Sponsorship: sustainable blood money

Rio Tinto Zinc is to sponsor the Australian 2012 Olympics team. The company described its values as 'accountability, respect, teamwork and integrity (which) are in tune with those of the Australian Olympic team.'


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Corrupt Olympic fantasies

The tourism disaster which is London 2012 is turning from a gale into a hurricane. Hotels, outraged by the price gouging being practised by LOCOG's partners Thomas Cook and CoSport, are withdrawing rooms from its preferential-rate scheme. A while back SCoeLtd blamed hotels for jacking up prices and threatening London's good name. However, hotels hit back accusing LOCOG and its partners of being behind the abominable inflation. At the heart of the matter is the undisclosed payment made by Thomas Cook and CoSport to LOCOG to become official resellers of these rooms. This kind of corruption lies at the heart of the Olympic system whereby a range of commercial organisations pay Organising Committees to gain monopolistic access to the Games. Price gouging was supposed to be outlawed at the 2012 Games. In reality it is central to the whole event.


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How No Games Chicago helped kill their 2016 bid

"The 2016 Olympic Bid One Year Later - What We Should've Learned"

Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics was shot down on October 2, 2009. What did we learn from the bid process? What did the bid tell us about Chicago politics and competing visions for economic progress? One year after that decision, Tom Tresser, one of the lead organizers for No Games Chicago (www.nogameschicago.org) will reveal behind-the-scenes details of why activists from around the city came together to derail the bid, what happened when they went to the IOC's World HQ in Switzerland and what happened when they went to Copenhagen.


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Commonwealth Games Human Rights Neglect

PRESS RELEASE:

On Tuesday the 15th of March, CWG2010 number crunching: Some stats revealing some relative costings in the Glascow Commonwealth Games 2014 Compulsory Purchase of Margaret Jaconelli's propertyCWG2010 number crunching: Some stats revealing some relative costings in the Compulsory Purchase of Margaret Jaconelli's property a home-owner in the way of development for the Commonwealth Games Village will make a second appeal to the court of session to request that she is adequately compensated for the home she owns on Ardenlea street which Glasgow City Council is forcing her to leave using compulsory purchase powers. If unsuccessful, Margaret Jaconelli will be evicted from her home on Thursday, 17th March.


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one ring to bind them all

So, turns out it's not just the 2012 Host Borough of Hackney that bans books (well more specifically bans the launch event of an Olympics critical author from one of its public libraries).


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Olympic blacklisting allegations

Frank Morris speaks out: The demonstration outside the Olympic site on 1st March called in solidarity with the courageous whistleblower sacked for standing up for an illegally blacklisted workmate.Frank Morris speaks out: The demonstration outside the Olympic site on 1st March called in solidarity with the courageous whistleblower (centre) sacked for standing up for an illegally blacklisted workmate.


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The true cost of tickets for the Olympics: community and workplace organising?

from Corporate Watch

Official prestige tickets for the 2012 Olympics, which include food and drink, are going to be some of the most expensive in the history of sport, at £4,500 per person.

These tickets cannot be sold as single tickets, but only in blocks of ten. In addition, conditions of purchase will mean that an individual or company buying hospitality tickets for the opening or closing ceremonies of the Games will have to pay a minimum of £270,000, because seats for other events much also be bought at the same time. The only sports tickets to ever be more expensive were those for the 2011 Super Bowl in Texas at £5,545 each. However, once tax is added, the Olympics tickets become £5,400, so together with the ‘minimum buy’ requirements the tickets are not far off the most expensive sports tickets in history.


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The Olympics, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Podium Conference 2011: Panel at the Podium Conference Countdown to the Games February 2011.  Copyright ©2011 sytaffelPodium Conference 2011: Copyright ©2011 sytaffel


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Getting a leg(acy) up

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.


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that Pudding Mill White Elephant

The saga of the Stadium's non-legacy rumbles on.

Ken has waded in claiming waste of public money and horrendous environmental consequences should Tottenham succeed with their bid entailing the demolition of the currently under-construction stadium and it's replacement with something more suitable to the needs of Premiership football. So it appears poor old West Ham are still highly likely to be saddled with that "fundamentally flawed" Olympic Stadium according to coverage by Paul Norman and Amanda Baillieu in Building Design.


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