The political machinery

Support for the Olympics was won by the London 2012 media strategy. The campaign worked assiduously to inhibit public discussion through a process of narrative containment and image management. There has also been a concerted promotion of the Olympic proposals by the Labour local authorities, and by Tessa Jowell in the run up to the May 2006 local elections. Promotion of the Olympic event has been caught up in the self aggrandizement and structural cohesion of the New Labour party machine.

The LDA estimate that in the 'red line area' alone, somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 jobs could be created (private conversation). Later projections are as high as 35,000 (E. Goodwyn and K Munn, October 11, 2006). However, it is clear that social actions and relationships, development plans and economic strategies, have all been defined by a discourse of uneven development, that of poverty in the Lower Lea Valley and Olympic boroughs (a continuing product).

The LDA and consultants assert a re-imaging of locality via increased media exposure, and ascribe to major sporting events the power to redefine inhabitants' perception of place (LDA, 2004). They assert that sports facilities will catalyse development and attract business location after the Games. Cultural critics might disagree. Fredric Jameson (1991) points to the "induced disorientation" of much postmodern architecture and a "depthlessness based on the culture of the TV image".

The costs of repression

Security for the London Olympics 2012 will be overseen by a Cabinet level Olympic Security Committee chaired by the Home Secretary and comprising senior officers from the UK security forces. The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG), an interim body responsible for any negotiations before the Olympic Delivery Authority was fully constituted, had a Security Directorate of its own. £25 million has been allocated to in venue security, and a further £200 million to cover "wider security costs" (GamesBids.com, July 16, 2005).

Probable impacts of the Lower Lea Valley Developments (particularly the Olympics phase) on tenants in privately rented accommodation.

It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
Alexis de Tocqueville 1805-1859

The emerging debacle of the escalating costs of the Games are providing the most disingenuous twists of logic and language. Ken Livingstone now states that the rising costs are not associated with the Games but with the ‘Legacy’, as if it were a leech that had insinuated itself into the proceedings. ‘Legacy’, we were told when the bid was successful, was one of the reasons which helped win. ‘Legacy’ was all about regeneration of an area typified as a black hole, despite it housing over 250 businesses, housing low-wage families and individuals and having a significant urban wildlife associated with the waterways and derelict land.

"Postmodernity means if anything coercion" (Cooke, 1988). The counterpoint of the disciplinary subject, honing a body without limits at corporate behest, the 'celebration of excellence', is sweated labour on the fringes of Europe and in the Far East. Oxfam, fair trade and trade union campaigners have highlighted factory exploitation and health hazard in the internationalised manufacture of sports clothing, footwear and other goods in their Fair Olympics report Play Fair at the Olympics, Respect Workers' Rights in the Sportswear Industry, 2004. The report was drawn up for a campaign around the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.