The Olympic flame passes brightly through somewhere in the the Uyghur Autonomous Province !

Originally posted Yule 2007

A new report 'Feeding the Olympics' from the Soil Association, Sustain and the New Economics Foundation, calls on London 2012 to deliver on their promise to be the greenest and healthiest Games in terms of the food they provide, and sets out how this can be done:

"This report is a call to action for everyone involved in catering for the London 2012 Olympic Games, to ensure that the food served before, during and after the Games is local, seasonal and organic as was promised in London’s bid

The LDA acknowledged there would be a loss of open space during the construction of the Olympic Park. I received the following information after several enquiries.

Remarkably, refutation of the inevitable benefits of hosting the Games is considered within the Olympic planning documents (Retail, Leisure and Sport Impact Assessment Appendices, Appendix 4 to the Environmental Statement, January 2004) as part of an attempt to calculate the amount and type of retail floor space that the Games could support. The Atlanta Games of 1996 was a retail disaster.

The £550 million funding for the London Olympics will initially come from London council tax payers, £1.5 billion from the National Lottery, followed by a further £75 million from council tax, and £250 million from the London Development Authority (LDA). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) insists that host cities underwrite all liabilities. £15 million was spent on the London bid alone (Blowe, 2004; 2005).

Links to four articles in Rising East Online worth looking at

Regeneration Without End: Urban and Social Change in the East of London since the 1890s —William Mann;