30th January 2012

Dear Ms Alexander

I wholeheartedly congratulate you on your decision to resign from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012. As far as I am aware you are only the second person involved with London 2012 who has had the integrity, courage and conviction to take such a morally justifiable action.

by Jeff Davis, a librarian living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

In the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics, the RCMP stepped up its surveillance of the radical left in Vancouver. After all, they knew a bunch of activists and anti-capitalists were organizing to oppose the Games, and when you’re throwing a multi-billion-dollar party, it looks bad when people start drawing attention to inconvenient truths like the criminalization of poverty, the erosion of civil liberties, corporate profiteering, and massive public debt.

The circus goes on! Having elicited the information from Greenwich Council's Senior Planning Solicitor that the ODA had requested that the LDA purchase Blackheath Circus Field on its behalf, NOGOE's Rachel Mawhood was surprised by the response from the ODA to a Freedom of Information request submitted on 20th December 2011 in which she had written:

'I understand, LOCOG intends to use the Olympics Act 2006 somehow to circumvent the 1866 and 1871 legislation to empower themselves to enclose Circus Field in 2012.

Which part of the Olympics Act says that it can be used to over-ride the Metropolitan Commons Act 1866 and Supplemental Act 1871?'

Following the revelation that the Blackheath Circus Field had been purchased by the ODA NOGOE2012 has pressed on to uncover more details about the transaction. It turns out that the purchase was actually made by the LDA.

Mrs Mawhood of NOGOE pointed out to the Greenwich Senior Planning Solicitor that the Olympics Act required that purchases of land for the purposes of the Olympics have to be made by a Regional Development Agency, which the ODA is not. The Solicitor has responded that the ODA has got around this problem by requesting the LDA buy the land on its behalf, so the LDA has taken out a short lease from the Crown Estate Commissioners and the Queen.

Dear Mrs Mawhood

The London Development Agency (LDA) is a regional development agency for
the purposes of the London 2012 Act. The LDA was designated as a
development agency for the Greater London Area under Schedule 1 of the
Regional Development Agencies Act 1998. The LDA is acting at the request
of the ODA as set out in s.36(1) in acquiring a short lease of Circus
Field from the Crown Estates owner of this part of the registered common.

The lease is made between Her Majesty the Queen, the Crown Estate
Commissioners and the London Development Agency, and an under lease of
the Circus Field has been made between the LDA and LOCOG by licence to
underlet from the Crown Estate Commissioners.

Regards

Suan White
Senior Planning Solicitor
Greenwich Council

The Olympic Delivery Authority, ODA, has bought the Circus Field at Blackheath to overcome the provision in Section 4 of the Metropolitan Commons Supplemental Act 1871 which bars the Management Board for the heath, now Greenwich Council, from enclosing any part of the Circus Field. This purchase enables the ODA to use Section 36 of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Act 2006 to achieve exactly that result!

Back on 13th August 2009, a Thursday not a Friday so unsure if this was the cause of the mishap, Anthony, London 2012 likes to keep things informal, the External Relations Executive, a kind of 2012 Foreign Office person, in a fit of poorly considered enthusiasm asked a question: 'Who should get the chance to perform? Morris dancers for the traditionalists? Street dancers for the modern?'

What is a favela, a slum or a 100 year old community without services? What happens when the police move in? Gentrification?

By Mike Wells 11th January 2012, edited 29th December 2011Campaigners Against Dow

A recent sponsorship deal has seen the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games accept money from Dow Chemical. Dow will provide a fabric "wrap" which will be placed around London's Olympic stadium.

According to Britain's Guardian newspaper the wrap's purpose is to reduce wind inside the stadium.  But, as the metaphor says ...

Some of the public make a nuisance of themselves saying negative things about your exciting brand - and that's when you have to call in the professionals to manage your message.

Sometimes it's a close shave and the wrong people almost get their annoying complaints onto your blog.

From Labour Behind The Label

As part of the Playfair 2012 campaign we've been lobbying the London Games organisers (LOCOG) to ensure workers making garments and merchandise for the Olympics have their rights respected. And on paper we've had reasonable success. But problems arise when we dig deeper.

One block on the Carpenters Estate

UCL and the London Borough of Newham have today announced plans to explore the establishment of a new campus for UCL in the Olympic borough of Newham

Occupying the Olympics: What can be done? (From @tentcityuni) #occupy2012

by Jennifer Jones
November 21st, 2011 | Published in #Media2012 and the Olympic Games, Activism, Citizen Media, Featured, London2012

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.

Ted Jeory, one of the few journalists to pick up on the radioactive contamination of the London Olympic Park, has reported that London 2012 is seriously concerned at the head of steam building up in India over the deal which allowed Dow to sponsor the Olympic stadium. 'Senior sources', not just 'sources', are reported as saying the deal was a 'mistake' which it seems they are finding it difficult to wriggle out of.

the Black Power Salute: 16th October 1968, screenshot from Democracy Now

Reposted below are both parts of Democracy Now's exclusive interview with John Carlos and Dave Zirin, shedding new light and detail on the people and events around the Mexico 1968 Games, the student massacre, the Black Power Salute, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman, John Carlos, Avery Brundage...

What with the focus on London 2012 we don't hear much about the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. But true to mega event form they are having their own negative impacts on some particularly vulnerable Glasgow residents.

On 27th August supporters of the Save the Accord Centre held a demonstration attended by around 500 people. This will be followed by a Glasgow Games Monitor 2014 Event: Whose Legacy? on 21st October, which will include an introductory talk by Libby Porter and Neil Gray, both from Glasgow University, on the Legacy from Mega Events, discussion with carers and the recently evicted Margaret Jaconelli and film shows.

The Accord Centre carers issued the following statement to accompany their demonstration:

84% of 2000 sports clubs in a survey conducted by the Sport and Recreation Alliance do not expect any benefit from London hosting the Games. 'We are disappointed that 84 per cent of clubs do not see the Olympic and Paralympic Games as an opportunity,' said Chief executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance, Tim Lamb. 'However, this does not come as a surprise. We've been highlighting just how vital legacy is to the future of sports clubs.'

The grim tale of Olympic evictions continues at Sochi. The IOC has praised Sochi’s preparations. Jean-Claude Killy said “We have organised Olympic Games all over the world – Norway, Japan, Italy… But I have never seen anything like what I saw in Sochi. I believe that after the Olympics, Sochi’s former history will seem pre-history. The city will turn into one of the world’s best resorts.”

The Pudding Mill White Elephant just won't lie down. CoeLtd is still hoping to bring the 2017 IAAF World Athletics Championships to London. But it all depends on there being an available stadium. After all it's hard to hold an Athletics Championships without one. LoCoe has his own IAAF ambitions with the next milestone in 2015 when he hopes to succeed to the top job. The loss of a stadium could prove terminal to those ambitions.

Remember all the hype about the Olympic effect on property prices?

The mere fact of being in vaguely the same part of the city as the Olympic stadium was supposed to make a property instantly desirable - and any sign of prices rises were leapt on estate agents and property pundits as evidence of the 'Olympic effect'.

Yet again the Olympics claims as a legacy a project which had been under consideration years before the Games were even thought of. Conniving in this deceit the BBC describes the new DLR connection between Canning Town and Stratford International as a 'new £211m DLR extension connecting Olympic Venues'. BoJo and the ODA's Hugh Sumner are then given the opportunity to claim it as a legacy.

The Bhopal Medical Appeal has issued a statement following the announcement by LOCOG that Dow Chemical are to provide the London Olympic Stadium ‘wrap’. It emphasises that its concern is not the 1984 gas disaster but the contamination of drinking water by chemicals from toxic waste dumps in and around the United Carbide site.

It’s difficult to keep track of the changing size and definition of the much vaunted ‘largest new park, or new urban park, in Europe, or in London, for 200, 150, 100, 20 or even 12 years’. First it was 129 hectares, then it was 110, 102 and now perhaps just 100 hectares. And is a car park parkland? At one time, according to the ODA, it wasn’t but now apparently it is when it is in an Olympic legacy park and so is the field of play of the Main Stadium, even though it is in the middle of a large building.

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
Frederick Douglas, Speech on the 24th anniversary of emancipation, Washington , DC, 1886

A local resident is interviewed by a foreign correspondent while rioting is taking place around the Pembury Estate in Hackney, East London.




At present Sheldon Thomas runs his own organization The Helping Hand Trust which works directly with gang members especially around extreme teenage violence giving intensive support, mentoring and gangs mediation...

Former Indian Olympics hockey players have demanded that Locog withdraw from the deal with Dow Chemicals to provide the wrap around the main stadium. A number of players came from Bhopal and were witnesses to the event or had relatives who died in the mass poisoning. If Lowcog refuses they will call for a boycott of the London Games. Former hockey star Amer Sher Khan said: 'We will ask the government to boycott the games if the LOCOG carries out the deal despite being conveyed the message in this regard.'

Transport for London has said in a Freedom of Information response that it will be enforcing normal speed limits in the London Olympic Road Network (ORN). It has confirmed that the expected time for a journey from Park Lane, where the Olympic ‘family’ will be staying, to Stratford is ‘approximately’ twenty-five minutes, but there will be no exemptions for those using the ORN should they not be able to get to the Games within this time window.

Far from being inspired by the Olympics to take up sport, as predicted by Tessa Jowell back in 2007, people are showing less inclination to participate the closer we get to 2012. The most recent survey by Sport England, released in June, which measured participation between April 2010 and April 2011 showed a decline among women, disabled people, white adults and the poorest Britons. The rate of participation also fell among those under 35 and over 55. The only region to show an improvement was the North-West, while in the South-East, which is where most events are happening, and the East Midlands levels of participation declined.