London 2012 Olympics

Given the recent general 'excitement' of the conclusion of Game of Thrones, it would appear obvious just how well the public has embraced exercise.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/05/olympic-legacy-failure-london-2012-message-millstone

It is, of course, not only a problem with the 'legacy' of the wretched Olympics, but with elite sport in general.

I gather Tessa has now pitched in too...

The world is full of surprises ...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/jul/22/london-2012-was-a-gigantic-waste-of-time-and-money

Can the title of the thread be changed back to "Fuck The Olympics"?

The olympic games have no obligation to provide a legacy and I had a pretty wicked 4 weeks following it, NEXT

they still haven't re-opened the greenway

grrrr arghh

Is the section going south from Stratford High Street still shut?

He does make a strong case that none of this year's many British victories are related to the enormous amount of money thrust into developing sports people in 2004-2012 ahead of the olympics (when the current crop of stars would have been ~10-25 and heavily engaged with youth sports programmes.)

Oh, no, he just dismisses it out of hand as a possibility. Good journalism there.

I have no idea what the case is there either way, as I don't care much about elite sport--I posted it because I remember well the claims that funding the Olympics would increase participation in sport and boost public health generally. I didn't believe it then and I wouldn't believe it now if someone made a similar claim about another public wastefest draining public money.

I struggle to understand why legacy is still pushed/sold/seen as something that only happens after an event?

From working in a Commonwealth Games venue I know that we were waaaay busier before the games than after (I dunno what the script was with Olympic venues being open to the public before the games down there?). And understandably so, there was probably 3 years and 50 weeks of run up to the games up here, London was probably the same with the 'lympics.

Within days of these things finishing though people are just thinking about getting back to normal life.

I have no idea what effect (if any) pre games participation had on public health but there definitely was participation.

Nope, the only bit that I know that's shut is the other side of this High Street up to Loop Road / View Tube Cafe

Cheers. I'm not sure they'll ever open up the bit on the other side, probably stick some flats on it, like the rest of that road.

Yeah and the rest of the park... I got a consultation leaflet through not too long ago about building some uni related stuff basically on the remaining open space in the south of the park.

The biggest fuck up IMO is that bridge over by the Olympic village. Why the hell did they build a temporary bridge there - only to replace 4 years later with a 'permanent' one??

It's mostly storage at the moment from what I can see, and a strip of allotments.

A Planning Application has been made for a large concrete plant the other side of the river from there. Lovely.

Here's a petition against it

I struggle to understand why legacy is still pushed/sold/seen as something that only happens after an event?

Well, it's used as part of the justification for spending large sums of public money on an unaccountable kleptocracy that tours the world and bleeds countries dry for a few weeks' spectacle and a lot of empty promises. Part of the criticism of that has always been of the white elephants that are created, so 'legacy' is used to assuage fears that the arenas and other facilities will be used. Needless to say, the 'legacy' is always rather underwhelming, as the concentration of facilities simply makes no sense, even in a place like London (where most of them were, of course, taken down and some transported elsewhere), and it would always have been more effective to invest the money in grassroots sport.

I think they should imitate what the ancient Greeks did and have four venues with permanent facilities, one on each major continent, and hold athletic games in each every four years, including in it the athletic world championships. You could still have 'the Olympics' as something special among those four, but it would do everyone a lot of good if they stopped travelling the world.

Funny that, whenever Sadiq Khan investigates the finances of anything done under Boris Johnson these days, it turns out to be a total mess.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/nov/01/sadiq-khan-mayor-london-west-ham-stadium-inquiry

Who would have thought? (Only everybody who was paying attention at the time.)

I like the seats going from £300k to £8m. That's an impressive amount of 'issue'.

Edit: From £14.29 per seat to £380.95

It's a standard way of getting the building contracts.

Nearly all tenders are won by the cheapest bidder, then once you win you go bust. But that's just a company going bust, you can set up another and save the project for the real profit-making bid using a new company. At which point the entity paying doesn't have a lot of choice in the matter.

It's for this reason that Wandsworth Council were brilliant with regards to the power station chimney restoration. They used planning law to prohibit work on all four chimneys simultaneously and this meant that the company doing this couldn't easily go bust after winning the contract and demolishing them... they had to actually demolish one and fully restore it to get paid and then proceed, leaving the big money to roll in later but receiving enough funds to keep going after the first chimney. Slowing the whole process down prevented the typical smash and grab.

The West Ham fans aren't happy either, I know the recent trouble was bad but the handover's been sloppily done. WH took 140 stewards with them, these people knew the fans and could nip trouble in the bud. The stewards at the Olympic Stadium are brand new and a bit heavy-handed, reports of fans yelling "You need your eyesight checked ref, you silly sausage!" and getting turfed out. Most of those 140 stewards from Upton Park have resigned now.

It's funny how every community activist predicted this before the Olympics, but even more funnily enough wasn't listened to. And Saffron Woodcraft is a great name.

Urban regeneration in east London has failed to stem inequality and residents feel more insecure than ever about their livelihoods, according to a new report.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/urban-regeneration-east-london-poorer-communities-b1188262.html