International Perspective & News On London 2012 [Archive]

jerseyboi

May 14th, 2009, 11:03 AM

Lend Lease stays wary on Games (Australia)

LEND LEASE has made it clear it will only have a limited exposure to construction of the athletes' village for the 2012 Olympics in London.

Details of the funding requirements for the Games are due to be released in Britain this week, with Lend Lease understood to be offering to remain as a fee-based contractor or a limited equity player, with a maximum exposure mooted to be up to £150 million ($298 million).

Lend Lease is undertaking work on the site on a job-by-job basis and remains cautious in committing cash until the London Olympic Development Authority - which is run by the former Lend Lease chief executive David Higgins - confirms funding requirements.

Frank Lowy's Westfield is building a shopping centre at Stratford, adjacent to the planned athletes' village.

Speaking yesterday at an "investor strategy day", Lend Lease's chief executive, Steve McCann, said work for the 2012 Olympics was on time and on budget.

He told investors Lend Lease would continue to deliver on its integrated model across its geographical businesses.

Mr McCann also announced that the group had been selected by the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland as preferred developer for Brisbane's Ekka Showgrounds, and for part of the the site as an inner-city mixed-use development. The project is to be staggered over the next 15 years and has a projected value of about $2.5 billion.

"There is a significant downturn in UK and US residential markets, part of the challenging conditions being faced in all of the company's markets," Mr McCann said. "Global property values have slumped amid a widening global recession and as the credit crisis curbs lending. Asset prices may face further declines.

"We will continue to focus on the government infrastructure through Bovis as well as private to public partnership deals."

Mr McCann confirmed the report he issued on Monday that net operating profit after tax would total about $300 million for the year ending June 30, down from a previous forecast of $380 million to $400 million, and said he would not sell assets at "sub-optimal values".

Lend Lease has no material debt maturities until November next year, when the British debt contract expires. Management has indicated that it would seek to refinance this facility rather than using cash to pay it down.

Lend Lease's update on the athletes' village project follows comments from the British Government in February that stadium costs for the 2012 Games had risen 17 per cent, pushed higher by a lack of competitive bids and design changes. The cost of building the venues, including the main stadium, is forecast to be £1.37 billion, compared with a 2007 estimate of £1.17 billion.

http://business.smh.com.au/business/lend-lease-stays-wary-on-games-20090513-b3d2.html

jerseyboi

June 11th, 2009, 10:49 AM

London drumming up projects for 2012 Olympics

San Francisco Chronicle

75,000 business opportunities. That's the number waiting to be snapped up courtesy of the 2012 London Olympics. This and other mouthwatering lures were thrown out to a couple of dozen Bay Area clean tech executives at a breakfast gathering in San Francisco Wednesday. It was the first stop of a "North America Road Show" put on by Think London and the UK Trade & Investment agency, aimed at stoking U.S. business interest in London's megabillion showcase.

Going with the times, British officials, including the London Olympics head of sustainability, pitched it not only as the first ever green games but also as the centerpiece of a massive, green-oriented urban regeneration project, which in turn is supposed to help reduce the capital's carbon footprint by 20 million tons by 2025. There are 600 projects in development or on the drawing board. Accent on retrofitting, electric vehicles and industrial recycling. Projected budget - $30 billion.

That's one reason why the Brits are over here. "We don't have $30 billion," said Padmesh Shukla, finance chief of the Mayor of London's office. "Much of this needs to be privately produced and financed." The United Kingdom is getting plenty of private investment in green tech, but, noted Janet Coyle, director of Think London's Olympics project, "a very small amount comes from California." Given a buffet table groaning with opportunities, "We'd like to see more interest from California companies. We'd be delighted to make introductions."

Check out the opportunities for yourself at www.london2012.com/business. More on Think London, which has a San Francisco office, at www.thinklondon.com.

jerseyboi

June 14th, 2009, 10:08 AM

Jack the Ripper
wohnt nicht mehr hier

Jack the Ripper lives no longer here, now comes the IOC.

from Germany

The Olympic Games 2012 endanger the last city districts with generate inexpensive housing in Lon*don, the once infamous East end should now wer***den upgraded. For people, the rent no longer can afford, there are hardly alternatives: too few social housing are built because the Finanz**krise.

of Martin Reeh

DruckenAt the highest point of the road from Stratford to Leyton, where a bridge crosses the Eisenbahn*strecke eastwards, sticks a picture of Johnny Rottenbach on a billboard. The singer the Sex Pistols nourishes a cow in the Middle a sattgrünen, tear far on the eyes and praise the virtues of Countrylife-butter-remains of a promotion campaign, the coating fat company earned an increase of 85 percent. Right the drag is grey hold Reihenhaussiedlungen along. Links are towers behind high walls cranes, huge Sandhaufen and the concrete Gerippe of new buildings in the body - one the largest construction sites in Europe. Here the summer Olympics will begin in three years.

One of the largest construction sites of Europe: the Olympic Stadium in construction (Foto:_Martin_Reeh) welcome in London, perhaps unbekann*testen city of future sporting major events. While from South Africa (Cup 2010) and Ukraine (Football Championship 2012) messages over slow stadium expansion or crime not tear, while Vancouver (Winterolympiade 2010) and Sochi (Winterolympiade 2014) headlines because of the protests of the indigenous peoples, hears in German media little from London. « ZDF sent in August of last year in » aspects "a short contribution, at the usual nachtschlafenen time. » And also in London, along the fence to the future Olympic site is Rottens butter poster the only thing discreetly indicates that in the UK capital times protest has been.

This would the Olympic plans be capable of raising größe*re controversy. London has content in sei**ner application not to advertise with excellent cancer for son*dern ver*kauft the games as social urbanistic project. The East end, London einstiges Armen*haus with a high proportion of immigrants mainly from South Asia and comparatively cheap Mie*ten should be upgraded. « Ken Living*stone, conquered the Londo*ner City Hall as independent linker in 2000 and as » red Ken "known is, has his biographers An*drew Hos*ken according personally ensure that the games in London East come. In a Ge*spräch with the British Olympic Association, which temporarily favored the West of the city to the Wembley Stadium as Austra*gungs*ort, Living*stone its support of the stadium construction in the Os*ten dependent made. "The main Angelegen*heit of the games was her » heritage", to Living*stone.

"Since you can before promotional material of the Olympic Planner, where from the » heritage « save of the games is hardly. » It is the talk of new homes, schools and parks, better transport connections and jobs. Main austragung area of the games is the lower Lea Valley, formerly especially used as industrial area between the districts Hackney and Tower Hamlets in the West and Newham in the East.

Already 2007, Centre on housing rights and Evictions in Geneva, however, before rapidly rising rents and evictions of jet*zigen inhabitants due to the Olympic Games had warned to the NGOs. In Hackney about increased the property prices after the announcement of the Olympic decision 21 percent and thus clearly stär*ker as the London average. And so ugly the area in Stratford, in the Wes*ten of future Olympia*stadions equal behind the current site is a true Traumland for Gentrifizierer.

The LEA is not much larger than a channel that driving on the houseboats and meanders fun in the South, to finally lead near the Docklands into the River Thames. The first new offices and homes along the banks are already built.

Now the apartment prices in the London East thanks to the financial crisis as elsewhere in the UK but again fell. However, if real estate companies unverdrossen on an Olympic boom 2012 markets reasonably recovered have should. Also the conservative mayor Boris Johnson, the 2008 won the choice against Livingstone, sticks of the Olympic his predecessor.

sitting in the narrow, betonierten backyard of a Reihen*hauses in Tower Hamlets Julian *Cheyne. Start 60 graumelierter Bart, glasses. Until two years ago, the former Labour Member of the Clays lane in Stratford - lived where now excavators umpflügen the area and establish the athlete village. The Sozialwohnung settlement for 450 tenants was demolished, the people are now across the whole city. » My cat have I weggegeben, would here no drain more had ", says Cheyne. But more annoyed him that the cohesion of the people at the Clays lane was destroyed by the move. The London Development Agency (LDA) have started too late together replacement apartments offer them, although in a survey the most people a common move favour had. » The only practicable proposal was then a House directly along the highway. " It have rejected this as well as other, now is would the former inhabitants only every few weeks.

Not picturesque enough for tourists: the market in Dalston (Foto:_Martin_Reeh) Cheyne has is his move to moved, to annoy the Olympic Scheduler with small Nadelstichen, pious around with the LDA about the release of information about the price for Clays lane or write letters to the gigantic shopping centre, an investor in Stratford in addition to the Olympic site plans: the shopping mall with 300 shops should subtract from the West London purchasing power.

Most importantly is Cheyne games monitor ak*tiv, a group protests since 2004 against the games. » The impetus came from German Haus*besetzern in London ", says Cheynes partner Carolyn Smith. » 50 Zu*hörer had arrived at the first meeting, the second came just 30. " Then, you have losgelegt at that time under the name NoLondon 2012. The Group mailed a dossier on the harmful Auswir*kungen to the IOC members, held a well attended press conference and a demonstration with 100 participants. » Environment or Iraq-attracts always ", says Smith. But urban development or civil rights? No chance.

"As then the IOC in July 2005 London instead of favorite Madrid the gave the shock under the activists had been large: » Ei*ne women is weggezogen even from London", says Smith. Now that the group confined to document the impact of the games on its website: the evictions of tenants from their homes and Roma of their Stell*plätzen, the destruction of office buildings and public sports grounds, the loss of an allotments system and other environmental destruction.

« Smith's main concern applies the internal security, about the drones, during the games London from the air to monitor and the inner nature of the British company, the like with the » model Deutsch*land "compares the 1970s: high compliance pressure, almost no opposition." And what about the gentrification? » Which takes place anyway, with or without games ", believes it.

Then leads Smith, mid-40, weather resistant clothing, through their residence Dalston, a district of Hackney to local administration has specially veröffent*licht a master plan to upgrade. In addition to Bahngleisen listen pneumatic hammers. The first underground to Hackney is reaching bis*her only over buses is under construction and to join the district to the city. New flats arise in high-rise buildings and old factories. In the Dalston lane is a ruin - one nine houses in the district on speculation grounds, mysterious fires victim to have fallen in recent years. For the 2002 of the District of privatized House was previously the tear-off approval been denied.

Traumland for Gentrifizierer: the LEA River on the Ölympiabauzaun (Foto:_Martin_Reeh) And finally is because the market, on which the butcher abgehackte cow legs in the dozen vertically stacked have and stroll through the ärmlich dressed people with plastic bags. A market for local use, not picturesque enough for tourists. » The District Administration is against the traders, by current revocation ", says Carolyn Smith. Drinking in public has the authority by a large poster at the entrance of the market prohibit let.

local markets as target? In the neighbouring district Newham, just a similar conflict end seems to be gone. « ‘ There had of labour Mayor Robin Wales the Queen ' s market targeting - the » blot ", as he him called. A luxury new building with 350 Wohnun*gen should arise instead used primarily by migrants market, including a new market. A citizens ' initiative feared rising rents, the current level owners could no longer afford. Now has precisely the new London Mayor plans stopped: he was not appropriate the Um*gebung, was the 96 metre high planned home.

"With the revaluation of East end would a Ent*wicklung London end, the after World War first the West of the city registered, which the sociologist blue glass, a German Jewish Emigrantin, 1963 to influence the to bulky in the concept » gentrification"(named after the English name) » gentry « induced (for the lower nobility): » many Arbeiterviertel London are one after another the lower and upper Mittelklassen conquered by been. Once started this process of gentrification an area, he quickly progressing, until all or almost all ur*sprünglichen inhabitants have been displaced and has changed the entire social character of the quarter. "

http://i44.tinypic.com/994dbm.jpg

New flats should arise here: Leerstehende speculation houses in Dalston (Foto:_Martin_Reeh) Chelsea Notting Hill, Camden Town and Primrose Hill until after Islington is so since the fifties gradually the whole London West gentrifiziert been before the wave began to überzuschwappen in the 1990s in the East or the situated in the South, Brixton. In Notting Hill, formerly a centre of poor black immigrants, offered the local agent currently for example, a 52-Quadrat*meter apartment in the popular Blenheim Crescent for 550 pound per week, sees itself.

Still missing in the East end but, sees it once the Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets from in to the earlier old Truman Brewery a bar area arose, still that making such area for the Mittelschichten attractive: an extensive network of cafes, restaurants and exhibition locations. The Coffeeshop chains such as Costa, Nero, Pret and Starbucks, which exceed the London city with its branches have bis*lang only until the Metro station Aldgate East come near Brick Lane, as da*hinter start a no go area.

Michael Edwards, Professor at the University College London, and one of the harshest critics of the London urban development policy has visited lectures as student at blue glass. Why happened years criticism of gentrification promote big projects such as Olympic without impact? » In the Government it gives out a strong belief in a Trickle-down effect, that almost every project will have a positive effect for the poor ", says Edwards. Livingstone have on the modernization of public transport in London excellent done around through improved cycle times and free transport for persons over 60. » But Olympic and other projects he has is admitted by on a faustischen Pact with the financial sector. " And then he explains the complicated London housing system. This is a virtually unregulated market - why shooting the quickly up - and two systems of genann*ten to affordable housing (affordable housing) for those who cannot afford the required rental. In the social housing there partly years latency and criteria that take account of the income, but allein*erziehende or prefer people with a bad health. In addition the intercultural intermediate housing, whose financing is so expensive that not the poorest benefit but workers in the public sector, which in the Centre kept to.

Livingstone ceded the urgently needed because of London population growth building of new apartments largely the private sector, investors but wanted to commit to build 50 percent of housing for affordable housing. In other words, for the customer in the normal rents got free if you cofinance the other part.

This system was now failed, says Edwards. Investors games with no longer given the financial crisis. Either they demand to reduce the share of social housing or not. So, the athlete village in Stratford now entirely on the public must be funded lack investors. The cost of £ 1.1 billion to partially come through the later sale of apartments. So could precisely the real estate crisis gentrification through the Olympic Games encourage.

» After the old system because the financial crisis, collapsed it would now actually possible a debate about the home financing alternatives ", says Edwards. » But I am not very optimistic. "

As would not currently appear the first article in the travel parts of the newspapers anprei*sen London East as new tourist destination. » Despite Graffitis and dilapidated corners - the East end is a visit worth before it will forever change ", says et*wa the Sunday Mail. Since the days of Jack the Ripper have the with an image problem fought, it soon, thanks to Olympia, past.

"At the Ausfallstraßen of Tower Hamlets has the management of district before recently new Schil*der hanging let: » did know that the crime in Tower Hamlets fallen last year ten percent?". Jack the Ripper lives no longer here, now comes the IOC.

tigerman

June 15th, 2009, 07:56 PM

^^
Sorry but I cant read pidgeon english or pidgeon german for that matter! :nuts:

jerseyboi

June 15th, 2009, 09:32 PM

^^sorry about that, but thinks you get the main comment about
the article at the end!with the last line........

did'nt translate very well!!

EnglishKevin

June 16th, 2009, 11:29 AM

PMSL !

jerseyboi

June 28th, 2009, 12:04 PM

A dose of culture for overseas media at London 2012
28 June 2009

From Oz

Overseas media covering the 2012 Olympics will be housed in hotels in downtown London instead of purpose built media “villages” like they had in Beijing.

The five thousand journalists and photographers will stay in hotels in Bloomsbury a cultural part of the city close to the British Museum, Soho theatre district and the Covent Garden Opera House.

Covent Garden is also home to one of London’s Walkabout Clubs, one of the few venues showing this week’s State of Origin Rugby League clash live on television. It is sure to be popular with Australian media and athletes keen to watch the AFL and Rugby during the Games period.

“We are creating a press hub in the heart of London so they can experience the culture and vibe of the city” a spokesperson for the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) said.

“Transport will be a challenge but we have twelve million transport journeys in London each day and our system will cope”.

Special buses will be provided for media which will run on lanes designated for Olympic vehicles only.

A new rail service on London’s Underground called the “Javelin” will get the media and the public attending the Games from Kings Cross/St Pancras Station to the Olympic Park at Stratford in just seven minutes.

Journalists attending the first World Press Briefing in London this week quizzed LOCOG about security following the horrific bombings on the London Underground in 2005. They were assured the British Government has security measures in place to protect people attending the Games.

“The Home Office has set up a dedicated team to handle security on trains and buses” LOCOG’s transport expert told the conference.

“We continue to work with the security authorities” he said. He was confident there would be no strikes by public transport unions during the Olympics.

“We have signed a principle of co-operation with the unions to avoid strikes” he said.” Besides all the drivers are really keen to see the events”.

Mike Tancred

miguelon

July 1st, 2009, 09:10 AM

The London games will have the unique oportunity to revolutionize the summer games, just like Germany did with the 2006 World Cup, and Germany did it no with the most impresive or largest stadiums, but with the mass participation of the fans, interactive activities, a lot of support for all the teams. a good time zone, huge transit infraestructure already in place.

Vanguard

July 1st, 2009, 09:33 AM

jerseyboi

January 20th, 2010, 03:45 PM

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/london-2012/news/newsid=26785.html

from Canada today.

The stadiums that will play host to gold medal-winning performances at the 2012 Olympic Games are fast taking shape in a once rundown area of east London.

Bulldozers roar and forests of cranes dot the landscape as orange warning lights flash - the site is a little boy's dream come to life, stretching as far as the naked eye can see.

The main stadium, with its distinctive crossed white girders, is unmistakeable at the edge of the development - less spectacular than the Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but imposing all the same.

The other striking building dominating the skyline is the Aquatics Centre, designed by Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, its half-completed roof resembling a curled leaf.

In the distance, the first of 11 apartment blocks is nearing completion in the Olympic Village, which will house 23,000 athletes and officials during the Games.

David Higgins, an Australian recruited as chief executive of the Olympic Development Authority because of his experience of building venues for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, is satisfied with the progress.

"We are well into the structure now on all the major venues and the village and media centre and in a year's time the structure will be finished on virtually all those projects," he said.

"You can see a lot of it coming out of the ground now as well as the big shopping centre at the middle of the site."

The site's workforce will mushroom by 4,000 to 11,000 this year, as the transformation of an area once covered with largely dilapidated warehouses and car repair workshops accelerates.

And the once sceptical local population appears to be coming round to the idea of playing host to the Olympic circus - recent surveys have shown support running at around 80 percent.

Julianne Marriott, a tourist guide, said the interest in visiting the site was increasing all the time.

"We are starting to see more people from abroad now, with people coming from other European countries but also from Russia because they are hosting the (2014 Winter) Olympics and from Rio," which is organising the 2016 Games.

"But most of all it's just the great British taxpayers who want to find out what is happening here, what our money's going on and what is going to happen after the Olympics," she said.

The key to securing the support of local people has been promises that they will be left with more than just a white elephant once the Olympic flame is extinguished in two-and-a-half years' time.

Understandably, people want to know what the long-term benefits will be of a project with an overall budget of over eight billion pounds (nine billion euros, 13 billion dollars).

So a separate company has been created to manage the "legacy" of the Olympic Park, with London keen to show it has learned from the mistakes made by host cities in the past.

Many of the facilities for the 2004 Athens Games are rusting away and the Bird's Nest is still seeking a post-Games role in Beijing - the under-used stadium was recently filled with fake snow to become a "winter wonderland".

But organizers say the London site has been designed so it can become a self-contained city capable of hosting a thriving community once the Games are over.

An unusual feature compared to other Olympics is that the stadium's 80,000 capacity will be shrunk to around 25,000 after the Games, by dismantling the upper tiers.

Higgins is cautious about the thorny issue of the legacy - it is not his organisation's responsibility - but as he gazes across London from his office in the Canary Wharf financial district he can see the long-term potential.

"The thing that makes this project so unique and the difference for example from Sydney is that this site is a mile from Canary Wharf, it is two miles from the City of London, it has nine major railway lines intersecting on the site, it's going to be a new city.

"That will bring jobs, opportunities and it'll be a place that people want to live in because of the infrastructure investments and the parks."

Importantly, the "guts" of a new city - the power stations, a sewage system and the open spaces - are being constructed now, rather than after development occurs, Higgins points out.

"I think it is all incredibly exciting," said Marriott. "It is going to be a brilliant place, both during and after the Games."

jerseyboi

January 30th, 2010, 03:49 PM

Brazilians say London 2012 organizers are their 'inspiration' for 2016 Games

See>

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5j2auz34RKWkPdWpsV2pOGdDW7zVA

kerouac1848

January 30th, 2010, 04:38 PM

As LA changed the Olympics by showing you can make a profit, and Barcelona took it up another level by transforming a city through regeneration (and marketing and PR), so I think London could be the new milestone by illustrating that the Games can be sustainable afterwards. Every host it seems has issues with venue uses after the games and avoiding the dreaded 'white elephant' label. In fact, you get the feeling that it was accepted this would be the case, and the benefits of being the next 'Barcelona' would out weigh the costs in the long-run (peaking with the huge building programme at Beijing). With a mixture of temporary arenas, redesigned permanent ones (Olympic Stadium) and a host of solid mix-use venues (Excel, O2, etc), London might just change that notion. Afterwards, all Games could be based on sustainably with temporary arenas the norm. In a sense, this is already happening with regards to Rio. They aren't going to be build a new Olympic stadium, instead upgrading an athletics venue which has a long lease with a football club (Botafogo) from 45,000 to (I think) 60,000. Many other venues already exist although I don't know if Rio has anything like the Excel centre or even Earls Court.
Either way, we could look back at London as another milestone to rank alongside LA and Barcelona.

jerseyboi

February 1st, 2010, 11:04 AM

:shocked: http://www.insidethegames.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8902:rio-2016-hires-tony-blair-as-paid-consultant&catid=77:summer-olympics-2016-news&Itemid=90

Rio 2016 hires Tony Blair as paid consultant

February 1 - Former Prime Minister Tony Blair (pictured) has been hired as a paid consultant by the organisers of the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro to give them advice on preparing for the Games, it has been revealed.

jerseyboi

March 1st, 2010, 08:24 PM

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0301/mcaleesem.html

Persident McAleese visits London 2012 site

During a visit to London's 2012 Olympic site, President Mary McAleese said that the project was providing many opportunities for the Irish construction sector and that it was up to the Irish to use them and use them well.

jerseyboi

March 3rd, 2010, 09:24 AM

Canada >

Eyes turn to "value for money" London 2012

http://ca.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idCATRE62202020100303?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

elskapel

March 16th, 2010, 07:12 PM

I was hanging around the view tube on the greenway this lunch time and was asked if i could be interviewed for Bejing tv. The main focus of the questions was rather predictably the comparison between the London stadium and the Beijing one and whether I thought the London one was any good. I gave a diplomatic reply and said that they were different beasts and that the Beijing one had an artist collaberating and the London had a simple beauty because you could see how it worked just by looking at it. They seemed happy but it always seems to be the case that you think of better things to say afterwards, i wish i'd mentioned the surroundings by comparison which in my opinion are far superior in london

PeteVincent82

March 17th, 2010, 09:16 PM

you should have mentioned about the birds nest being built usuing slave labor

jerseyboi

March 22nd, 2010, 05:58 PM

full article>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/22/AR2010032201470.html

UK: London 2012 Olympics pose greatest terror risk

By DAVID STRINGER
The Associated Press
Monday, March 22, 2010; 11:33 AM

LONDON -- An attack on London during the 2012 Olympic Games poses a major security threat to Britain, the government said Monday in its latest assessment of risks from terrorism.

Ministers also acknowledged growing concerns over an attack using chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, and warned that al-Qaida affiliates in east Africa and Saudi Arabia are gaining strength.

Publishing an annual report on Britain's counterterrorism strategy, Britain's Home Office acknowledged that the 2012 summer Olympics pose an acute security challenge.

"The government is working on the assumption that the greatest threat to the games is international terrorism and that the threat in 2012 will be high," the document stated.

jdjones

March 25th, 2010, 01:45 PM

From the US coverage of the Vancouver closing ceremony
N0Hw0bQ4Y1U

Can we get an american to do the opening and closing ceremonies, they make the UK sound better than we possibly could! ;-p

Its AlL gUUd

March 25th, 2010, 10:59 PM

yeah thats a great vid, looks gets you excited and they say all the right things. but don't forget the videos we used for the bid process, they were some of the best. Very emotional and exciting.

jerseyboi

August 8th, 2010, 03:53 PM

Billions are being spent on the 2012 Olympics in an effort to outdo Sydney 2000

SEB Coe admits he doesn't always get it right. The man charged with trying to make London's 2012 Olympics a bigger success than Sydney's "best ever" Games remembers the mistakes he made when working at the 2000 Olympics for Channel 7.

After another late-night session at the athletics, Coe dragged himself and his bags into the back seat of a waiting car and asked to be taken back to his hotel. The amused driver replied, "You know this is a police car, mate?"

As head of the London Olympic bid in 2005, Coe beat the favourite, Paris, to win the race to host the next Games, from July 27 to August 12, 2012.

Now chairman of the London Organising Committee, Coe welcomed about 300 Olympic delegates from 30 countries to judge London's preparations at a world press briefing in the British capital this week.

Coe is an Olympics expert who has attended the Games since winning two gold medals as an athlete in the 1500m in the Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984) Olympics. It is also third time lucky for London, which will become the first city to stage a modern Olympics trifecta: in 1908, 1948 and 2012.

While every host city wants to beat the last, Coe agrees that despite the romance of the Athens Olympics in 2004 and the precision of Beijing in 2008, Sydney remains the high-water mark for Games success.

"Sydney had everything, it had great sport, a party atmosphere, a nation that was celebrating its own birthday party, it was profound and funny and poignant," Coe says.

"We will do everything we can but I tend to try not to think about beating Sydney.

"If I can capture some of that Sydney magic in London, we will be doing pretty well."

To try to reproduce Sydney's magic, London is spending pound stg. 9 billion ($15.6bn) on infrastructure, split between new venues, regeneration and contingency. Another pound stg. 2bn will be used to stage the Games and Coe boasts 75 per cent has already been raised, with the most of the remainder coming from ticket sales.

Coe says the pound stg. 11bn Olympic bill is what's left after pound stg. 27m was shaved off the Olympic budget by the new British Conservative-led coalition government, which won power with a promise to bring the country back from the economic brink.

Coe is close to the new government, given he was a Conservative MP from 1992 to 1997 and then served as chief of staff to former Tory leader William Hague, and he has absorbed the financial haircut.

"As one of the largest global financial markets in the world, London was hard hit by the financial crisis," Coe says. "But all the independent assessments say that over the course of the Olympic project [2005-12] the Games could account for between 5 per cent and 7 per cent of London's [gross domestic product] over that seven years."

Australian International Olympic Committee delegate Kevan Gosper, who is chairman of the IOC press commission, believes London will go close to beating Sydney in two years' time when a worldwide audience of four billion will judge for itself whether London has trumped Sydney. "With two years to go London is the best prepared Games I have seen," Gosper said at the world press briefing.

"It has been a very smooth operation. They have an excellent organising team. Seb knows his way around government and finance.

"They have also had a smooth run with the English press, which is a good benchmark.

"And the people of London are behind it."

The 2012 Olympics is also proving a welcome economic stimulus for the depressed British economy and the capital is littered with cranes, building sites and road and rail works as about pound stg. 6bn worth of construction is rolled out.

Coe says the whole country is benefiting, with 50 per cent of Olympic contracts being awarded outside London. "When we were bidding in 2005 I don't think we understood how economically important this project would be," Coe says. "We hit 2008 and the economic markets collapsed. But we will be able to deliver this project despite the testing economic times."

Australian companies have also scored, with Austrade confirming that more than 20 Australian businesses have secured about $250m in contracts for the London 2012 Olympics. Colin Biggs, Austrade's London-based senior business development manager, says contracts have been won by Australian infrastructure companies, architects, procurement specialists, security trainers and sports managers.

Nowhere is the construction more intense than in east London, a historically poor, depressed and ugly area that has festered with social disadvantage for centuries.

Just as the 2000 Olympics transformed Sydney's Homebush area 20km west of the city from a wasteland into a business and event centre, so too is the 2012 Olympics rejuvenating east London.

"We are building a new city within an old city," explains Coe.

Stratford in east London will be the epicentre of the London Games and the site of a new 2.5sq km Olympic Park, which includes a main stadium, an innovative wave roof Aquatic Centre, velodrome, press centre and athletes village.

British government and sporting chiefs point to Olympic Park as London's Games legacy.

"If you get on the underground [train] and travel seven stops from Westminster in the parliament district to Stratford in the heart of Olympic Park, you would lose a year in life expectancy at every stop," Coe says.

"This area is among the poorest of the poor. We will be leaving behind a legacy of some 3000 homes, a [pound stg. 1.3bn Westfield] shopping centre, transport links and a healthcare centre.

"There are about 10,500 people working on Olympic Park and 20 per cent of the workforce is resident of this area."

Being a regular visitor to Australia, Coe claims Melbourne as his second home and says that until now London could only have dreamed of having Melbourne's glut of sporting facilities, including Olympic Park, the Telstra Dome, MCG and the tennis centre. "London has been limping along with one Olympic-size swimming pool," he says. "We now have an aquatic centre with two 50m pools and diving facilities. They are facilities London should have had a long time ago."

Gosper says the weak point in London's plan will be transport and moving millions of locals and visitors across a city that suffers from endemic gridlock and home-grown terrorism.

The day after London won the right to host the Games, in July 2005, four home-grown terrorists bombed London's transport system, killing 52 people.

Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred says London's transport is his biggest concern during the Games. He is particularly worried about the safety of Australia's team of 430-450 athletes, who will be using public transport to enjoy the Olympic city after they have competed.

"What happened in 2005 should be in the front of everyone's mind," Tancred says. "Protecting people on the underground is their challenge."

Coe acknowledges transport is a complex problem, compounded further by the need for terrorism-proof security, funded by a pound stg. 600m police and security budget.

Director of Games security Ian Johnston says the security alert for the Olympics will be set on the second-highest level: severe. Johnston admits that striking the balance between public safety and freedom will be tough and that transport is an acknowledged soft target.

"Transport will call for more creative thought than most previous Olympic cities have had to bring to the table," Coe says. "We need to meld our thinking and make sure it works. We'll get there. It will not be business as usual."

In addition to security, the London Games' transport plan includes a new high-speed bullet train running from central London to Olympic Park, ribbons of bridges, an alpine-style cable car spanning the Thames, light rail extensions and underground line upgrades.

But Coe says London's public works and new venues will not be on the same scale as the elephantine structures that emerged in the Chinese capital for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A distinguishing feature of the 2012 Games will be the use of famous London landmarks as Games venues, including Wimbledon for tennis and Lord's for archery.

"We will not be the elephant Olympics and we will not be the white elephant Olympics," Coe insists. "We will not see the likes of Beijing again, the venues were jaw-dropping.

"We will not be trying to replicate Beijing. But I am happy to magpie the best from the best.

"From Sydney I want the party atmosphere, the volunteers and a city that came alive. I want the spirit and the regeneration of the city from Barcelona [1992]. I want the theatre and drama of Athens [2004] and the precision and eye for detail of Beijing. If I can capture all those elements in London, I will have done a good job."

Coe declines to predict whether it will be enough to steal Sydney's "best ever" crown. Nor is he game to predict whether Britain will once again beat Australia on the medal table, as the mother country did in Beijing, winning 47 medals overall to finish fourth, ahead of Australia's 46-medal total in fifth place.

"I know enough about Australians to know you don't much like losing," Coe says.

Louise Evans, The Australian's managing editor, has covered four Olympic Games.

Cat man do

August 8th, 2010, 08:34 PM

Can we get an american to do the opening and closing ceremonies, they make the UK sound better than we possibly could! ;-p
Yes but as long they don't keep referring to 'London, England'. That really narks me. We don't refer to 'New York, America'. Unless its for the average American that perhap's doesn't know that London is in England?

Madman

August 8th, 2010, 11:17 PM

Yes but as long they don't keep referring to 'London, England'. That really narks me. We don't refer to 'New York, America'. Unless its for the average American that perhap's doesn't know that London is in England?

To be fair, they do it to themselves as well. I've seen many a trashy US drama where they've done Miami, FL or Chicago, IL for instance. It must just be a cultural trait they carry through to other countries.

maddderz

August 8th, 2010, 11:51 PM

Yeah the guy who does Man Vs. Food does it sometimes lol

london lad

August 9th, 2010, 12:56 PM

Canadian article here. Loving the West Ham Soccer franchise lol ;

-- - - - - - - -- - - -
http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article1666398.html
London takes gamble on Olympics to revitalize community

Eric Reguly

Stratford City’s main street, in East London, is a seedy mess.

Many storefronts are boarded up, though Workplace, the local employment office, is doing a thriving business trying to find work for the hopelessly unemployed. Some of the ugliest modern apartment blocks ever designed line the streets, interspersed with handsome but run down old buildings, like the Stratford town hall, shabby fast food joints and discount shops.

The poverty is made all the more jarring by geography. Just to the west lies a pocket of wealth – the shiny towers of Canary Wharf, stuffed with investment banks, BMWs and men in Brioni suits. Stratford City could be on a different planet.

But turn the corner, and there it is – Europe’s biggest urban mall. Called Westfield Stratford City, the £1.45-billion, U.S.-style monument to shopping is nearing completion and will cover 1.9 million square feet. That’s just the start, for the mall will be the gateway to the 2012 Olympic Games. The Olympic stadium, with 80,000 seats, is 90 per cent finished. The other structures, from the Calgary Saddledome-style velodrome to the aquatic centre, which looks like a great white stingray, are going up quickly. With 23 months to go before the opening ceremonies, the site’s 10,000 workers are at the peak of what is known as “the big build.”

A lot has changed since London won the Olympics five years ago, when the city was Europe’s premier boomtown. The 2008 financial collapse saw the British government take part or full ownership of at least three big banks while an estimated 133,000 jobs in banking, investment banking and asset management disappeared during the height of the financial crisis. Then came the recession and, with the election of David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in May, a brutal austerity program to prevent the country from following Greece down the economic toilet.

Which leads to the question: Can London afford £9.3-billion for the Games and will the investment revitalize perennially depressed East London?

The street-level views from Stratford City vary considerably.

Victoria Ezeani, a 34-year-old law school graduate of Nigerian descent who is a regular visitor of Workplace, isn’t optimistic. “I’ve been looking for a job since May – there’s nothing,” she says.

Won’t the new mall soak up every idle body in sight? Not as far as Ms. Ezeani is concerned. She believes the 300 stores, when they open next year, will hire “friends of friends” or import employees. “Plus, no employer is willing to take you without experience,” she says, noting that not many young people in Stratford City have experience in anything but looking for work.

Bonita Anthony, 48, who works for a social housing agency, thinks the Westfield development and the Olympic site will revitalize the whole area. “There is a lot of wasteland around here,” she says. “The mall is far too American for my liking, but if it brings people to the area, it’ll be a good thing. The question is: What will happen after the Games?”

Good question. Olympic cities, from Montreal to Athens, generally have a dismal record of leveraging the Games into lasting economic and social benefits.

London’s surprise victory over front-runner Paris to host the 2012 Olympics seemed confirmation that London was on top of the world. It also gave the city an opportunity to revitalize the struggling East London, a pitch that appealed to the International Olympic Committee. But it would come at a price. When London launched its Olympics bid in 2003, the cost was estimated at £4-billion – £3-billion for the Olympic Park and £1-billion for regeneration of the River Lea, the Thames tributary that flows through the park.

After London was awarded the Games in 2005, the price tag was revised upward to £9.3-billion, thanks to rising construction costs, tax, beefed up security, extra transportation expenses and a disturbing lack of private funding. A £2.7-billion contingency fee was tossed into the sum. When the financial crisis hit, the amount seemed extravagant and perhaps unaffordable. But David Cameron’s new government left the budget largely untouched.

Tony Travers, the London School of Economics (LSE) professor who is a director of the Greater London Group, which researches the city’s competitiveness, said the government had no choice but to leave the budget intact. By the time the austerity program was launched, the Olympic Park was more than half built and on schedule for early completion.

“The budget was made before the recession and austerity program,” he said. “Once you’re signed up, you have to see it through a pretty much whatever cost.”

The government was, and continues to be, under unrelenting pressure from the deprived areas of East London to keep the Olympic Park budget intact and commit to “legacy” developments after the athletes have left town. In an LSE speech late last year, Roger Taylor, director of the Olympic Host Boroughs Unit (composed of the five generally poor boroughs around the Olympic Park) cited “the desperate need for physical regeneration that could bring benefits to a very deprived community” of 1.25 million residents.

Mr. Taylor noted that by almost every social and economic measure – employment skills, jobless rates, life expectancy, child poverty, violence – the area ranked near or at the lowest in all of London. The borough of Newham, for instance, has the city’s lowest employment rate at 56 per cent. The Westfield Stratford City mall and the Olympic Park are essential economic drivers, but guaranteeing regeneration will require “a sustained commitment over 20 or more years,” in education, employment, housing, health and crime reduction, he said.

Australia’s Westfield Group, the developer of the Westfield mall, considers the mall the commercial anchor for a whole new East London metropolis, one that will stretch east from Canary Wharf into the five boroughs. The 87-acre site was not scaled back in the recession and will be anchored by Britain’s biggest retailers – Waitrose, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer.

When it opens next year, about 8,500 people will work there, eventually rising to as many as 18,000 when all the retail and leisure phases are complete. Westfield is also sponsoring an on-site retail academy to train the unskilled. “These initiatives will play a key role in helping to reduce unemployment,” said Peter Miller, Westfield’s chief operating officer.

Mr. Travers said the construction of the mall and the Olympic Park is something close to a development miracle, the equivalent of a “Hoover Dam-style project,” essentially compressing potentially decades of development into a few years. He notes that two other big London revitalization projects – the King’s Cross area and Battersea Power Station, Europe’s largest brick building – are nowhere near finished because of on-again, off-again efforts since the 1980s.

The Westfield mall will be a permanent East London feature. But the Games are a one-shot wonder and the fear is that the Olympic Park will go from economic asset to liability the moment the closing ceremonies finish. In an effort to prevent the park from reverting to wasteland, a public agency called Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) was formed with the goal of turning it into a vibrant commercial, housing, leisure and sports centre.

The OPLC will start off on good footing, because it will inherit the Olympic Park land debt-free. Plans are already being made to sell the Olympic stadium (minus 50,000 removable seats), possibly to the West Ham soccer franchise. A mix of social and upscale housing will be essential to the project’s success, as will the development of food markets, performance space, festivals and light industry. So far, there are only expressions of interest.

Will it work? Mr. Travers said there are no certainties, given the hefty ongoing investment that will be required to keep the Olympic Park alive during tough economic times and the potential fall-off in political interest in reviving East London once the Games are history. “It’s a gamble,” he says. “Everyone says they want a proper legacy but it’s not at all guaranteed that it will work.”

If it doesn’t, the £9.3-billion spent on the Olympics will seem like a waste of valuable resources when Britain was essentially broke. But if the amount does rejuvenate a hard-pressed corner of Britain, it will be considered money well spent. The trouble is, no one will know for years.

jerseyboi

March 31st, 2011, 12:44 PM

Countdown to the Games from Canada

London seems to be on track to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. Even the newts have been taken care of.

On a dark, drizzly evening last week, several hundred Londoners gathered near Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square to watch a ceremony to unveil a broken clock. “It is tremendously exciting since this reminds us of how much we’ve still got to do before the Olympics,” London’s famously shambolic Mayor Boris Johnson announced as the cameras rolled. “We’re on schedule, with an iron grip on the budget so far—but really it’s all about sport and beating France!”

To be fair, the Omega London 2012 digital countdown clock was not broken at that moment, but stopped unexpectedly less than 24 hours later—499 days early for the city’s planned Olympic opening ceremonies on July 27, 2012. And despite this minor glitch, London seems to be in good shape well in advance of its big moment on the world stage.

The same day the clock flopped, the first advance tickets went on sale. Roughly 75 per cent—some 6.6 million—of tickets to the Games will be up for grabs to the public, through an application process which closes in six weeks’ time. Lord Coe, the London 2012 chairman, told the BBC sales had so far been “steady—with no reports of anything untoward.” In honour of the 500-day milestone, foreign press were also allowed a rare glimpse into the Olympic Park located in the city’s formerly industrial and increasingly rejuvenated East End. During a bus tour guided by Sarah Weir, head of arts and culture for the Olympic Park, reporters were assured that preparations were on schedule, with construction 75 per cent complete.

Shrouded in English mist, the amazing scope of the venue was laid bare: 2.5 square kilometres of new construction and landscaping with a budget of $15 billion, which according to organizers has not changed since being set in 2007. The big stadium, the heart of every Olympic venue, is now weeks away from completion—a ring of lightweight white steel resembling an airy modern day coliseum. It will be located on a man-made “island” surrounded by a moat of water on three sides. Spectators will cross one of five bridges to gain entry to the venue, which will be home to the opening and closing ceremonies as well as countless athletic events.

Like most of the structures, the stadium was built with legacy in mind. During the Games, it will have capacity for 80,000, but its construction allowed for the top tier of seating to be dismantled, bringing the capacity down to a manageable 25,000. Practical as this design was, it is now moot, following the recent news that West Ham football club, with its legions of fans, will likely move into the venue once the Games are over.

Other buildings will evolve as planned, such as Zaha Hadid’s marvellous undulating Aquatics Centre, built with two temporary “fins” for extra seating that will be dismantled post-Games. The basketball arena, shaped like a quilted air mattress and certainly the least attractive building on the site, will serve (thankfully) as the world largest temporary sports venue of its kind. The velodrome, a 6,000-seat paraboloid-shaped building (think of a Pringles potato chip) was unveiled last month by British gold medal-winning champion Sir Chris Hoy. It has been hailed by organizers as the world’s fastest cycling track.

Art installations are beginning to spring up around the park as well, with the most notable being Anish Kapoor’s semi-constructed Orbit, a spiralling metal sculpture that will stand 115 m high. Though the piece is only a third finished—a single cone composed of red metal spokes is all that exists so far—an average of 10,000 visitors a month make the voyage out to the wilds of east London to examine the piece from the free viewing centre, which sits just outside the park.

After the importance of legacy, sustainability is the other major theme. In addition to spending months “decontaminating” the site’s soil (after decades of industrial use), organizers claim 97 per cent of everything in the original setting has apparently been reused in the park (though where all those antique bricks ended up is anyone’s guess). Nature lovers will be pleased to hear that measures are being taken to sustain the natural habitat on the banks of the River Lee, which snakes through the site. Hundreds of new trees sit with netted root balls, waiting to be planted. And 2,000 newts, as well as other creatures, were moved into temporary digs before construction. The plan is to move the survivors back once the Games are over.

Like their animal counterparts, many human beings will have a chance to move into the Olympic Park once the athletes’ village is converted into residential dwellings—60 per cent will be for private sale and another 40 per cent for social housing. Some 16 months before the Olympics even begin, such talk may seem premature, but as Weir points out, “Everything about this park is designed with the future in mind.”

Now, one supposes, it’s just a matter of beating France.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/03/30/countdown-to-the-games/

jerseyboi

August 4th, 2011, 11:58 AM

Watch...

epaC6qmohms

RobH

August 4th, 2011, 12:05 PM

Watch...

Thanks for making that one clear Jerseyboi; your post would have been masively confusing without your thoughtful instruction. ;)

Saw this a week or two ago as it happens. Very cheesy typical-American view of London, but hey, there's nothing wrong with that. Still made me excited for next year watching it.

jerseyboi

August 4th, 2011, 12:11 PM

Thanks for making that one clear Jerseyboi; your post would have been masively confusing without your thoughtful instruction. ;)

Saw this a week or two ago as it happens. Very cheesy typical-American view of London, but hey, there's nothing wrong with that. Still made me excited for next year watching it.

No problem :lol:

potto

August 4th, 2011, 01:33 PM

There are some on here and in this country who would have preferred NBC to have designed the London 2012 logo :lol:

Sesquip

August 4th, 2011, 03:06 PM

Oh man, American TV cracks me up :D

"....In A World....."

Gavrosh

August 4th, 2011, 07:06 PM

According to that, London consists basically of Parliament and Buck Palace, and that's about it....

kerouac1848

August 4th, 2011, 09:08 PM

I cringed watching it, it's so dated and old-fashioned - so American. Hopefully perceptions will change and they'll get more shots of St. Pauls and the City (plus Shard) in the background. I've noticed that is how more and more British programs portray London at least.

Also, Buckingham Palace is so unimpressive and dull, I've never gotten the fuss. Windsor looks better.

MasterOfHisOwnDomain

August 5th, 2011, 07:51 PM

According to that, London consists basically of Parliament and Buck Palace, and that's about it....

More like England and the UK consist essentially of Parliament and Buckingham Palace... small country apparently! :lol:

foundation

August 5th, 2011, 10:32 PM

Well I thought NBC's promo was great!

querido

August 5th, 2011, 11:02 PM

Well I thought NBC's promo was great!

Yes .. I like it too:)

So, any more vids like that from around the world?

Its AlL gUUd

August 6th, 2011, 03:36 PM

Yes .. I like it too:)

So, any more vids like that from around the world?

If anyone wants to dig it out, there was that other London Promo video created by NBC shown after the closing ceremony for Vancouver. I thought that was pretty good (tho a bit cheesy aswell but who cares).

fiddlediddle

August 6th, 2011, 10:03 PM

13807419/

bertyboy

August 7th, 2011, 10:12 AM

Oh man, American TV cracks me up :D

"....In A World....."

Hey, at least they didn't feel compelled to refer to it as "London, England".

ps. fiddlediddle - you need to put the full url in the img tags.

bertyboy

August 7th, 2011, 01:01 PM

Does anyone know what the international coverage of the London riots last night has been like? Is it likely to deter people from coming to the games next year being so close to Stratford?

Its AlL gUUd

August 7th, 2011, 02:46 PM

Does anyone know what the international coverage of the London riots last night has been like? Is it likely to deter people from coming to the games next year being so close to Stratford?

I doubt it, if anyone has any extra tickets that they don't want anymore feel free to pass them to me :yes:

GarfieldPark

August 9th, 2011, 05:24 AM

Originally Posted by Sesquip:

Oh man, American TV cracks me up

"....In A World....."

Hey Sesquip: Instead of making fun of NBC TV --- why don't you try to get your quote correct in the first place. Nowhere in the video was the phrase: "....In a World...." stated. The correct wording was:

"In one year .... The World .... Comes Together .... In London"

Sounds to me like maybe you've got a bit of an inferiority complex, that you need to make things up so that you can make fun of them and then feel better about yourself.

Anyway ---- to respond to the question above .... yes, we are getting lots of coverage over here in the US of the riots going on in London - and it is being mentioned that it is occurring in the area near the Olympic Stadium and village. I don't know if it is impacting people's decisions to attend -- although if it keeps up for much longer, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it does.

I was reading some posts earlier in this thread -- from almost exactly a year ago (August 2010), where there was mention of the problems with poverty and disenfranchised youth living in some of the areas near the Olympic park. It seems some of the concerns about potential trouble are beginning to appear. There undoubtely is a lot of anger that these rioters have about certain issues. The fact that there was a bombing in the London subway (tube) the day after London was announced to host the 2012 Olympics was probably not a coincidence. I hope the local police and security forces take the current events as a warning to be extra prepared for the problems that could occur when the Olympics actually are underway next year. Good Luck.

DrewHallam

August 9th, 2011, 07:31 AM

jdjones

August 9th, 2011, 08:19 AM

I was reading some posts earlier in this thread -- from almost exactly a year ago (August 2010), where there was mention of the problems with poverty and disenfranchised youth living in some of the areas near the Olympic park. It seems some of the concerns about potential trouble are beginning to appear. There undoubtely is a lot of anger that these rioters have about certain issues. The fact that there was a bombing in the London subway (tube) the day after London was announced to host the 2012 Olympics was probably not a coincidence. I hope the local police and security forces take the current events as a warning to be extra prepared for the problems that could occur when the Olympics actually are underway next year. Good Luck.

L.... O.... L! So the idea of US ignorance of the outside world still stands!

Take heed to your own advice:

Hey Sesquip: Instead of making fun of NBC TV --- why don't you try to get your quote correct in the first place.

potto

August 9th, 2011, 10:59 AM

bit of friendly rivalry here :lol:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14456635

Renmin Ribao, China

"The Olympics will be hosted next year; the security situation in London, which has always been a first-choice site for terrorist attacks, will be even grimmer. British police now face two main problems. First, as the government cuts police funding in order to reduce the deficit, British police will carry out massive layoffs. With insufficient manpower and financial resources, they will inevitably be overwhelmed with problems in maintaining social order. Second, after the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, the credibility of the British police has declined and there is still a very long way to go in rebuilding the credibility of the police and restoring public support, says Qu Bing, Institute of European Studies, China Institute of Contemporary International Relations."

Sesquip

August 9th, 2011, 02:44 PM

annamaria4711

August 9th, 2011, 03:33 PM

Originally Posted by Sesquip:

I was reading some posts earlier in this thread -- from almost exactly a year ago (August 2010), where there was mention of the problems with poverty and disenfranchised youth living in some of the areas near the Olympic park. It seems some of the concerns about potential trouble are beginning to appear. There undoubtely is a lot of anger that these rioters have about certain issues. Good Luck.

disenfranchised....my back side, they are kids who want, want, want...did you note their designer gear, their ipods, things that I myself can't afford and I don't go out destroying facilities that don't belong to me...I'm sorry too many people are putting words in these yobs mouths and giving them excuses..... I too am back on the job market, but I don't riot, there are no facilities in my local area specifically for people like me, but I don't go booh hoo hoo over it..... 10yrs old kids out in the street at 12 at night...where the hell were their parents... its a society that wants wants wants...but does not want to work for it, they want someone eles to do the work and for them to lead a footballer gangster life style...
I've seen some of the tweets from these looters, they are bragging about what they got... They ahve so tarnished the image of London at a time when we really need people to come over and spend here to help revitalise the economy......they are stupid and selfish they don't care about the community they just care about themselves

jdjones

August 9th, 2011, 03:51 PM

I'm starting to agree, If they were truly disenfranchised they would target symbols of the establishment whether this be police stations, council offices or services. The truth is targeting Debenhams or Greggs and burning down independent traders and private homes is not hitting the establishment. Burning down buildings that they knew would catch fire quickly is just arson for the sake of arson. They were targeting Debenhams, Curries, Armani (in Birmingham) and JD sports solely because these store sold what they wanted.

fiddlediddle

August 9th, 2011, 04:45 PM

I was reading some posts earlier in this thread -- from almost exactly a year ago (August 2010), where there was mention of the problems with poverty and disenfranchised youth living in some of the areas near the Olympic park. It seems some of the concerns about potential trouble are beginning to appear. There undoubtely is a lot of anger that these rioters have about certain issues. The fact that there was a bombing in the London subway (tube) the day after London was announced to host the 2012 Olympics was probably not a coincidence. I hope the local police and security forces take the current events as a warning to be extra prepared for the problems that could occur when the Olympics actually are underway next year. Good Luck.

I think London will probably be the safest place on the planet come the time of the games. Only fools would attempt to try something with all that extra security going on. But other countries may not be so safe. As the attention will be focused on London some other countries could be caught short.

RobH

August 9th, 2011, 06:40 PM

disenfranchised....my back side, they are kids who want, want, want...did you note their designer gear, their ipods, things that I myself can't afford and I don't go out destroying facilities that don't belong to me...I'm sorry too many people are putting words in these yobs mouths and giving them excuses..... I too am back on the job market, but I don't riot, there are no facilities in my local area specifically for people like me, but I don't go booh hoo hoo over it..... 10yrs old kids out in the street at 12 at night...where the hell were their parents... its a society that wants wants wants...but does not want to work for it, they want someone eles to do the work and for them to lead a footballer gangster life style...
I've seen some of the tweets from these looters, they are bragging about what they got... They ahve so tarnished the image of London at a time when we really need people to come over and spend here to help revitalise the economy......they are stupid and selfish they don't care about the community they just care about themselves

Well said that woman! :applause:

cnapan

August 9th, 2011, 10:55 PM

I'm also sick of people finding excuses for these selfish pampered scum.

Spare a thought instead for the victims. Ordinary people in their own neighbourhoods now facing a loss of their business or homes or other property... or even worse.

These are the real victims.

Sesquip

August 10th, 2011, 02:37 PM

Explanations are not excuses.

They may well be all those things, annamaria4711, but if we don't ask WHY they are those things, and then try and act on the answers to that question, then this will all happen again.

jonnyboy

August 10th, 2011, 03:05 PM

awesome2000

August 10th, 2011, 08:13 PM

They were communicating with Blackberries-sounds like they are really short of money!!

jerseyboi

September 19th, 2011, 12:42 PM

All eyes on England from boston.com
http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-18/yourtown/30172962_1_sarah-burton-royal-wedding-wedding-dress

Olympic previews, the royal wedding postgame, and the world’s hottest theater tickets.

September 18, 2011|By Margie Goldsmith
“By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show,” said famed 18th-century English author Samuel Johnson. Little did he know how much more life there would be in London three centuries later. Now is the time to go, before the crowds arrive in summer 2012 for the Olympic Games and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, feting Elizabeth for her 60-year reign.

Flights from Logan to Heathrow on British Airways (http://www.british-airways.com) start at $500 and take around 6½ hours. If you’re planning on sightseeing, consider buying a London Pass (http://www.londonpass.com), which affords you queue-free access to the city’s top attractions, before you go. Its Travelcard option includes transportation from the airport and on all trains, buses, and the London Underground – the “Tube.” But be sure to hail at least one classic black taxi, just for the experience. For a sumptuous stay, check into the Savoy hotel (800-257-7544, http://www.fairmont.com/savoy; from $611), just a short walk from the river Thames, Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye, the city’s iconic Ferris wheel.

If you were glued to the telly during April’s royal wedding, sprint over to Buckingham Palace, where even commoners can get a close-up view of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen. The gown and the Cartier tiara the queen loaned the bride are both on display (http://www.royalcollection.org.uk). Even if you miss the dress (on display until October 3), take in the paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens, the Sevres porcelain, and exquisite English and French furniture. For an unforgettable meal, splurge at London’s newest hot spot, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (http://www.dinnerbyheston.com) at the Mandarin Oriental overlooking Hyde Park. Getting a reservation is a challenge; booking lunch may improve your chances.

Sneak a peek at the upcoming Olympic venues by signing up for a two-hour walking tour with London’s knowledgeable Blue Badge Guides (http://www.tourguides2012.co.uk) to view, albeit from a distance, the ongoing construction of the Olympic stadium, Aquatics Centre, and the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a steel observation tower. For a more immediate taste of an international sporting event, join 20,000 screaming fans October 8 for a cricket “all-star” game (http://www.titansofcricket.com) featuring players from England, India, Pakistan, and Australia competing at London’s O2 arena.

Theatergoers should head to the West End and, for bragging rights, pick a musical that hasn’t jumped stateside yet: Try Ghost the Musical, for fans of the 1990 Demi Moore flick, or for the young at heart, Matilda, adapted from the novel by British children’s author Roald Dahl, opening in November.

Before you leave, stop by Covent Garden (http://www.coventgardenlondonuk.com) for your souvenir shopping. At this covered market, you’ll find everything from hand-carved wooden toys to Brit-chic clothing at Pretty Green, a ’60s-inspired boutique with casual and classic British styles designed by ex-Oasis rocker Liam Gallagher. Take a break at the tres Parisian Laduree’s salon for gourmet tea and macaroons in exotic flavors such as licorice. Save room for ice cream served on toast at the edgy Icecreamists boutique (http://www.theicecreamists.com). As its mantra goes: “God Save the Cream.”

Gavrosh

September 19th, 2011, 01:02 PM

Hard up Bostonians could save themselves a fortune by staying here:

http://www.premierinn.com/en/checkHotel/LONSTR/london-stratford

SWLondoner

September 19th, 2011, 10:25 PM

^^:lol:

Has Boston miraculously avoided the recession or is that article slightly out of touch?

jerseyboi

November 3rd, 2011, 10:11 PM

Exclusive: Canada's 2012 Olympic outfits revealed - Canada Goes For Patches!

See http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20111102/olympic-clothes-111102/

When Canada's top athletes walk into the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, they'll be wearing team outfits that proudly reflect Canada's spirit to the world. But the look of this coveted Olympic gear has remained a well-guarded secret -- until Wednesday.

Canada AM cracked that mystery wide open today, giving Canadians their first exclusive look at these new team outfits.

Suzanne Timmins, the fashion director of The Bay, presented these fresh, clean-lined pieces with the help of four Olympians in training: Tobias Oriwol, Karen Cockburn, Jason Burnett, and Tonya Verbeek

"We wanted to created uniforms that showed what Canadians really looked like," said Timmins.

Canada's athletes will receive 31 pieces from the collection when they arrive in London next summer.

That HBC collection includes the Canada Windbreaker, a practical yet stylish piece with a "hide-away" hood that can be zipped inside the collar. The lightweight jacket also features outer pockets, vents and a wordmark appliqué across the chest.

The collection also includes a fashion-forward jean jacket decorated with Canadian patches, a crew neck sweat shirt and a track jacket that features stripe details, Canadian Olympic patches, the Canada Leaf patch and a large Team 2012 printed logo on the back.

Designers were passionate about giving these uniforms plenty of updated attitude.

Strong Canadian colours such as Maple Leaf red, northern white, evergreen, heather grey and black dominate these summer pieces.

For inspiration, designers looked to the uniforms of the Montreal 1975 Summer Games for their sporty colour-blocking. That effect was freshened up for 2012 by adding the Canada wordmark within a colour-blocked band that now sits proudly on the team's jackets, T-shirts and hoodies.

Canada's Maple Leaf, another iconic symbol of this country, also received a design update.

First seen at the Stockholm 1912 Summer Games, the Maple Leaf has always been present on the uniforms of Canada's athletes. Now the Maple Leaf graphic will feature the Canada wordmark arched within the shape of that leaf.

These new Olympic outfits also pay tribute to Canada's spirit of exploration.

"Canada is famous around the world for the patches sew on travellers' backpacks," said Timmins.

In honour of that tradition, The Bay has created an Olympic patch collection which depicts Canada's provinces, indigenous animals, sports and other aspects unique to this vast country.

The Shield Patch, in particular, was inspired by provincial symbolism and spotlights Canada from coast-to-coast.

Also included in the collection are two patches dedicated to the 2012 Canadian Olympic Team, one in English and one in French.

Priced from $15 to $100, the full collection is attainable for would-be supporters from coast-to-coast at The Bay and Zellers.

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20111102/olympic-clothes-111102/#ixzz1cffjkRbC

eh.........think forgot the umbrella's :lol:

Officer Dibble

November 10th, 2011, 03:13 PM

epaC6qmohms

Officer Dibble

November 10th, 2011, 03:18 PM

bY0GAsQXskY

spindrift

November 10th, 2011, 07:00 PM

bertyboy

November 11th, 2011, 01:14 AM

The theme from Love Actually there in the second clip for our transatlantic friends. I hope they're not too disappointed when they arrive next year and discover Hugh Grant isn't PM. Good use of Big Ben's Bongs in both videos.

What's the attraction with St. Stephen's tower? I had some colleagues over from our Atlanta office last week, and they booked into a hotel in Covent Garden over the weekend. The main thing they wanted to do was see "Big Ben" (I did point out that this would require privileged entry to the tower and clock mechanism). They also wanted to see the Olympic Stadium, but I told them it is still pretty much a building site and they wouldn't be able to get close.

spindrift

November 11th, 2011, 11:18 AM

Dunno Berty. Is St Stephen's tower THE iconic London landmark, in the same way that any American film featuring scenes in Paris MUST have a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower from the hotel window? They also always include shots of Buckingham Palace which is a big flabby pink blancmange of a building.

high_flyer

November 16th, 2011, 08:27 PM

What's the attraction with St. Stephen's tower? I had some colleagues over from our Atlanta office last week, and they booked into a hotel in Covent Garden over the weekend. The main thing they wanted to do was see "Big Ben" (I did point out that this would require privileged entry to the tower and clock mechanism). They also wanted to see the Olympic Stadium, but I told them it is still pretty much a building site and they wouldn't be able to get close.

I'd say it's probably the most famous clocktower in the world and an instantly recognisable symbol of London, and a lot of people like to see those symbols of places themselves, I guess to prove they've been there.

And I'm sure they loved your slightly know-it-all response to their saying they want to see Big Ben ;)

spindrift

December 4th, 2011, 06:32 PM

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-11/66421919.jpg

Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
December 4, 2011

Reporting from London — Never mind the sprints, relays and marathons coming to London this summer.

Look at the competition now among the flower vendors of Columbia Road.

"Who's got a fiver?" hollers one grizzled man with a fistful of roses.

"Four for 2 quid!" bellows another.

"Five pounds a bunch!" howls yet another.

These guys sound better than the extras in "My Fair Lady," and they're here every Sunday morning at Columbia and Ravenscroft streets, supplying blooms, succulents and a soundtrack to accompany London's ascendant East End, which is soon to be neighbored, sort of, by the Olympics.

What if you dodged the July 27-Aug. 12 Games but hit London and the East End? The cultural and infrastructural benefits that come with the Olympics have already begun and will last long after the last shot is put. New train stations opened last year in East London's Hoxton and Shoreditch High Street. Two thousand rental bicycles will be added to East End neighborhoods by 2012 as part of a Barclay's campaign to make blue bikes as common in London as red buses and black cabs. And a new exhibition of landscapes by David Hockney will take place Jan. 21-April 9 at the Royal Academy of Art, which isn't in the East End, but maybe a new train could take you there.

Even without such bonuses, the East End is an increasingly interesting place to be. On a visit to London early this year, I spent most of my time in the East End neighborhoods of Shoreditch, Hoxton, Spitalfields and Brick Lane that lie roughly midway between central London and the new Olympic Park, eight miles east at Stratford.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-eastlondon4-20111204,1,1737158.story

jerseyboi

December 10th, 2011, 02:30 PM

Lloyd Lost

December 12th, 2011, 01:56 PM

East London: getting into Olympic shape

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/east-london-getting-into-olympic-shape/2011/12/07/gIQAcoMMiO_gallery.html#photo=21

Contains 21 images of London 2012 from washington post

Some interesting captions. Did you know Straford City is in Newham and that the site of the Olympic parklands was formerly engulfed by the "toxic waters of the river Lea"? Fascinating.

jerseyboi

December 16th, 2011, 05:01 PM

FOUR BILLION TO WATCH 2012 CEREMONIES

More than four billion people worldwide are expected to tune in to watch the opening and closing ceremonies for the London Olympics - worth up to STG5 billion ($A7.7 billion) in advertising terms, organisers say.

About 20,000 people from across the UK will perform in the four ceremonies next year.

Organisers have so far remained tight-lipped about which big acts will feature in the ceremonies at the start and end of the Olympic and Paralympic Games - rumours include performances from Take That, the Spice Girls and even Beatles legends Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, but nothing has been announced officially.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) says more than 10,000 hopefuls turned up for a first round of auditions for volunteer performers at the ceremonies.

The ceremonies are predicted to be viewed by a worldwide TV audience of four billion people in more than 200 countries.

In advertising terms, the equivalent airtime value is expected to be worth between STG2 billion and STG5 billion.

Sir Martin Sorrell, head of advertising giant WPP, said: "The London 2012 opening and closing ceremonies will be four of the biggest moments in TV history, broadcast in over 200 countries to an audience of four billion people.

"The equivalent advertising value that will deliver for the UK could be up to STG5 billion, however with regards to perception of London and the UK and a tourism legacy you could say that they will be priceless."

A team of leading British creative talent has been put in place to lead the direction of the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies.

In May 2010 filmmaker and producer Danny Boyle was appointed as artistic director for the opening ceremony, while director Stephen Daldry, designer Mark Fisher, Hamish Hamilton - best known for his direction of live TV events - and Catherine Ugwu, producer of the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, were appointed as executive producers across all four ceremonies.

And in February this year, Take That's creative director Kim Gavin was appointed artistic director for the closing ceremonies of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The closing ceremonies team also includes multi-award-winning stage and costume designer Es Devlin and Bond film composer and record producer David Arnold.

In June 2011, Jenny Sealey and Bradley Hemmings were appointed as artistic directors of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Music directors for the opening ceremony are expected to be announced shortly.

Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, said: "I am incredibly excited about Danny Boyle's amazing plans for London's opening ceremony.

"Four billion people around the world will be absolutely wowed by what they will see by the Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies.

"The ceremonies will be the most fantastic advert for everything that is great about our country."
http://london2012.olympics.com.au/news/four-billion-to-watch-2012-ceremonies

RobH

December 16th, 2011, 05:23 PM

Don't believe that number for a second.

jdjones

December 16th, 2011, 07:37 PM

Don't believe that number for a second.

I agree, I would believe 4 billion catching a glimpse of a portion of the ceremony, but not watching it in its entirety, that's almost 2/3 of the world population, you would have to get all of India and all of China to watch to make up for those who don't have access to a TV.

bertyboy

December 16th, 2011, 11:01 PM

2 billion is probably nearer to what is likely.

jerseyboi

January 16th, 2012, 03:03 PM

The French Thread ( No Mr RobH I did not start that one! ) :)

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=232159

jerseyboi

February 28th, 2012, 07:49 PM

http://i42.tinypic.com/2kiuz4.png
http://www.canada.com/news/London+2012+Olympic+rings+sent+floating+down+Thames/6221820/story.html

jerseyboi

March 9th, 2012, 09:12 PM

Britain awash in gloom as London Olympics approach

LONDON—With less than five months until the games begin, England's mood is about as gray and gloomy as a rainy day along the River Thames.
Instead of enthusiasm, euphoria and ebullience, the Olympic countdown is generating a drumbeat of skepticism, scare stories and doom.
There are persistent complaints about the ticketing, worries over cost overruns, predictions of traffic gridlock and transportation chaos, threats of blood shortages, disease and strikes—even talk of drought.
British oddsmakers are even taking bets on everything that could go wrong.
The Olympic flame will fail to arrive on time for the July 27 opening? That's 66-1 at Ladbrokes.
An athlete will miss the start of competition and cite transport problems as the reason? That's 2-1.
A power cut at the opening ceremony? That's 25-1.
Britons have a reputation as natural-born grumblers who love nothing more than to complain, and the Olympics have proved to be a perfect outlet for naysayers and killjoys.
"This is very typical of the British mentality," said Ellis Cashmore, a professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University. "There is a quite healthy recognition of our own limitations. There is a tradition in Britain to think, 'Well, we really don't do things that well, you know. If anyone can screw it up, the British can.'"
Many Londoners plan to leave town to avoid the whole thing, especially when they can cash in by renting out their homes or apartments for the Olympics.

"It's going to be difficult getting in and out of the city center during the games," said Jason Hammond, a 45-year-old company director who lives in northwest London with his wife and five children. "It's too much of a hassle. So we've booked a holiday and put our house up for rent for 12,000 pounds ($19,000) a week, four times the normal price."
Also feeling in a sour mood and planning to leave town during the Olympics is Andrew Doughty, 41, who lives with his wife and two young children in the north London borough of Islington—a short train ride from the Olympic Park. He applied for tickets for his family and came up empty-handed.
"Now we feel really disconnected," Doughty said. "Everything for us is now just a major inconvenience. It's all downside now being in London. The place is going to be overrun. The Tube system is going to be swamped. I'd rather watch it on TV on holiday somewhere."
Certainly, every host city goes through ups and downs during the seven-year buildup to the Olympics—the euphoria after winning the bid, the reality check of the massive task at hand, the doubts and worries in the final stretch and the burst of enthusiasm once the Olympic flame arrives for the torch relay. But with Britain, that doubt-and-worry phase seems to be lasting and is more pronounced.
"It's like before a big game," senior Canadian IOC member Dick Pound said. "You suddenly say, 'Are we properly prepared? Are we going to blow this? Are we going to be the laughingstocks of the world?' That's perfectly natural. All you have to do is make sure it doesn't paralyze you."
Once the games get under way, and assuming there are no serious problems, Britain is sure to get caught up in the party atmosphere.
But, for the moment, the mood is muted.
"People are pretty cynical," said John Armitt, chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, which is responsible for building the venues. "We're very good at seeing the downside of the things, arguing about it and debating it. I put it down to the natural British character, I'm afraid."
London has its share of serious challenges, particularly over transportation and security. Can the city's already-stretched Tube and rail network handle the Olympic crush? Will the games be safe from terrorism or other disruption?
Those have been the main concerns since London was awarded the Olympics in 2005. Lately, the flashpoint has been tickets, or the perceived lack of clarity and fairness in the sales process.
Demand for the 6.6 million tickets has been huge. Early rounds of sales were marred by computer problems and confusion over why some people got tickets and others didn't. The media and the public have been sharply critical of how it's been handled.
Things turned hostile this week when organizing committee leaders Sebastian Coe and Paul Deighton faced heated questioning by the London Assembly.
Committee chair Dee Doocey accused Coe of being "obsessed with secrecy" and lashed out: "You are the least transparent organization I have ever come across in the eight years I have been on at the London Assembly!"
At the heart of the malaise is a lingering concern about the cost of the games during a time of economic austerity. The public sector budget stands at 9.3 billion pounds ($14.6 billion), much of which has gone to building the Olympic Park in east London.
On Friday, a British government oversight committee warned the games could go over budget because of big increases in security costs, which now exceed 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion).
"It is staggering that the original estimates were so wrong," committee chair Margaret Hodge said.
Cashmore said there has been "a dramatic shift over the last couple of months."
"Everyone's enthusiasm has been tempered suddenly with a kind of a jolt," he said. "On top of that, every story we get in the media about the Olympics is not about how fabulous the spectacle is going to be."
Recent stories of foreboding during the Olympics have included:
— Patients will be stranded in ambulances in traffic jams while dignitaries and sponsors flash by in limos in special lanes. Delivery of blood supplies will be impeded by traffic restrictions.
— Supplies of anthrax and smallpox vaccines are running short and need to be stockpiled to guard against a biological attack.
— London faces a potential public health emergency because of diseases brought in by thousands of visitors and athletes. (This took a new twist when Britain's Olympic team doctor advised athletes not to shake hands to avoid picking up germs—a suggestion that officials later said would be disregarded.)
— Water supplies could be at risk after southeast England was officially declared a drought zone—a contrast from the traditional worry that the games will be soaked by rain.
— Some of London's West End theaters could be shut down because of a lack of ticket bookings.
As far as the international guardians of the Olympics are concerned, there is nothing to panic about.
Pound, the International Olympic Committee member from Canada, attributes the mood in part to the British media.
"That happens when you have four daily papers in a single town," he said.
IOC vice president Thomas Bach of Germany said he's seen it all before.
"In Barcelona, the stadia were supposedly not ready," he said. "In Los Angeles, everybody was supposed to be a victim of crime. In Sydney, there was a crisis. You name it, any games. It's everywhere. There are normal ups and downs.
"We will see and live brilliant games in London. I'm absolutely confident."
Until then? Dour Britons will just frown and bear it.
http://www.mercurynews.com/olympics/ci_20139435/britain-awash-gloom-london-olympics-approach

bertyboy

March 10th, 2012, 12:05 AM

Pish! I'm agog with anticipation about the games. The only dour people are journalists!

jonnyboy

March 10th, 2012, 02:53 PM

most people i know are excited. a load of us are going to line the route as the torch passes near us in leicestershire. in the next village they re having a mini olympics fun day. we re also having an opening ceremony party with a big screen in our local pub!!! there are some negative people but they are in a minority!!!!!!

annamaria4711

March 10th, 2012, 06:16 PM

what a FAB idea Jonnyboy..Olympics egg and spoon race, Olympics potato sack race...FAAAAB

ferge

March 11th, 2012, 04:43 PM

I think it is wrong to judge the 'Nation's mood' and expectation/excitement of the games, it is still too far away yet to start a big build up of anticipation. At the end of the day, we've seen in the past few weeks the Aquatic centre in use, the Velodrome in use.. people are turning up to cheer on our hopefuls and I think once the Olympic park looks less like a building site, the tv specials will start and the sun will be shining longer into the night and we'll be gearing up for welcoming our visitors :)

potto

March 13th, 2012, 12:29 PM

glad to see journalists in other countries are as bad as ours regarding spin and self-agendas.

The musings of a dull middle aged executive somehow trumps "Demand for the 6.6 million tickets has been huge" for the attention grabbing headline and theme of the article.

jonnyboy

March 13th, 2012, 01:07 PM

[QUOTE=annamaria4711;89326210]what a FAB idea Jonnyboy..Olympics egg and spoon race, Olympics potato sack race...FAAAAB[/QU

thats what they re doing for the kids! medals/god save the queen etc! im going to help! gonna be nearly as much fun as our huge diamond jubilee party! NB my olympic enthusiasm is strong but need to get past the jubilee before i can focus on that!!

jerseyboi

April 22nd, 2012, 11:27 AM

London 2012 'will surpass Sydney'

London 2012 will surpass Sydney and be hailed as the best Olympics ever staged, Australia's leading IOC member predicted as organisers marked 100 days to the start of the Games.
Kevan Gosper, an IOC member since 1977 and a vice-president of the Sydney 2000 Olympics organising committee, said London 2012 had succeeded in turning the Games into a nationwide event rather than one just focused on the capital.
Organisers launched their slogan for the Games - Inspire a Generation - with Gosper in attendance and he said there would be no envy from Australians if London takes over Sydney's mantle as the best Games there has been.
Gosper said: "Records are set to broken. Sydney got the accolade of the best-ever Games but that was 12 years ago."
The 100 days to go launch event at Kew Gardens in London also saw the unveiling of giant Olympic rings in a flower display which will be visible from flights arriving at Heathrow airport.
Organisers also announced the Red Arrows - the RAF aerobatic team - will perform a flypast across the UK to mark the opening ceremony on July 27, flying over London 2012 live sites in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London.
London 2012 chairman Lord Coe said: "I am delighted to announce the motto Inspire a Generation.
"It is everything we have been saying since we have started this extraordinary journey, not just since we got across the finish line in Singapore."
The organisation of the Games has been relatively untroubled with all the building work coming in on time and within budget and London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton said organisers would be "paranoid" in ensuring complacency did not creep in.
Deighton said: "When it comes to the risk of complacency I can assure you in life these days only the paranoid succeed so there is absolutely no danger of us not looking at every risk that would prevent us delivering these Games in the effective and spectacular way we have promised."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hlFYn0hlOppiIJftCQrm6Ig3Y1lQ?docId=B37686451334767791A00

rjgibb

April 23rd, 2012, 05:34 PM

And for the Los Angeles Times view on the same announcement...

London's Olympic countdown begins in earnest (http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oly-london-100-days-20120418,0,3472326,full.story)

bananapotato

April 25th, 2012, 08:59 PM

http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g371/Afiq_Nadzir/2012MALAYSIA.jpg
countdown clock in malaysia
http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g371/Afiq_Nadzir/100daystogo_Malaysia.jpg

deepblue01

April 26th, 2012, 05:51 AM

It's official, London will do fine!!!!!!

annamaria4711

April 26th, 2012, 01:15 PM

Not sure where to post this or create a new thread for the Cultural Olympiad...but here are two links....

This one re the 2012 London Festival
http://festival.london2012.com/

and here's the Olympiad link itself
http://www.london2012.com/cultural-olympiad

annamaria4711

April 26th, 2012, 01:21 PM

http://festival.london2012.com/brochure/index.php

There is a lot going on

jerseyboi

May 7th, 2012, 04:47 PM

London's Games, an Island Between Beijing and Rio
LONDON — Wedged between Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, the London Olympics look suspiciously like a Games without a big-ticket theme.
see
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/sports/olympics/08iht-srolylondon08.html

DarJoLe

May 7th, 2012, 06:00 PM

No big ticket scheme?

Obviously that winning the Games to inspire the youth of the world passed them by.

jdjones

May 7th, 2012, 07:01 PM

I think the article is getting at that London does have a theme, but isn't as obvious as Beijing or Rio. The article is peppered with words like 'sustainability', 'legacy', 'future'... and ultimately that is what they are getting at, the theme of London is sustainability and a blueprint for future games.

bertyboy

May 7th, 2012, 10:02 PM

No big ticket scheme?

Obviously that winning the Games to inspire the youth of the world passed them by.

Did you read the article? It is saying that there isn't a geopolitical point to be made from the London games, instead relying on rejuvenation and eco-credentials as its "big ticket".

jerseyboi

June 4th, 2012, 02:23 PM

London orchestra to mime Games opening ( From Australia )

There is outrage in London about the decision by Olympic Games organisers to have the London Symphony Orchestra mime its performance at the opening ceremony.

It has emerged the world renowned orchestra will pretend to perform while a recording made six weeks ago blasts out of the stadium speakers.

Considered to be one of the best orchestras in the world, it was awarded the contract for the 2012 Games.

But when the athletes walk in to the stadium in front of a worldwide audience of 4 billion people, the orchestra will in fact be pretending.

Twitter has been abuzz with outrage.

"What a bloody joke," one person said, "The London Symphony Orchestra told to mime at games opening."

"You'll see the London Symphony Orchestra at the Olympics, but you won't hear it - how ridiculous, what a farce," another posted.

See http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-04/london-symphony-orchestra-to-mime-at-olympics/4051434

RobH

June 4th, 2012, 03:01 PM

There is outrage in London...

:lol:

I had to actually GOOGLE this to find out who or what was OUTRAGED and it seems the answer is.....no drumroll needed (mime one if you must).......The Daily Mail. Quelle surprise!

Nedd

June 4th, 2012, 03:51 PM

:lol:

I had to actually GOOGLE this to find out who or what was OUTRAGED and it seems the answer is.....no drumroll needed (mime one if you must).......The Daily Mail. Quelle surprise!

It is a stupid decision though. Half of the thrill of watching a concert is knowing that it is being performed live (especially with 'classical' music). Considering it's the LSO, there's really no need to record it. We should in fact be showcasing one of our country's finest orchestras - it's almost as if the organisers don't trust the musicians!

mayflower232

June 4th, 2012, 04:09 PM

It is a stupid decision though. Half of the thrill of watching a concert is knowing that it is being performed live (especially with 'classical' music). Considering it's the LSO, there's really no need to record it. We should in fact be showcasing one of our country's finest orchestras - it's almost as if the organisers don't trust the musicians!

When you understand the complexities of sound engineering in a stadium this big then you have a right to comment. We could well have them perform live... but it would not only be an unnecessary pain in the backside in technical terms, the sound distribution would not be able to be digitally optimised for those in the stadium, meaning it would sound pretty bad.

RobH

June 4th, 2012, 04:13 PM

Half of the thrill of watching a concert...

This isn't a concert though as Knitemplar has pointed out in the other thread. These things are timed to fractions of a second, and acoustics in stadiums are more or less rubbish for classical music. And if you read the rest of the article that Jerseyboi quoted from you'll see the operations director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra - who was interviewed for the ABC piece - agrees with the London organisers on this point. I'd assume he knows what he's talking about.

Furthermore it goes on to say "this is standard practice for an event of this scale, and the performers have no issue with it."

So if the performers have no issue, if an orchestra operations director says it makes sense to do it this way, if LOCOG say its standard practice, and if our resident expert on Olympic ceremonies (yes Myles that was a compliment, enjoy it) says this is the only sensible way of doing it, then I've really no problem with it being done this way. London 2012 are not the first to do it this way, nor will they be the last.

As an aside: Sydney had the orchestra miming as well in their 2000 OC, because their organisers also realised the limitations of having them perform live. The controversy in Sydney, however, wasn't that the orchestra mimed (people seemed to understand the reasons for that), but that the Melbourne Symphony recorded the music, but the Sydney Symphony Orchestra did the miming!! That understandably bemused a lot of Sydneysiders.

Perhaps the MSO weren't collectively pretty enough to be on show!

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/08/12/ct460x276.jpg

chrissus83

June 4th, 2012, 04:13 PM

RobH

June 4th, 2012, 04:19 PM

The trouble in Beijing as I understand it was the TV feed went out of sync with the Audio feed. So what TV viewers saw was out of sync, but in the stadium everything looked and sounded fine. We'll be using our own equipment rather than relying on other people in London, so things like that ought to be avoided (in other words, no excuses). That point though does at least show the complexity of these things.

koal4e

June 4th, 2012, 10:26 PM

Remember what happened at the handover with Leona lewis singing live? The sound was terrible and put a big dent in the sequence. If having the orchestra miming will avoid this type of distaster then I would have thought it would be worth it.

The miming is needed for sounds/acoustics in the arena to ensure it runs smoothly so no problems there really.

mayflower232

June 6th, 2012, 02:58 PM

I was watching the American twitter feed when they had highlights of the Jubilee concert broadcast last night. The response was incredible, everyone saying how outstanding it was and that they had never seen fireworks like it! (Someone should tell them about our NYE fireworks if they think thats big). But on the whole there were a lot of people saying how this has restored their faith in that 2012 is going to be up there with the best. When Madness was broadcast everyone was in awe of the projection system we were using on the palace.

I also noted how everyone started saying how they want to visit London after seeing the city on TV. Jubilee plus 2012 should mean an epic year for tourism in 2013.

pagey17

June 6th, 2012, 03:05 PM

jerseyboi

June 9th, 2012, 09:24 PM

The home and away Games ( The Australian big influence on London 2012 )

See http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/the-home-and-away-games/story-e6frg8h6-1226357792440

bertyboy

June 10th, 2012, 01:02 AM

The home and away Games ( The Australian big influence on London 2012 )

See http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/the-home-and-away-games/story-e6frg8h6-1226357792440

Not the most in-depth article is it? Someone pronounces "aquatic" strangely. :ohno:

Gavrosh

June 10th, 2012, 02:06 PM

"I keep telling the Brits they are getting it wrong." He pointed out to some British colleagues that a duck says "quack" not "quock", but "then I realised I was undermining my own argument".

Yes....now I can see why they had to insource people of that calibre...

koal4e

June 10th, 2012, 10:10 PM

Sesquip

June 11th, 2012, 02:38 PM

Not the most in-depth article is it? Someone pronounces "aquatic" strangely. :ohno:

The rest of the article is behind a sign-in

bertyboy

June 11th, 2012, 03:06 PM

The rest of the article is behind a sign-in

Oh - how many of us are likely to have accounts for Australian newspapers? :dunno:

koal4e

June 11th, 2012, 08:59 PM

Oh - how many of us are likely to have accounts for Australian newspapers? :dunno:

Australian news what? Its hard enough just reading our own idiotic media!

diddlefiddle1

June 16th, 2012, 03:09 AM

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gcwHf9X7BFc

jerseyboi

June 16th, 2012, 11:30 AM

bzeTzZAvm_U

Metroguy78

June 16th, 2012, 12:04 PM

OK now that was an awesome video!

bertyboy

June 16th, 2012, 12:10 PM

Note, not a single image of the Olympic Park though.

Metroguy78

June 16th, 2012, 12:13 PM

I guess they just wanted to show the people in Australia the well know parts of London, like a tourist promotion video more than anything

gorgu

June 17th, 2012, 11:30 AM

OK now that was an awesome video!

really I thought it was pi$h!

Its AlL gUUd

June 17th, 2012, 01:51 PM

Yeah, I prefer the American promo video.

spindrift

June 17th, 2012, 10:38 PM

Yeah, I prefer the American promo video.

The one with the Love Actually music? Pure fromage.

The Kiwi song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfrn_zYwBic

spindrift

June 17th, 2012, 10:50 PM

Oh, I found this curiosity!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcwiGIGMjSg&feature=related

brummad

June 18th, 2012, 12:25 AM

That's been around for almost 7 yrs

spindrift

June 18th, 2012, 12:46 AM

Never seen it. Marvellous acting by Roger Moore's eyebrows.

Vanguard

June 18th, 2012, 03:54 AM

streetlegal

June 18th, 2012, 05:29 AM

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/

Probably can't watch that in the UK, but basically the ABC(Australian Broadcasting Corporation) wheeled out some high profile 'Olympic haters' and generally portrayed the whole thing in a negative light. References to razor wire, North Korea like atmosphere, bulldozing happy communities, 'flatpack' architecture etc. Nothing upbeat at all.

Hmm.

I got as far as Will Self and gave up. Cynicism, I find, is pretty repellent and elitist in itself. No wonder he writes for the Guardian.

adrianbaggott

June 18th, 2012, 02:17 PM

Oh, I found this curiosity!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcwiGIGMjSg&feature=related

That was used for the bid in Singapore.

spindrift

June 18th, 2012, 02:38 PM

never seen it before, sorry if it's a re-post!

adrianbaggott

June 18th, 2012, 04:08 PM

Was good to see, look how young everyone looks back then, especially Griff Rees Jones and David Beckham

ferge

June 18th, 2012, 04:33 PM

Love that video, for me I think that was the clincher to winning the bid. I'm not overly familiar with other bids over the years, but clips I did see always seem corporate and contrived. The London bid video had an element of humility to it, plus it is a great song by Heather Small :|

Metroguy78

June 18th, 2012, 04:35 PM

its an awesome song, still on my iphone to work out till

rjgibb

June 28th, 2012, 04:32 PM

Think you know about London? Have a look at this "London Trivia" video (http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/2012/london-trivia-part-1.html) and other athletes' experience videos on US NBC's micro-site. Delightfully cliched stuff from our friends across the water.

levaniX

July 4th, 2012, 10:34 PM

Let me tell you something about pre-olympic coverage on Belarussian tv.

On state Belarus 2 channel(which consists of sport, entertainment and documentaries) you can see some programme called "London 2012. The Countdown"

Identity looks very 80s-90s. (so odd to see it today) And format seems to be quite old-fashioned.

At first, there you can see some polls, dedicated to all Olympics(check your skills)
Then, you can see the story about belarussian sportsmen, who will take part in Olympics
Then, something about the kind of sport, which is included in Olympics, its history, and role of Belarus
Then, ripped-off official videos by organizers, which look quite strange, it doesnt go with identity package back from 90s. Also, its in "letterbox" resolution. Originally-16:9, its compressed into 4:3.

Lloyd Lost

July 5th, 2012, 12:50 PM

Identity looks very 80s-90s. (so odd to see it today) And format seems to be quite old-fashioned.

The retro 80s-90s (with a generous dash of all other preceding decades ever) has been so persistent over the past decade that I honestly can't think what a non retrospective theme might look like. Also, hard to imagine that it might catch anyone off guard or appear "odd" or old fashioned, but I guess cultural trends don't permeate all nations to the same degree, even in the information age.

levaniX

July 5th, 2012, 07:32 PM

Honestly, Belarus 2 is not main channel, but identity of main one-Belarus 1, hopefully, is up to date.

I can record that programme next time, i think

woodgnome

July 7th, 2012, 06:49 PM

Soggy weather soaks London as Olympics loom

-- Link to Detroit News article (http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120707/NATION/207070358/Soggy-weather-soaks-London-Olympics-loom?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Sports|p) --

http://cmsimg.detnews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=C3&Date=20120707&Category=NATION&ArtNo=207070358&Ref=AR&MaxW=640&Border=0&Soggy-weather-soaks-London-Olympics-loom

After a sodden spring, is Britain heading for a summer washout? It's lurched from the cold, wet drizzle that dampened the queen's Diamond Jubilee flotilla on the Thames to a sea of mud at the Isle of Wight music festival to frequent delays at Wimbledon, where even the retractable roof couldn't make the event all strawberries and cream.

And now that the country has recorded its wettest June on record, should Olympic officials be concerned? The games are just 20 days away.

"Oh, goodness! It's only a bit of British weather," said Charles Powell, a spokesman for the Met office, the national forecaster. "It's naturally variable."

Britain is an island nation, at the mercy of winds scooping up water from the Atlantic Ocean and breezes bringing in dry air from the European continent. There's a reason trench coats are classic here. This is a country that can have four seasons in an afternoon.

In other words, if the weather is not to your liking, hang on, it will change. Things weren't looking promising on Friday, though, as Britain's Environment Agency issued nearly 100 flood alerts. Forecasters warned Britain to brace for a month's rain in 24 hours.

And if things don't brighten up, London Olympic organizers say they are ready for every eventuality.

"The main thing is that we are used to it and we have planned accordingly," said Debbie Jevans, director of sport for the games.

There are five different sailing routes at Weymouth, on England's south coast, in case of poor weather. The BMX cycling track has a cover and improved drainage following lessons learned from downpours during a test event.

Plans have been drawn to make sure organizers and spectators get the most up-to-date information possible. Five Met Office forecasters will be embedded with the games and working around the clock, providing long- and short-range forecasts for the event, which starts July 27 and ends Aug. 12.

Some extreme weather patterns may cause some delays if the safety of athletes and spectators is endangered. Beyond that, the Olympics will go on.

That hasn't stopped bookmakers from going into overdrive over all the rain-soaked bets that can be placed. British bookmaker Ladbrokes has offered odds at 50-to-1 that it will rain every day at Olympic Stadium in east London. The odds are 25-to-1 that the weather causes the flame to go out during the opening ceremony.

spindrift

July 7th, 2012, 09:58 PM

Look how happy they are in woodgnome's picture:

"I can't get wetter, let's just crack on, COME ON RAIN!"

levaniX

July 8th, 2012, 08:45 PM

recording, yeah
WN6B2i2xId0

pagey17

July 8th, 2012, 11:22 PM

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/

Probably can't watch that in the UK, but basically the ABC(Australian Broadcasting Corporation) wheeled out some high profile 'Olympic haters' and generally portrayed the whole thing in a negative light. References to razor wire, North Korea like atmosphere, bulldozing happy communities, 'flatpack' architecture etc. Nothing upbeat at all.

Hmm.

I despise Self, they deride it as flatpack yet his type advocate sustainable and their liberal approach to both immigration and our penal system has made it necessary for large scale security infrastructure.

levaniX

July 9th, 2012, 07:14 PM

Improved version
a8_GBjZ8RaI

adrianbaggott

July 13th, 2012, 03:41 PM

How silly lol

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/mcdonald-banned-other-french-fries-olympics-153018031--oly.html?fb_action_ids=4342031195920&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_ref=type%3Aread%2Cuser%3AFI5JdS4ZvCBwA3szrt8R7GGkolo&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%224342031195920%22%3A10151017845570772%7D&code=AQBdWtgfrXK9cW6r9k2p3G6GmclPO7BT5qA0J8l38fgRLn7ElKIsKAHe6dJ0ovamMiOUipv7PMNABZN8QrKTBvV34kdEyljnblk-Os2F-WH_g2rwF4TazgYSA4B320FwqKzjSU8Ik5QHb6ZiFglLpLPROzxBXK9StF7NPnXVFPfVgrwW-cVDrXkGVBmZUbEV_Y0#_=_

jerseyboi

July 16th, 2012, 08:11 PM

o7VZdiZeVhY

SkyScraperRaper

July 16th, 2012, 08:17 PM

Oh, that's good to hear, different sized athletes get different sized beds. That's a relief.

Not to sure about those rugs they have put under the foosball tables, they look a bit naff.

Must be quite exciting for these athletes now, seeing the venues and settling into a fun holiday like setting.

jonnyboy

July 18th, 2012, 05:59 PM

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/london-and-the-2012-olympic-games-a-match-made-in-hell-a-844599.html

so the germans dont like london?

eddyk

July 18th, 2012, 06:27 PM

Sour Grapes.

Screw 'em.

potto

July 18th, 2012, 06:50 PM

Steel City Suburb

July 18th, 2012, 06:51 PM

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/london-and-the-2012-olympic-games-a-match-made-in-hell-a-844599.html

so the germans dont like london?

Reads as though they've phoned the Daily Mail.

potto

July 18th, 2012, 06:55 PM

well they do mention Simon Jenkins! Yeah well done Mr Jenkins, he has probably single handedly taken off 0.1% of GDP with his incessant whining... bill is in the post ;)

RobH

July 18th, 2012, 07:07 PM

Two World Wars and Three Olympics Doo Dah Doo Dah

jerseyboi

July 18th, 2012, 07:55 PM

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/london-and-the-2012-olympic-games-a-match-made-in-hell-a-844599.html

so the germans dont like london?

eh..... read that article before and it was from Brazil? :nuts:

http://olimpiadas.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2012/07/18/uma-previa-de-um-fiasco-de-dimensoes-olimpicas.htm

Groninger86

July 18th, 2012, 08:12 PM

http://www.rtl.nl/components/actueel/rtlnieuws/2012/07_juli/18/economie/Nederland-grootste-bouwer-bij-Olympische-Spelen.xml

It's the press in Holland, Holland is the country with the biggest profit after UK. 1.3 miljard Euro. (Threes, lights, groundinspection etc, watertaxi's).

mogwai83

July 19th, 2012, 06:13 AM

Laughable just how sour the absurd canadian media still are... Ignoring that almost everything said is a work of pure fiction the bile they're spouting is rather entertaining.

zXvpjDh0MQI

Vanguard

July 19th, 2012, 07:52 AM

You can't blame these foreign media organisations for this, they're only repeating the headlines and bile that comes from the UK press.

I must say, I'm quite stunned by what the UK media is doing. It's not like they're just holding up their charter for independence and responsibly reporting deficiencies in the organisation of the games. They really are out to portray the Olympics as negatively as possible. It is deliberately vicious.

It's a race to the bottom. Hopefully they'll calm down once the medals start getting handed out.

cnapan

July 19th, 2012, 08:57 AM

"A Preview of an Olympic-Sized Fiasco"

I guess you reap what you sow ie the abilty for foreign press to pick up on all the negative rather than constructive hysteria from the media here over past couple of years. Hopefully when on the ground the reports will be different.

What are we reaping exactly? Well, the main thing is that we have sown 20 billion quid and will reap a few weeks of unusual events which lots of people will see come rain or shine.

The article is inaccurate in places but spot on in others. For example, our kids will remain fat and inactive after this costly event despite the bollocks talked of a 'legacy of fitness'. Perhaps it would have been a bit different if 10 billion were spent on sports facilities for ordinary people to use up and down the country instead.

Either way, sour grapes from a jobbing freelance journalist won't stop the even being successful because tickets have been selling like hot cakes, and good attendance is the key to the success of any event, not the weather, organisation or anything else.

cnapan

July 19th, 2012, 09:02 AM

They really are out to portray the Olympics as negatively as possible. It is deliberately vicious.

It's a race to the bottom. Hopefully they'll calm down once the medals start getting handed out.

This is what the media do. The tv news and newspapers are interested in sensation. Bad news sells. Stories of impending doom sells. If there's been some snow, they'll drive for miles to find a snowdrift to stand in and make it seem as bad as possible. If the forecast is for the snow to stop, they'll dress it up as 'the met office are warning that there may be more on its way'.

Don't expect balance or perspective - be it from a red top tabloid or the bbc. My advice is not to read or watch this drivel and just get on with life!

spindrift

July 19th, 2012, 09:23 AM

http://www.standard.co.uk/incoming/article7956309.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/Cynthia-McFadden.jpg

An American “army” of 2,800 broadcasters is descending on London as part of the biggest media operation the games has seen.

The giant team from US television channel NBC dwarfs the BBC’s 765-person London 2012 crew, and includes Martin Bashir and London adventurer Ben Fogle. An unprecedented 21,000 journalists and broadcasters will arrive in the capital for the Olympics this week.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/us-broadcast-army-descends-on-london-to-cover-olympics-7956508.html

jerseyboi

July 19th, 2012, 10:59 AM

Olympics fiasco gets global exposure see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e75dec68-d0d4-11e1-8d1d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz213bCu0rD

pagey17

July 19th, 2012, 11:38 AM

Lots of rich journalists are coming excellent news for the UK heh hehe

Gutbomber

July 19th, 2012, 11:47 AM

Plenty of this negative rubbish on the 'sports arenas' thread too. The negativity and blatant trolling on there actually brought me out of a 10 year state of lurking! Just absolutely infuriating!

Hello everyone btw...

spindrift

July 19th, 2012, 11:54 AM

More hysterical bollocks:

The Associated Press has a slightly bizarre story seemingly designed to panic tourists arriving in London. “The Olympics crush has begun in London and so has the scramble for cold, hard cash in the pricey British capital. Lines are getting longer at ATMs, visitors are in sticker shock over British prices and some befuddled tourists are wondering what currency to use. Stores in the Olympic Park only accept certain credit cards and a top British financial authority is even recommending that tourists make sure to bring British pounds with them.”

RobH

July 19th, 2012, 12:01 PM

https://p.twimg.com/AyKHQ5oCcAEa-tZ.jpg

jdjones

July 19th, 2012, 12:23 PM

More hysterical bollocks:
The Associated Press has a slightly bizarre story seemingly designed to panic tourists arriving in London. “The Olympics crush has begun in London and so has the scramble for cold, hard cash in the pricey British capital. Lines are getting longer at ATMs, visitors are in sticker shock over British prices and some befuddled tourists are wondering what currency to use. Stores in the Olympic Park only accept certain credit cards and a top British financial authority is even recommending that tourists make sure to bring British pounds with them.”

LOL, it sounds like these tourists are fucking idiots! What currency to use? Try pounds! Queuing at ATMs, you realise you can pay by card, this isn't the third world!!

shhhhhh

July 19th, 2012, 03:21 PM

This is what the media do. The tv news and newspapers are interested in sensation. Bad news sells. Stories of impending doom sells. If there's been some snow, they'll drive for miles to find a snowdrift to stand in and make it seem as bad as possible. If the forecast is for the snow to stop, they'll dress it up as 'the met office are warning that there may be more on its way'.

Don't expect balance or perspective - be it from a red top tabloid or the bbc. My advice is not to read or watch this drivel and just get on with life!

Exactly. Theres now thousands of journalists in the UK to cover the Olympics with not very much news to report. The big story is G4S seriously messing up and considering that security has always been a worry for the games, it's only to be expected that it'll be reported. All the other negative stuff is just crap to fill column inches, which will all be forgotten about in a fortnight.

In Beijing it was Human Rights this and Human Rights that throughout the buildup, followed by 'wow look at the opening ceremony' followed by a few weeks of people running fast and doing big jumps. London will be the same except Security will be the story rather than Human Rights.

potto

July 19th, 2012, 03:23 PM

although some are trying to turn temporary exclusivity rights in a sports venue into a human rights issue :lol:

BuildItBig

July 19th, 2012, 03:25 PM

In Beijing it was Human Rights this and Human Rights that throughout the buildup, followed by 'wow look at the opening ceremony' followed by a few weeks of people running fast and doing big jumps. London will be the same except Security will be the story rather than Human Rights.

Put perfectly.

It's nice when someone takes a calm step back and looks at how these stories operate.

adrianbaggott

July 19th, 2012, 04:41 PM

"A Preview of an Olympic-Sized Fiasco"

haha I guess Athens with the building running behind schedule and Beijing with its political and human rights problems had equally negative press before but all the articles so far about London have been about the Olympics being some sort of fiasco or disaster when it hasn't even started! Bizarrely the G4S security mess isn't even mentioned so cant be a reason.

I guess you reap what you sow ie the abilty for foreign press to pick up on all the negative rather than constructive hysteria from the media here over past couple of years. Hopefully when on the ground the reports will be different.

And Beijing had the smog and pollution problem and the removal of thousands off people from their homes to make way for the park. Also the farce that was the World wide Olympic torch relay, once the games started it was all forgotten, the locals loved it and there were calls for it to be called the best ever Olympics. Thankfully Sydney still holds that honour, well until the middle of August 2012 lol

ferge

July 19th, 2012, 04:54 PM

End of the day, there's going to be a fuck load of people there.. amongst them Royalty, World Leaders, Dignitaries and I imagine quite a good number of high profile VIPs, and some of the biggest names of Sport - Regardless of the 'fiasco' with G4S, they're not going to make a mess of the security, not with all those lot inside.

rjgibb

July 20th, 2012, 03:35 PM

I'm a massive Olympic apologist but even I have to admit I wryly enjoyed some of the truths in this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/sports/olympics/olympics-leave-british-complaining-even-more-than-usual.html

levaniX

July 20th, 2012, 04:15 PM

joez14

July 21st, 2012, 12:38 AM

Right. Am off to the Canary Islands with the family for a week tomorrow.

It's going to be fantastic to get away even if unfortunately I'll have to watch the opening ceremony live on SPANISH tv. But I'm sure it will be repeated in the UK / I have scheduled a recording. I shall let you all know how their coverage of the ceremony was, but luckily I'll be back in time to catch it all on the Saturday in the UK on the 24 BBC HD freesat channels.

eddyk

July 21st, 2012, 12:42 AM

Find Eurosport... ^^

I was in Spain for the entire 2008 Olympics... eurosport was my hero.

js1000

July 21st, 2012, 12:45 AM

Talk about a narcissistic thread

doddy-bjm

July 21st, 2012, 06:58 AM

What about international broadcasting?

Belarus 2 will cancel all(!!) ordinary programmes just to show all olympic events(except of lottery and weather at 9)

In Russia, theres one channel called Sport 1, and it will show olympic events only.
Also, 2 main channels share the major broadcasting of events, Russia 2 and Channel One

In Indonesia we have TVRI ( National Television) and it will show all olympic events

from Opening ceremony ( 28 July 2012) morning (local time ) until Clossing Ceremony

off course :-)

and between 150 Million Indonesian from 230 Million will be watch Opening Ceremony
(local media say) :cheers:

~Sorry for my english language ~

levaniX

July 21st, 2012, 08:57 AM

hmm, quite interesting that Opening Ceremony of 2008 Olympics wiill be repeated on Eurosport.

Nice reason to compare opening ceremonies.

bertyboy

July 21st, 2012, 02:18 PM

Talk about a narcissistic thread

Must we?

jonnyboy

July 21st, 2012, 04:51 PM

In Indonesia we have TVRI ( National Television) and it will show all olympic events

from Opening ceremony ( 28 July 2012) morning (local time ) until Clossing Ceremony

off course :-)

and between 150 Million Indonesian from 230 Million will be watch Opening Ceremony
(local media say) :cheers:

~Sorry for my english language ~

thanks for your info. very interesting. and your english is great my friend!:)

woodgnome

July 22nd, 2012, 11:29 AM

Olympics return to a London that's worlds different from 1948

-- Link to Miami Herald article (http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/22/v-fullstory/2906486/olympics-return-to-a-london-thats.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) --

In 1948, London was a broken city barely crawling out of the Second World War. The Blitz had reduced whole neighborhoods to rubble. There were shortages of milk, eggs, coal and other basics. The Olympic Games, which came here that bleak summer, were about as welcome as a sunburn.

"Our country will not be able to handle the Games: it will take too long to rebuild London," predicted one English sportswriter, as reported by author Janie Hampton in her book, "The Austerity Olympics." "England would be jolly well satisfied never to hold the Games again."

The Olympics went on, of course, and 64 years later, as the Games return here July 27, it is almost impossible to reconcile that gray place with today's London: utterly rebuilt, a vibrant mash-up of tradition and innovation, a center of global finance - even though perched at the edge of a Europe in crisis - and a magnet for migrants from all over, one of the most ethnically diverse major cities in the world.

Historians describe the summer of 1948 as a transformative time for London - not just because of those Olympic Games, which built faith that the city would recover, but also because of a remarkable piece of legislation approved that July that allowed any subject of the British Commonwealth to come to the United Kingdom and enjoy full citizenship rights. The British Nationality Act paved the way for half a million ethnic minorities, primarily from the former colonies of South Asia and the Caribbean, to move to the U.K. over the next 14 years, a tide that has never receded.

"It is really a key year," said Randall Hansen, a professor at the University of Toronto who has written about postwar London. "If you took someone from 1948 and dropped him down in London today, the most fundamental change would be how 'black and brown' Britain is compared to the 1940s, when it was chiefly white."

Today 35 percent of London's 8 million people are nonwhite, hailing from more than 90 countries, putting the city at the forefront of a demographic revolution in Europe over the past half-century. It can lay claim to being the largest Nigerian city outside Nigeria and the largest Bangladeshi city outside Bangladesh. Along its stately boulevards and redbrick lanes you're as likely to find pubs serving fish and chips as cafes hawking chicken tikka masala, the buttery Indian curry that's often called Britain's favorite dish.

The city's most iconic sporting addresses - Wembley, the northern neighborhood whose stadium hosted the 1948 opening and closing ceremonies and this year will feature soccer in a new venue, and Wimbledon, the hallowed home of tennis - boast among the most multiracial populations in London.

"People think of London and they imagine hanging flower baskets, quaint shops and people in blazers," A.A. Gill, a columnist for The Sunday Times, said in an interview. "But if you go to Wimbledon, it is like Pune," a metropolis in India.

Along the High Road in Wembley, shop signs are written in Tamil and Somali, a Caribbean barbershop sits a few doors down from a Bollywood-themed bar, and posters admonish pedestrians not to spit paan, the stuffed betel leaf that Indian men chew like an addiction.

"I never imagined a place like this," said Simon Karim, an Iraqi Christian who fled Baghdad after the 2003 U.S. invasion, landed in Sweden and moved to London four years ago. His young daughter, in school here, has learned to speak with a British accent he almost can't recognize.

"The Englishman has been everywhere in the world over the last 200 years, so anyone can feel welcome here," said Karim, standing at his coffee stall inside a small shopping center along the main road in Wembley. "I feel I am treated better than I was in Sweden. There, you are like a strange person and they only talk to you if they are drunk."

Many Londoners say that the new arrivals and their descendants are less ghettoized than ethnic minorities in other European cities. The 40-member town council in Brent, the northern borough that comprises Wembley, includes 23 people from minority communities. In 1964, when Len Snow took a seat on the council, his fellow council members were all white.

That change, said Snow, now 88, is "the most striking feature of Brent today."

Indians in the area now outnumber whites, but in 1963, when Ashwin Patel moved to Wembley, there were only three South Asian families. A young Ugandan of Indian origin, Patel landed at Heathrow Airport with little more than a suitcase and a slip of paper that he'd been given with the phone number of an Indian family. A taxi took him to their home, where he was offered a bed. The next morning, he opened his window and glimpsed the London sky: gray and polluted, nothing like the bright East African skies he'd grown up with.

"I was crying to myself, 'Why did I come here?' " he recalled.

He found a job sweeping the warehouse of a store that sold parts for heating and ventilation units. But within a year he'd learned enough about the business that the manager, an Englishman, asked him to work the sales counter. A dark-skinned man interfacing with customers was, back then, a small revolution. Customers couldn't get his name, so they called him Joe. Some of the other employees raised their eyebrows at an immigrant being promoted over them.

A few years later, when he left the company to open a general store in the west London town of Uxbridge with his two brothers, who'd followed him to England, his boss asked him to find an Indian to replace him, Patel said. But he found a less welcoming reception in Uxbridge. Two weeks after they opened, the store was broken into, the vandals scrawling an epithet on one window: PAKIS GO HOME.

A violent anti-immigrant streak had developed among skinheads and other London youth, and the fact that Patel and his brothers weren't Pakistani hardly mattered. Over the next several months their windows and locks were repeatedly smashed; when they installed metal shutters, those were broken, too. Patel and his family slept in an apartment above the store, and the attacks were terrifying.

"We didn't dare come outside," he said. "But we were very strong-minded. We just continued."

It wasn't until the 1970s, he said, that he felt attitudes toward immigrants changed. Schools began enrolling the children of the new arrivals. As in the United States, the passing of a generation has helped ethnic minorities in Britain assimilate to the point where South Asians, the largest nonwhite group, feel that "the English people have really accepted us," said Patel. Now 68 and semi-retired, his children, who have children of their own, "think this is our country."

Which is not to say that difficulties don't persist. While Indians, Chinese and other groups have generally thrived, still other communities, notably Somalis and Bangladeshis, have struggled to integrate and so remain on the margins of society. One in four people in prison in Britain is from an ethnic minority background, the unemployment rate among Muslim men is nearly 50 percent and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis report poorer health than the rest of the population, according to a 2010 study by Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Amid the economic downturn, anti-immigrant strains have reappeared in Britain, if not necessarily in London. The addition of eight Eastern European countries to the European Union in 2004 prompted a flood of new immigration, particularly from Poland. Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party came to power in 2010 promising to crack down on immigration, saying that the influx of outsiders had not only raised pressures on schools and public services, but also had frayed the social fabric.

"When there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighborhoods, perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there, on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate, that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighborhoods," Cameron said in an April 2011 speech.

Yet London, which has one of the highest proportions of migrants, is also the city where attitudes toward the newcomers are the most positive, experts say. Emad al-Ebadi, an Iraqi-born member of the Brent council who moved to London in 1980, drew a comparison to Paris, where lawmakers last year banned the wearing of Islamic face veils in public.

"Here there is no discussion of anything like that," al-Ebadi said. But he noted that integration in schools and pubs hasn't yet translated to diversity in the top ranks of society. An architect, he still feels he is passed over for big projects because executives prefer "English" faces. Even in the ethnically mixed Brent council, only three out of 10 members of the executive committee are ethnic minorities.

"We are the backbenchers. The decision-makers are still the whites," he said. "So we have a long way to go."

levaniX

July 23rd, 2012, 08:28 AM

The best unofficial logo of Olympics, ever
http://s1.ipicture.ru/uploads/20120723/3vTVW6uT.jpg (http://s1.ipicture.ru/)

pagey17

July 23rd, 2012, 08:37 AM

http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/66174/article_4ebe49766287def5_1342986703_9j-4aaqsk.jpeg

Czech art outside czech olympic headquarters

jdjones

July 23rd, 2012, 08:47 AM

The best unofficial logo of Olympics, ever
http://s1.ipicture.ru/uploads/20120723/3vTVW6uT.jpg (http://s1.ipicture.ru/)

That's such a rip of the NBC London logo:
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/assets_c/2012/05/london-olympics-nbc-logo-thumb-315xauto-40846.jpg

streetlegal

July 23rd, 2012, 10:41 AM

Anyone know if they will be live-streaming the opening ceremony online?

Honestly, America drives me nuts at times like this: NBC have the exclusive rights, but, of course, will not be showing the ceremony live . . . instead they are sticking to their usual formulaic, bland, soap-opera and chat-show daytime shit!!! Unbelievable.

They are carrying live-streams, but ONLY if you subscribe to their cable TV.

I am guessing that, with such a big media event, either the BBC or the Olympics website will be live . . . but not sure if there will be international restrictions.

Corporate America can really suck.

Any one know?

lexeme

July 23rd, 2012, 11:50 AM

If you know how to use a proxy get one with a UK IP address then go to www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/watchlive (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/watchlive) (its only SD quality though)

Or I'm sure you'll find a stream (or many) on Justin TV in HD.

Best bet is to hunt around a few hours before it starts.

jerseyboi

July 23rd, 2012, 12:01 PM

jerseyboi

July 23rd, 2012, 03:23 PM

EYES ON LONDON: The Tube, the weather and remembering an Olympic tragedy

LONDON - Around the 2012 Olympics and its host city with journalists from The Associated Press bringing the flavour and details of the games to you:

http://www.canada.com/sports/2012-summer-games/EYES+LONDON+Weather+forecasts+tighter+security+newly+minted+hometown/6974388/story.html

levaniX

July 23rd, 2012, 04:04 PM

potto

July 23rd, 2012, 04:21 PM

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/23/london-pollution-could-affect-olympic-athletes-performance/

London pollution could affect Olympic athletes’ performance

Less than a week from the opening ceremonies, allergists are warning that some Olympic athletes may suffer breathing problems due to air pollution in London.

The amount of nitrogen dioxide in London is comparable to the level of nitrogen dioxide in Beijing before Beijing banned half of the cars in preparation for the Games, and London has done little to control traffic...

rjgibb

July 23rd, 2012, 04:31 PM

Pop-up studio for Al Jazeera on the South Bank, near Gabriel's Wharf (and ITV studios). Nice views of St Paul's and the City but not an Olympic venue in sight!

http://i1225.photobucket.com/albums/ee392/Richard_Gibbard/20120723_133932.jpg

danm

July 23rd, 2012, 05:26 PM

levaniX

July 23rd, 2012, 05:38 PM

Even such dictatorships as Belarus show it!!!!

shhhhhh

July 23rd, 2012, 05:41 PM

How can no tv channel be showing the ceremony live? That's criminal.

I guess when you pay $1.5 Billion for the TV rights, you pretty much get to choose when you want to show it.

I can understand them wanting to do a prime time big event in the evening, but it seems crazy that they aren't choosing to show it live earlier in the day as well. People will end up seeing the best parts on the News channels before they get a chance to see the show.

Maybe it's purely so that they can brag about a large audience and also slip in adverts every 5 minutes without missing any of the show out.

streetlegal

July 23rd, 2012, 06:29 PM

Thanks for your suggestions, guys--much appreciated!

Yeah NBC have the exclusive rights and they are using it to push everyone to buying their cable package. I just have basic digital cable.

I was shocked when I found out that it wasn't be broadcast live, but should have guessed. American terrestial TV is shockingly bad. It hates anything that might involve risk, a change in its rigid formulae, or less adverts.

I suspect I'll find something online . . .

streetlegal

July 24th, 2012, 08:00 AM

Looks like I am not the only one who is mega-pissed off. Maybe I will take a trip to Canada where I can watch it live! Only in America!

http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2012/07/23/london-olympics-nbc-opening-ceremonies-still-quite-delayed/tab/comments/#comment-153555

levaniX

July 24th, 2012, 08:05 AM

So, yes, Olympic logo of Belarus 2 is just a rip off from NBC

gunners

July 24th, 2012, 09:49 AM

spindrift

July 24th, 2012, 09:51 AM

London ranks among worst European cities for air pollution
Air quality study judges UK capital to be 'below average' for its lack of action on tackling deadly soot particles

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/07/london-worst-european-cities-air-pollution

Hot, still days are the worst, from London Bridge you can see the pollution hanging in the air.

madjackmcmad

July 24th, 2012, 11:07 AM

About the only people not loving the Olympic Village are the Indians
http://www.firstpost.com/sports/london-olympic-village-not-up-to-indias-high-standards-388684.html#.UA5iCI2aJbc.twitter

Not up to Indias 'high standards' apparently.

jdjones

July 24th, 2012, 11:37 AM

Of course, this is what they provided the Commonwealth in Dehli 2010:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/23/world/asia/23lede_games1/23lede_games1-blogSpan.jpg

http://images.brisbanetimes.com.au/2010/09/23/1945003/games1-600x400.jpg

http://resources1.news.com.au/images/2010/09/24/1225928/653441-delhi-games-village.jpg

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/2267724-3x2-340x227.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b263/dewi123sant/3-115.jpg

potto

July 24th, 2012, 12:57 PM

looks like they were moaning primarily at the space in each apartment

danm

July 24th, 2012, 05:16 PM

RobH

July 24th, 2012, 06:11 PM

Now, now - those pictures were from a few apartments before the Commonwealth games started. The athlete's village in Delhi actually turned out to be pretty good.

But the Indian athlete is complaining about space - what he seems to forget is that there are thousands more athletes for the Olympics than there were for the CWG, so space was always going to be an issue. You have to compromise on space per flat in order to accommodate the much higher number of athletes.

Those pictures aren't representative of what the athletes saw in Delhi but some were in that state when Chefs de Missions arrived to inspect the apartments on behalf of their teams. The problems were sorted in the end. The major issue with Dehli was the fact that teams didn't know what was going on and more than one team delayed their arrival because of the scramble to get the village ready. It disrupted the athletes' and teams' preparations somewhat to be in this state of uncertainty so late on.

Also, if I remember correctly, the Dehli village was to be transformed into high-end apartments after their Games, so in that sense it's hardly surprising if they were more spacious than London's equivilent. But you build what you need for after the Games. The general concensus regarding London's village has been postitive from what I've heard and given that it fulfills every IOC requirement and is walking distance from the competition venues, I don't think many athletes will be grumbling.

Palimpsest

July 24th, 2012, 08:02 PM

Some good photography of competitors is already emerging: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/07/23/sports/PhotoReplay20120723.html

And you might also be interested in AP's site: http://www.ap.org/Content/Press-Release/2012/AP-turns-Eyes-on-London-as-Summer-Games-coverage-unfolds

woodgnome

July 25th, 2012, 12:38 AM

London Olympics chaos welcome after sterile Beijing

-- Link to USA Today article (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/story/2012-07-24/Brennan-London-Olympics/56455656/1) --

LONDON - The traffic jams are likely to be terrible. Protesters are expected to be plentiful. Rain is likely to come back with a vengeance later this week, just in time for the Opening Ceremony. There will either be too few tickets for too many people or too many seats for too few people. There will be complaints from Londoners and visitors alike about everything, especially the traffic, protests and rain. Many of their negative comments will immediately appear in the pages and websites of a multitude of London newspapers and tabloids.

Isn't it wonderful?

After the International Olympic Committee sold its soul to give the Games to Beijing and the authoritarian and repressive Chinese regime in 2008, the Summer Olympics are coming back to an open, free and democratic society. They are coming back to a place where they belong, to a country and city that is encouraging its citizens to celebrate with it rather than keeping them away from venues with police crime-scene tape or detaining or arresting them — things Chinese authorities repeatedly did to their people before and during their precise but sterile Olympics.

In Beijing, people crowded the downtown train station the night of the Opening Ceremony to watch on a big-screen TV, but authorities came along moments before the event began, unplugged the television and told everyone to go home. In London, however, people are being encouraged to turn the Games into a neighborhood celebration.

Everything good and bad will be on display for all to see in London, which is exactly as it should be. That begins with Friday's Opening Ceremony, which is bound to be compared (perhaps unfavorably) with Beijing's overwhelming, $100-million-plus homage to itself on that stifling August evening in 2008.

Sebastian Coe, the man in charge of the London Olympics, was flying from England to Beijing when the ceremony was taking place. "When I came through the airport, anybody I saw greeting people was talking about the Opening Ceremony," he said in an interview several months ago. "'Oh my god, it was unbelievable, it was massive, it was grandiose, we've never seen anything like this.' "

Coe said he was expecting his staff to have been "a little cowed by what they'd seen." But he couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised. "They were all sitting there, saying, 'It was really good, and we just can't wait to get ours done.'"

We can only hope that it's the show we're talking about come Saturday morning. The joys of an open society can dissipate quickly when security becomes a great concern - and we can safely report that security is an omnipresent issue as the Games near. To say London is an armed camp is to vastly overstate the issue; there are many sections of this huge city that exhibit absolutely no signs of added security. But around the Olympic Park and other venues, it's a different story, with the British government deploying 1,200 more soldiers to add to the 3,500 it enlisted earlier this month to help the beleaguered and understaffed security company it hired.

On the bright side, at least they inform us about this. Beijing officials barely told anyone anything.

The threat of terrorism has hovered ominously over every Olympic Games since the tragedy of the 1972 Munich Games, when 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed by Black September terrorists. The day after London won the right to host the Olympics in July 2005, 52 people were killed in suicide bombings on the London transit system. Although no connection was made between the bid and the bombings, it's human nature to wonder, even now.

Disruptions of a lesser magnitude loom as well. Public-service workers from passport inspectors to train drivers are threatening to strike Thursday, which would create havoc in the city 24 hours before the Games begin. Ah, the joys of a free society.

That said, let the Games begin, and let the complaining begin too. Thank goodness.

woodgnome

July 25th, 2012, 03:12 AM

Negative piece on tonight's CBS News (video).

With only three days left until the start of the 2012 Olympic Games, the London organizers brought in 1,200 more soldiers to increase security. Mark Phillips reports on the whether the city is ready to host the world's biggest sporting event. (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7416046n)

capslock

July 25th, 2012, 09:59 AM

levaniX

July 25th, 2012, 09:41 PM

Not sure where to post it

The dictator was not allowed to be on the Olympics in London
http://charter97.org/photos/20101113_luka3_t.jpg
Organizers of the Olympic Games denied accreditation of Aliaksandr Lukashenka.

This was reported on his account on Twitter by the Chairman of the Russian Olympic Committee Alexander Zhukov.

"President of the NOC and London Olympic organizing committee has not given accreditation," - he wrote.

The Belarusian leader is in the "black list" of the European Union due to repressions against the opposition, falsification of the elections, and human rights violations in Belarus. He, as well as more than 200 other Belarusian officials and businessmen, are forbidden to entry the EU.

At the opening of the London Olympics will arrive a record number of heads of states - about 120.

As charter97.org reported previously with a link to the British press, the organizers of games also are not going to invite a number of other notorious dictators, such as Bashar al-Assad and Robert Mugabe.

http://charter97.org/en/news/2012/7/25/55647/

Steel City Suburb

July 26th, 2012, 02:02 PM

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/sports/304418/opening-ceremony-a-pine-tingling-spectacular

potto

July 26th, 2012, 05:35 PM

Ahhh, the inconvenience of a tolerant free society (relatively speaking of course). I'd rather live in a city of bloody minded, grumbling, creative people, than a city of herded sheep.

A good article. :)

Hmm interesting at the comments in that article seemed to dismiss that journalist opinion piece as lies, but Ai Weiwei the respected Chinese intellectual and artist has written a similar piece in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jul/25/china-olympics-london-ai-weiwei?newsfeed=true

Ai Weiwei withdrew from the Beijing 2008 Olympics opening ceremony and was declared a threat to the police state. Here he explains why he hopes the London Games will be different

levaniX

July 26th, 2012, 07:06 PM

Logo of Eurosport, including Olympic logo
http://i43.fastpic.ru/big/2012/0726/7f/bc60391668a695faeda54ebf355c207f.png

Gavrosh

July 27th, 2012, 01:43 PM

London as a local: 10 tips for Olympic survival

http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/how-be-london-local-10-tips-faking-it-970492?hpt=iol_bn7

very amusing

potto

July 27th, 2012, 01:59 PM

yeah that was good, not sure about the shopping Paris bit though, that is more of a global cliche than a British one.

try this one from the BBC...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18983558

chrissus83

July 27th, 2012, 02:24 PM

London as a local: 10 tips for Olympic survival

http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/how-be-london-local-10-tips-faking-it-970492?hpt=iol_bn7

very amusing

The bit about the night buses made me laugh out loud at my desk. Nothing says "I'm not working" quite like laughing at your computer monitor when at the office :-)

danm

July 27th, 2012, 04:29 PM

London as a local: 10 tips for Olympic survival

http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/life/how-be-london-local-10-tips-faking-it-970492?hpt=iol_bn7

very amusing

Too true :lol::

3. How to eat a balanced diet

A common misconception among newcomers is that an evening out in London will involve a meal. Failure to prepare for this can lead to lightheadedness, nausea and kebabs.

If someone suggests going for a drink after work, they mean drink and nothing else. Booze will be bought in quantity and at no time will the issue of dinner raise its ugly head.

To avoid a woozy stagger home via a frightening fast-food outlet, the sensible socialite takes dietary precautions.

It is acceptable to order prepackaged bar snacks such as crisps (potato chips) or peanuts to soak up some of the alcohol. Alternatively, try ordering drinks that offer a sliver of nutritional value, like a pint of London Pride beer or a cocktail with an olive.

In some bars you may see something called “Pork Scratchings” for sale. These are not for you.

10. How to survive the night bus

For all its crowds, grunge and frequent signaling failures at obscure stations like High Barnet or Cockfosters, when compared to the night bus, the London Underground represents the height of luxury travel.

Night buses are the last resort; the creaking life rafts that bear disaster survivors across the treacherous ocean that is suburban London in the wee hours.

Journeys that take 20 minutes by Tube, can take up to 48 hours on the night bus. During this time, the sun will not rise and many on board will either perish or get off and walk.

To survive this ordeal it is crucial to remain awake at all costs. Listen to loud i-Pod music, engage in rambling conversations with other passengers or play dodge the empty vodka bottle as it trundles towards you across the floor.

If you do succumb to sleep, expect to be woken up as the driver gleefully turfs you out at the end of the line -- usually a dark lane deep in the countryside.

You’re a long way from London now, innit.

cnapan

July 27th, 2012, 08:45 PM

That was hilarious.

My favourite:

"This is when commuters stack into train carriages like a human version of Tetris. Every conceivable space is filled. Bodies press against bodies. Limbs intertwine with limbs.

Despite the intimacy of these encounters (some marriages never achieve the levels of physical contact found on the Underground), it is an important rule of Tube etiquette not to acknowledge them.

So, even when you find a stranger inadvertently wedged into crevices of your body that you never knew existed, under no circumstances must you look them in the eye"

So true...

woodgnome

July 28th, 2012, 09:01 PM

Record-setting opening ceremony for NBC

-- Link to ESPN article (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=oly&id=8209044) --

The Olympics opening ceremony was seen in the U.S. by 40.7 million people, making it the most-watched opening ceremony for a summer or winter Olympics.

The Nielsen company said Saturday that the average viewership topped the previous record of 39.8 million people who watched the opening of the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta. The London festivities bucked a tradition that American viewers are generally more interested in these ceremonies when they are on U.S. soil.

The 2008 ceremony in Beijing reached slightly fewer than 36 million people.

The strong ratings came despite -- or perhaps because of -- complaints about NBC not streaming the ceremony live online.

spindrift

July 28th, 2012, 09:03 PM

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/7/28/1343487622693/2012-Olympic-Games---Open-008.jpg

An investigation is under way in the Indian Olympic camp after an impostor slipped into the opening ceremony and hogged the limelight from the real athletes.

The unidentified young woman, wearing turquoise trousers and a red hoodie, led out the team in the stadium despite having nothing to do with the squad, who were all wearing yellow turbans or saris.

India's chef de mission, PK Muralidharan Raja, has demanded an explanation from organisers. "She had no business to walk in with the Indian contingent and we are taking up the issue with the organisers.

"We don't know who she is and why she was allowed to walk in. It is a shame that she was with the athletes in the march past," Raja told Indian media

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/28/india-olympic-investigate-imposter

Strange story.

deepblue01

July 29th, 2012, 04:24 AM

Just like that kid slipping through the security at the airport

Be it set up or not, these small acts are there to embarrass London, just disregard it.

I prefer an impostor to a terrorist lol

woodgnome

July 29th, 2012, 05:34 AM

Opening ceremony a celebration -- of protest and dissent

-- Link to Sports Illustrated article (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/olympics/2012/writers/alexander_wolff/07/27/london-opening-ceremonies/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a0) --

Somewhere amidst the traumatized pasture animals; and Mr. Bean's reenactment of Chariots of Fire on the beach; and the parachute jumps of James Bond and the Queen from a helicopter; and the joint lighting of the cauldron by seven young British athletes, each chosen by a former Olympic great -- somewhere, that is to say, between Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins' ringing of the Olympic Bell and the echo of Paul McCartney's final note of Hey Jude -- artistic director Danny Boyle smuggled into the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics a worthy and important thing.

He gave us a chance to celebrate protest and dissent.

Four years ago, after a comparable night on the other side of the globe, the rest of the world had a moment of collective sadness for the London organizers. No way could the stagers of the next Olympics possibly equal Beijing's lid-lifting spectacle. But tonight we learned that if the guy in front of you zigs, it's best to zag. Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire, spent almost four times less money and deployed roughly one-tenth as many people. But he outstripped the previous Olympic host city by flaunting what the Chinese actively suppressed.

This was pageantry as jiu-jitsu. While Britain's coalition government weighs further cuts to its government-run health-care system, Boyle went out of his way to honor the National Health Service, with real NHS employees as nurses capering on hospital beds.

The show also included a nod to the early-20th-century suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and the Jarrow Marchers, who in 1936 walked more than 300 miles from County Durham to London to protest hunger and joblessness. When Boyle made a point of inviting their descendants to the proceedings, he also made a point to us.

With The Queen in the house, we heard music from the Sex Pistols, the same band whose God Save the Queen was banned by the BBC. Boyle meant for us to take to heart that line from The Tempest, read early in the evening by Kenneth Branagh: "Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises."

On these isles of wonder, tumult is a good thing.

The Olympics, of course, have a long and troubling history with protest and dissent. The Games have mostly been hostile to them. Showing in other parts of London right now are two productions of a much more modest scale, each of which speaks to this. One is a documentary called Salute, which tells not only of black Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who were banned from the Olympic movement for raising fists on the podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, but also of the white Australian silver medalist, Peter Norman, who got similar treatment for wearing a badge, in solidarity with Smith and Carlos, because he objected to the treatment of Aborigines in his own country. (Smith and Carlos served as pallbearers at Norman's funeral in 2006.)

The other, a play called 1936, was written by former British Olympic track coach Tom McNab. It makes the case that history would have followed a different course if the Olympic movement had stood up to Hitler before he turned the Berlin Games into the propaganda exercise that helped consolidate his power. Olympic blazer-wearer Avery Brundage, so appalled by the Mexico City protest years later, did all he could to suppress any disapproval of the Nazi regime, much less support organizers of a U.S. boycott.

Even today, you can't wear a Che Guevara or Jean-Marie Le Pen t-shirt into an Olympic venue. The sole instance in which the Olympic movement has stood up for protest and dissent was its shunning of South Africa's apartheid regime.

So all props to Boyle, the son of a boiler stoker and a school lunch lady, who lives in Tower Hamlets, one of the East London communities adjacent to the stadium where he let loose his colors and sounds on the world.

Somewhere in the cacophony of last night, during what might have been the world's largest Twitter storm, this nugget emerged: Hey Jude was No. 1 on the charts the day Smith and Carlos raised their fists -- and that single's B-side was Revolution.

To speak one's mind or assert one's rights is as irrepressible a human instinct as running or jumping. Of that, let us be not afeared.

TJF

July 29th, 2012, 06:25 AM

What, if I where a Che Guevara t-shirt down to the aquatics centre they won't let me in? Nice article mostly, but really?!

Gavrosh

July 29th, 2012, 01:54 PM

what are all those poor sods in jean marie le pen T-shirts who knew nothing about this rule going to do now?

woodgnome

July 29th, 2012, 09:12 PM

The worst Olympics ever: the London Games looks ugly – literally

-- Link to Guardian article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jul/29/worst-olympics-ever-vancouver-london-revenge) --

Two years ago the Vancouver Winter Olympics was labelled the worst Games ever by the Guardian. It's time to turn the tables

It wasn't difficult to recognise the strategy in London's coverage of the 2010 Games in Vancouver. As a Canadian citizen, I'm attuned to crippling insecurity, and the UK press's insistence that we were staging "the worst Games ever" was teeming with it.

But no hard feelings. Disparaging the Vancouver Olympics was a savvy approach for the knock-kneed nation going next. What better way to ensure that London won't be viewed as a momentous disappointment than by setting the bar as low as possible? Of course, this strategy works a whole lot better if, after deprecating the previous Games until an afternoon at Crufts feels like a grander occasion, you don't rest on your laurels so completely that you still manage to limbo below the bar.

The London Games is looking ugly, and I mean that literally. It started early, with the unveiling of that painful logo, the colour scheme for which appears inspired by a Nike catalogue. It resembles either Lisa Simpson performing a sex act or a child's illustration of the breakup of Pangaea. Granted, a long look eventually yields an Easter egg – a "2012" hidden amid the horror – but, like an eclipse, it's hard to stare at it long enough to appreciate it. (Has the sun taught you nothing, London? Perhaps if you saw it more often.)

But a logo that's best viewed through a pinhole projector is just the beginning. The official font looks like the result of a search through Microsoft Word for the script that best screams "fun". Thank God Locog started at the end of the alphabet and not the beginning, or all the Olympic signage would be written in Comic Sans.

In fairness, not everything has been an eyesore. Danny Boyle's opening ceremony looked absolutely beautiful, and it had some truly fun moments. Finally putting James Bond and the Queen on the same screen was a deft touch (as was sparing us a scene depicting what Bond usually does when he finds himself in the room with a powerful woman).

The ceremony may have been a touch too keen in its representation of the host country, however. For example, the 15,000-person army of volunteers acted as a trenchant nod to British history, since the United Kingdom is an empire built on the backs of volunteers, willing or otherwise.

And a ceremony overloaded with musical acts underscored Britain's tendency to overhype their musicians to the point of absurdity. I especially liked the appearance by the Arctic Monkeys, a band the UK press has gone to such embarrassing lengths to "Lisa Simpson" over the years that a Briton might be forgiven for assuming the opening ceremony was the only venue befitting their prodigious talent.

Of course they performed a Beatles song. Self-aware the festivities were not.

But I guess we shouldn't be surprised at the United Kingdom's lack of self-awareness when their press smugly gave us the term "worst Olympics ever" two years before they began to define it.

Harrison Mooney is a writer for the Vancouver Sun – @harrisonmooney