Olympics overspend
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marafi
Rolling down the hills with the bike.
- Location
- univeristy is my home for now. lol
Its a silly amount where the government can use the money for fixing the countries economy. We are properly very low in the level of economy around the world. Dam look at China.
MissTillyFlop
Evil communist dictator, lover of gerbils & Pope.
Actually, I'll think you'll find that was the 2008 "last legal drink on the tube" party:
God that was brilliant!
My beef with the Olympics is that it has failed to deliver on key parts of the promises made - namely changing the marathon route, investing in sports in the UK, actually regenerating the East End instead of creating a hermetically-sealed new one where the tourists won't actually have to mix with actual eastenders or visit actual east-end businesses (yeah, because the thing the people of Stratford and surrounding envrions really needed above all else was a Prada shop, ffs You want a library? How about an £800 handbag instead?!).
Yes, it's created jobs in a shopping centre, but as we know, shopping centres tend to have a nasty habit of killing small, local businesses, which is exactly the sort of business the Olympics were supposed to help.
And, if all we can offer in this amazing COUNTRY of ours (because, believe it or not, it does extend beyond the perimeter of the M25) is a clinical shopping centre, which could be anywhere, really, some lego building flats and some stadiums, some of which will be used after the games, some of which will be dismantled at another great cost to us (I'm seriously thinking of witholding £35 a year council tax til this is over) then we might as well start tearing down the castles and burning Shakespeare and Dickens on a pyre right now.
There is nothing about this Olympics which seems to be at all representative of the UK in these games so far...oh hang on, apart from incompetance (the logo that gives people epilepsy and a terrifying robotic cyclops named after a small town in Shropshire - really? - bring back Benno the bear, all is forgiven!) and rewarding the already superwealthy with contracts and corporate treats.
Pardon my cynicism, I'm sure the games will go fantastically well, but they will be sterile and retain exactly 0% of the charm and quirk the British Isles.
subaqua
What’s the point
- Location
- Leytonstone
sorry the IBC hasn't ben let yet and channel 5 are NOT in the bidder list . http://www.legacycompany.co.uk/fash...d-for-the-olympic-park’s-commercial-district/
Eastenders was touted as coming here. PS the media centre also looks nothing like the flythrough shows it. and thats less than 2 years !!
what will happen is the park will become a dogmess broken glass and litter strewn no go zone .
I am not saying that what was here before was better but i think the money wil dry up before all the lagacy works are finished and all the greenfierled stuff that was built won't be returned to its former glory Drapers field for example. if you loom you will find lots and lots of nasty things done in the name of "sport" and "the olympics" have a look at whats happening on Wansted flats part of epping forest to see how much "regeneration" is being done
subaqua
What’s the point
- Location
- Leytonstone
what like leabank square right opposite the park have been http://leabanksquare.blogspot.com/ see even the locals don't like whats going on. i really think you need to get out of London Dawesome as the fumes or something seem to be putting you into cloud cuckoo land.
oh and fior the record I was in favour of the games when it was announced we had won it. not now my eyes have been opened.
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
Isn't that up to the people who live nearby? Places like, oh I don't know, Leytonstone?
subaqua
What’s the point
- Location
- Leytonstone
different Local Authority. bit like salford and trafford councils in manchester. close but no cigar. and if the rest of Newhams (and waltham forest if truth be told) street services is an example it will inded be a tip very quickly. i regularly brush the area in front of my house as the street services were cut to pay for the olympics.
and for dawesome- nobody is saying that east london shouldn't have improvements its just what actual benefits the supposed improvements that have been delivered wil be. some of the money spent on the park could well have been spent on improving/maintaining sports facilities in the host boroughs. leyton leisure lagoon could get its extra lifeguard back so the flume could be reopened on family fun swim .
http://www.lifeisland.org/?page_id=2 great way of "improving" east london here
srw
It's a bit more complicated than that...
Mad at urage
New Member
- Location
- Just N of Cardiff
I merely quote too, but I cut out different bits - odd how it makes a different story
.One doesn't like to get too political at these times, but it is MASSIVELY cheaper than either our military (and ongoing civil) engagement in Iraq or our always-nearly-finished conflict in Afghanistan.
What did the Iraqi foray achieve? Regime change dressed up as some sort of WMD threat dressed in a non-link with fear of Al-Qaeda.
Are things better in Iraq today? Pffff... (and Gallic shrug).
Did we care so much about changing the despotic bin Saud regime? No. They are our friends and we sell them stuff.
How will Afghanistan look ten years from now? Twenty years? Has it been worth the blood and treasure paid?
I think the Olympics look like pretty good value when measured up against that lot.
Also nicer to look at and less likely to attract a documentry crew following an ex-Eastenders fatboy, pseudo-hardman geezer.
Ooops. i seem to have got off the fence for a moment. And straight onto a moral high horse. Silly me!
What did the Iraqi foray achieve? Regime change dressed up as some sort of WMD threat dressed in a non-link with fear of Al-Qaeda.
Are things better in Iraq today? Pffff... (and Gallic shrug).
Did we care so much about changing the despotic bin Saud regime? No. They are our friends and we sell them stuff.
How will Afghanistan look ten years from now? Twenty years? Has it been worth the blood and treasure paid?
I think the Olympics look like pretty good value when measured up against that lot.
Also nicer to look at and less likely to attract a documentry crew following an ex-Eastenders fatboy, pseudo-hardman geezer.
Ooops. i seem to have got off the fence for a moment. And straight onto a moral high horse. Silly me!
[QUOTE 1698973, member: 45"]Two lies. And some bad spelling.[/quote]
Subaqua predicted confidently that the whole area will be strewn with dog mess and broken glass.
That's as insulting to East Londoners as anything I can think of. The implication being we don't deserve any of this and won't be civic minded and the whole area will be a "no-go zone", presumably cos of the feral eastender gangs roaming around raping nuns.
Prejudice, in other words.
The fact is more Londoners are positive about the games than negative. It's a British trait to moan and complain and predict disaster. Slagging off the Olympics by saying East London people will ruin it is just daft.
Subaqua predicted confidently that the whole area will be strewn with dog mess and broken glass.
That's as insulting to East Londoners as anything I can think of. The implication being we don't deserve any of this and won't be civic minded and the whole area will be a "no-go zone", presumably cos of the feral eastender gangs roaming around raping nuns.
Prejudice, in other words.
The fact is more Londoners are positive about the games than negative. It's a British trait to moan and complain and predict disaster. Slagging off the Olympics by saying East London people will ruin it is just daft.
London 2012: Isles of Wonder is Olympic ceremony theme
London 2012's opening ceremony is to be called Isles of Wonder, organisers have revealed six months ahead of the Games.
The ceremony's artistic director, Danny Boyle, revealed the name at a press briefing alongside creative director Stephen Daldry.
Boyle said it would be about a land that has been poisoned by industrial legacy and the recovery of that land.
It is anticipated the opening ceremony on 27 July will be watched by one billion TV viewers.
Advertising experts estimate this is worth up to £5bn in airtime exposure.
Bolye, who is best known for directing Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, said they had commissioned the biggest ringing bell in Europe to hang at one end of stadium and ring at opening of Games.
It is to be inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest: "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises".
Boyle said he wanted people to hear it "for hundreds of years".
'Fabulous opportunity'
Talking about all four Olympic ceremonies Daldry said they were the "greatest shows on earth and the task was enormous."
He said they represent one journey to the end looking at who we are, who we were and who we would wish to be.
More detailed information will be released about the artists in April and the content of opening ceremony in June, he added.
At the opening ceremony Boyle will again be collaborating with electronic musical duo Underworld whose 'Born Slippy' featured in Trainspotting.
The pair have been named musical directors of the three-hour ceremony.
Some 20,000 performers are being sought for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Cast of 15,000 volunteers
23,000 costumes
12 hours of music
60 musicians
15,000 sq m of staging
13,000 propos
one million watt PA system with 500 speakers
They will be drawn from members of the public and more than 10,000 have already been auditioned.
Speaking earlier on Friday about the challenges that lay ahead in the next six months, London 2012 Chairman Seb Coe said it was a fabulous opportunity but a "heavy weight of responsibility".
Locog chief executive Paul Deighton said it would be all about attention to detail as well as building the excitement and helping people to be a part of what will be "the greatest thing this city has seen in their lifetimes".
A ceremony was also being held marking the handover of the Athletes' Village, on the Olympic Park in Stratford, from the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) to Locog.
The 2,818 flats will now be fitted out to cater for 16,000 athletes and officials from 200 countries.
London 2012's opening ceremony is to be called Isles of Wonder, organisers have revealed six months ahead of the Games.
The ceremony's artistic director, Danny Boyle, revealed the name at a press briefing alongside creative director Stephen Daldry.
Boyle said it would be about a land that has been poisoned by industrial legacy and the recovery of that land.
It is anticipated the opening ceremony on 27 July will be watched by one billion TV viewers.
Advertising experts estimate this is worth up to £5bn in airtime exposure.
Bolye, who is best known for directing Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, said they had commissioned the biggest ringing bell in Europe to hang at one end of stadium and ring at opening of Games.
It is to be inscribed with a quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest: "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises".
Boyle said he wanted people to hear it "for hundreds of years".
'Fabulous opportunity'
Talking about all four Olympic ceremonies Daldry said they were the "greatest shows on earth and the task was enormous."
He said they represent one journey to the end looking at who we are, who we were and who we would wish to be.
More detailed information will be released about the artists in April and the content of opening ceremony in June, he added.
At the opening ceremony Boyle will again be collaborating with electronic musical duo Underworld whose 'Born Slippy' featured in Trainspotting.
The pair have been named musical directors of the three-hour ceremony.
Some 20,000 performers are being sought for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Cast of 15,000 volunteers
23,000 costumes
12 hours of music
60 musicians
15,000 sq m of staging
13,000 propos
one million watt PA system with 500 speakers
They will be drawn from members of the public and more than 10,000 have already been auditioned.
Speaking earlier on Friday about the challenges that lay ahead in the next six months, London 2012 Chairman Seb Coe said it was a fabulous opportunity but a "heavy weight of responsibility".
Locog chief executive Paul Deighton said it would be all about attention to detail as well as building the excitement and helping people to be a part of what will be "the greatest thing this city has seen in their lifetimes".
A ceremony was also being held marking the handover of the Athletes' Village, on the Olympic Park in Stratford, from the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) to Locog.
The 2,818 flats will now be fitted out to cater for 16,000 athletes and officials from 200 countries.
Maybe they should have rounded up and exterminated the local residents first?
This is a stupid and insulting thing to say, the people in East London aren't feral.
Temporary you say?
Olympics will leave east London an open space to rival Hyde Park
Plans for a concert field, wetlands, meadows, and fitness trails in Lea valley
An artist's impression of the London 2012 Olympic stadium. Photograph: Press Association
After the athletes have gone and the flame has moved on, the biggest public park in more than a century will emerge from the site of the 2012 Olympics in London.
Its designers hope the 270-acre park (pdf), which will open in 2014, will capture the spirit of the great Victorian parks whose creators hoped to counteract the urban squalor of the industrial revolution.
The new park will have two rather more modern goals: to teach people to reduce their carbon footprint and to fight obesity. This week the organisers of the London games will unveil the initial plans for the park, which its designers claim will rival Hyde Park as the capital's greatest open space.
Acres of asphalt laid to withstand the 4 million visitors expected during the games will be torn up and replaced with meadows, wetlands and lawns, including a concert field with room for 50,000 spectators. George Hargreaves, the American landscape architect hired to design the park, said: "It will characterise east London and give the area an equal weight to the west. This will be east London's equivalent of Hyde Park."
A 120-metre wind turbine will loom above orchards and vegetable patches designed to encourage local food production, while a miniature biomass power station will run on willow cut from the park's wetlands. Steep scrambles and jumps will be incorporated into paths to help strollers fight the flab.
The Olympic park will cost the public purse £200m and will be built around the valley of the river Lea which runs from the Eurostar train station at Stratford to the Thames. At almost two and a half miles in length, the park will follow the form of the narrow river valley and will be fringed by intensive developments of offices and thousands of homes that are planned for the area after the games.
The athletes village will be transformed into almost 4,000 apartments which will overlook the new landscape. The park will be narrow and at one point just a couple of hundred metres across. This is partly down to the need to sell on much of the land which has been decontaminated especially for the games, to recoup costs for the event which have risen to £9.3bn.
Officials admit building a park is essential for increasing the value of neighbouring developments, a strategy that informed the development of Regent's Park by John Nash in the early 19th century. The Olympic Delivery Authority said the as yet unnamed Olympic park will be the largest new urban open space since the Victorian public park movement which produced grand spaces including Birkenhead Park by Joseph Paxton in 1847 and the Derby arboretum which opened as Britain's first public park in 1840. Until then, places like Hyde Park and Regent's Park had remained royal hunting grounds.
"They were built as part of the outcry about poor public health and squalor that flowed from the industrial revolution," said John Hopkins, head of parklands at the ODA. "The new agenda at the beginning of the 21st century is about achieving sustainability. Health remains a concern, particularly obesity."
Set among orchards, allotments, hazel coppice and nut groves, a "one planet pavilion" will demonstrate ways of living a low energy lifestyle. On the other side of the park, a miniature biomass power station will show how local energy generation can slash carbon emissions. The designers are planning to build a network of fitness trails, and outdoor gyms with equipment embedded in the landscape to encourage visitors to take more exercise. Steep 10m drops into the river valleys will be fitted with climbing walls and canoes will be for hire on the seven miles of waterways.
More conventional exercise activities will include a cricket pitch, novice and extreme mountain bike trails and horse-riding. A 10-acre grassland will be available for impromptu football kickabouts.
The plans seem a long way from fruition as scores of diggers clean up land contaminated with oil, diesel and low-level radioactivity from the area's postwar history as one of London's most intensive industrial areas. Specialist teams have swept the site for unexploded second world war bombs and are tackling an invasion of Japanese knotweed, a plant that grows so aggressively it can crack concrete.
"We plan to create another world with wetland habitats and broad expanses of meadows in the centre of east London," said Hargreaves. "This will be one of the great parks of London. I want it to become a park which gives a memory of London hosting the games.
"We are looking to achieve a grand scale and some epic spaces where you will sense the echo of 250,000 people moving through the park."
He intends to plant alders, dogwoods and willow to attract kingfishers and herons to the wetlands and traditional London trees, such as planes and limes, in the upland areas. The Olympic stadium will be scaled down to 25,000 seats and is likely to remain in use for sport, with Leyton Orient, the League One football club, the frontrunners to use it as a home ground. Just outside the park, the Olympic swimming pool will be available for public use.
Once the park is built, in 2014, its management will be taken on by the London Development Agency and the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, which owns part of the land. A detailed plan is due to be submitted this year.
Olympics will leave east London an open space to rival Hyde Park
Plans for a concert field, wetlands, meadows, and fitness trails in Lea valley
An artist's impression of the London 2012 Olympic stadium. Photograph: Press Association
After the athletes have gone and the flame has moved on, the biggest public park in more than a century will emerge from the site of the 2012 Olympics in London.
Its designers hope the 270-acre park (pdf), which will open in 2014, will capture the spirit of the great Victorian parks whose creators hoped to counteract the urban squalor of the industrial revolution.
The new park will have two rather more modern goals: to teach people to reduce their carbon footprint and to fight obesity. This week the organisers of the London games will unveil the initial plans for the park, which its designers claim will rival Hyde Park as the capital's greatest open space.
Acres of asphalt laid to withstand the 4 million visitors expected during the games will be torn up and replaced with meadows, wetlands and lawns, including a concert field with room for 50,000 spectators. George Hargreaves, the American landscape architect hired to design the park, said: "It will characterise east London and give the area an equal weight to the west. This will be east London's equivalent of Hyde Park."
A 120-metre wind turbine will loom above orchards and vegetable patches designed to encourage local food production, while a miniature biomass power station will run on willow cut from the park's wetlands. Steep scrambles and jumps will be incorporated into paths to help strollers fight the flab.
The Olympic park will cost the public purse £200m and will be built around the valley of the river Lea which runs from the Eurostar train station at Stratford to the Thames. At almost two and a half miles in length, the park will follow the form of the narrow river valley and will be fringed by intensive developments of offices and thousands of homes that are planned for the area after the games.
The athletes village will be transformed into almost 4,000 apartments which will overlook the new landscape. The park will be narrow and at one point just a couple of hundred metres across. This is partly down to the need to sell on much of the land which has been decontaminated especially for the games, to recoup costs for the event which have risen to £9.3bn.
Officials admit building a park is essential for increasing the value of neighbouring developments, a strategy that informed the development of Regent's Park by John Nash in the early 19th century. The Olympic Delivery Authority said the as yet unnamed Olympic park will be the largest new urban open space since the Victorian public park movement which produced grand spaces including Birkenhead Park by Joseph Paxton in 1847 and the Derby arboretum which opened as Britain's first public park in 1840. Until then, places like Hyde Park and Regent's Park had remained royal hunting grounds.
"They were built as part of the outcry about poor public health and squalor that flowed from the industrial revolution," said John Hopkins, head of parklands at the ODA. "The new agenda at the beginning of the 21st century is about achieving sustainability. Health remains a concern, particularly obesity."
Set among orchards, allotments, hazel coppice and nut groves, a "one planet pavilion" will demonstrate ways of living a low energy lifestyle. On the other side of the park, a miniature biomass power station will show how local energy generation can slash carbon emissions. The designers are planning to build a network of fitness trails, and outdoor gyms with equipment embedded in the landscape to encourage visitors to take more exercise. Steep 10m drops into the river valleys will be fitted with climbing walls and canoes will be for hire on the seven miles of waterways.
More conventional exercise activities will include a cricket pitch, novice and extreme mountain bike trails and horse-riding. A 10-acre grassland will be available for impromptu football kickabouts.
The plans seem a long way from fruition as scores of diggers clean up land contaminated with oil, diesel and low-level radioactivity from the area's postwar history as one of London's most intensive industrial areas. Specialist teams have swept the site for unexploded second world war bombs and are tackling an invasion of Japanese knotweed, a plant that grows so aggressively it can crack concrete.
"We plan to create another world with wetland habitats and broad expanses of meadows in the centre of east London," said Hargreaves. "This will be one of the great parks of London. I want it to become a park which gives a memory of London hosting the games.
"We are looking to achieve a grand scale and some epic spaces where you will sense the echo of 250,000 people moving through the park."
He intends to plant alders, dogwoods and willow to attract kingfishers and herons to the wetlands and traditional London trees, such as planes and limes, in the upland areas. The Olympic stadium will be scaled down to 25,000 seats and is likely to remain in use for sport, with Leyton Orient, the League One football club, the frontrunners to use it as a home ground. Just outside the park, the Olympic swimming pool will be available for public use.
Once the park is built, in 2014, its management will be taken on by the London Development Agency and the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, which owns part of the land. A detailed plan is due to be submitted this year.
