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We ARE halfway there: today is the mid-point between London winning the bid to host the Olympics in July 2005 and the start of the Games themselves in July 2012.
In our interview today, the newest member of the 2012 organising committee, Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King, highlights how close the Games are with his emphasis on spectators' experience. But there is an equally urgent issue facing Games chiefs: securing the Games' physical and sporting legacy.
That will be the responsibility of David Gregson, the new chairman of the Mayor's legacy board of advisers. Today the Olympic Delivery Authority predicts a rapid growth in jobs this year, rising to a total of 11,000 next year.
Overall, companies stand to gain £6 billion from Olympics contracts. The physical legacy of the Games will add to the sporting infrastructure, leaving the main stadium, two Olympics pools and a velodrome, although the inability of Olympic chiefs to agree a stadium design that can be used by other sports is deeply regrettable.
These new facilities must be able to support not only bigger one-off events but also grassroots sport. This is crucial to ensuring that the Games translate into greater physical activity on the part of Londoners.
The Mayor's Sports Commissioner, Kate Hoey, will shortly launch her plan for London's sporting legacy: it must aim to increase participation in sport across the whole city, not just the East End. To achieve this the Mayor must also must ensure that plans for a sports academy are carried through. Meanwhile, as our architecture correspondent Rowan Moore argues today, we should also seize the opportunity to create more green spaces in wasteland around the site, with grass, trees and even temporary allotments.
The groundwork has been laid but now planners must redouble their efforts if 2012 is to deliver real, long-term benefits to the city's spaces and to the fitness and health of its inhabitants.
Toxic banks
REPORTS that ministers are considering a “bad bank” to take on the sector's toxic assets is the clearest sign yet that the banks are still in deep trouble.
The disclosure of horrendous bad debts at Merrill Lynch and appalling results at Citigroup should destroy any remaining ministerial self-satisfaction over having “saved” the banks.
Deputy Bank of England Governor John Gieve delivered a similar message today, warning that Britain could “relapse” into the worst of the financial crisis and that Government forecasts could still be too optimistic.
The banks' continuing failure to lend is a result of the still-mounting toll of bad debts, most of them in the US sub-prime mortgage sector. That has not been altered by efforts to increase liquidity such as this week's business loan guarantee scheme, nor by tumbling interest rates.
The theory is that the new “bad bank” would accept banks' bad debts, thereby freeing up capital tied up in covering the debts for new lending. But taking on those debts will be risky and probably very expensive for the taxpayer.
At this point, there may be few alternatives to such a plan. But any such government help must be tied to cast-iron assurances that the banks finally come clean about their debts. A little humility from bankers would not go amiss either. The other obvious option now being discussed — full bank nationalisation — is surely not a future they would choose.
And celebrating...
JOHN MORTIMER. His death robs us of one of our most prolific dramatists. Mortimer's writing career spanned half a century, for several decades of which he was also a practising barrister. And it was this that gave him the inspiration for his most celebrated character, Rumpole of the Bailey. Lawyers are rarely loved; but this gentle humorist and polymath, one of the brightest stars of London's social scene, commanded universal affection.
Reader views (1)
I hope all commentators will take a pledge not to comment unless they have visited the Olympic Park (or even the London 2012 website) less than 7 days before publication.
"Legacy in advance", such as
the £100m works to Stratford station and
the progress of the Stratford City development despite the recession
is obvious to all visitors to Stratford.
The problem is legacy items being chopped from imminent construction, such as the Health Centre left out of the Olympic Village and the postponed western entrance at West Ham station.
- Alan Griffiths, Forest Gate, LONDON. UK, 18/01/2009 08:44
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