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The creation of a new company to deal with the 2012 Olympics legacy is a belated but welcome development.
Construction of the Olympic park in east London is now well under way, yet there has been far too little thinking about how this physical legacy should be safeguarded. The new company's first task will be to oversee the Olympic park's planning application this summer. The risks are clear. The cost of the venues keeps rising, as yesterday's report made clear: the bill for the main stadium alone has now risen to £543 million.
Yet as our report from Athens today makes plain, there is no guarantee that specialised venues will be properly used after the Games. In the Greek capital, stadia stand empty, strewn with litter. We need a real plan for how the 2012 site is integrated into the housing, parks and other developments planned to live on after the Games.
There must also be a much clearer plan for how grassroots sport will benefit from these venues.
This paper has supported the Games from the start, though we are a broad church when it comes to dissenters like the columnist on this page.
But we need a greater commitment to their sporting legacy. The Mayor's sports commissioner, Kate Hoey, is trying to stitch together a plan based on grassroots sports groups but such work has never been the priority for Games organisers that the original bid implied that it would.
Moreover, grassroots sports clubs are being harmed by the diversion of National Lottery funds to the Olympic site. The sporting legacy is — or should be — an integral part of the physical legacy for London of 2012. The new company must establish a credible plan for an Olympic park that people will want to live in and use.
Londoners will not forgive the organisers of 2012 if we are landed with Athens-style white elephants, rather than a credible legacy.
Silence in class
Most parents and teachers agree that better discipline is the key to improving school standards. Yet for all this Government's efforts, truancy and expulsions are still high so new Conservative proposals are welcome. Shadow education secretary Michael Gove says the Tories would give teachers powers to confiscate mobile music players. More significantly, they would increase headteachers' powers to exclude pupils and introduce enforceable home-school contracts covering behaviour.
The plans are a step in the right direction but leave some questions unanswered. Expulsions and suspensions can simply displace problem pupils to the streets, unless proper provision is made. Effective referral units are expensive. But the new powers would at least send a message to schools that discipline was a top priority, something that has been blurred by the Government's drive to reduce expulsions.
These proposals are also a measure of the distance that the Conservatives have moved on education under Mr Cameron and Mr Gove. Where once the party gave the impression of caring about little beyond grammar schools, Mr Gove has built support for a much more open education policy, this week embracing ideas such as a “pupil premium to reward schools for taking pupils from poorer homes”. But no matter how inventive the funding mechanisms, better behaviour is crucial if schools are to raise the low standards that blight schools for so many.
New best friend
In the race to be the first world statesman to meet President Obama, it seemed Gordon Brown had only one serious rival, the prickly French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. Alas, the Prime Minister reckoned without his old nemesis, Tony Blair. Yesterday Mr Blair was at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, shaking hands with the President and kissing the First Lady. Mr Obama referred to the former PM as “my good friend”. Mr Brown must be furious. Bankers may hang on his every word. But Tony won the race to be Obama's new best friend.
