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The London 2012 torch mixes the Olympian and the corporate

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/19/the-london-2012-torch-mixes-the-olympian-and-the-corporate

Sponsors to the fore in torch relay but who will light the flame in the London 2012 Olympic stadium?This article titled “The London 2012 torch mixes the Olympian and the corporate” was written by Owen Gibson, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 19th May 2011 09.58 UTCAs Seb Coe stood up to speak about the inspirational effect of the flame that will a year from now be passing through the cities, towns and villages of Britain having been “lit by the power of the sun on Mount Olympus”, three other figures looked on intently.They sat alongside him as he went on to talk about the galvanising effect he expected the tour to have on communities as the Olympic spirit coursed through them and they hosted their own celebratory events in the early summer gloaming.And they listened intently as Coe spoke affectingly about a husband and wife team who sold their house so the community gym they run in south-east London could survive – his nomination for one of the 7,200 out of 8,000 torchbearer slots reserved for members of the public.The three onlookers, who then got to take their turn to speak, were representatives of the three “presenting partners” – Samsung, Coca-Cola and Lloyds TSB – who get to plaster their branding over the torch relay. The man from Coca-Cola alone promised to bring “happiness and celebration” to the route.It is they (along with local authorities along the way) who effectively pay for the hoopla that will surround the torch relay that organisers hope will be the moment that the nation drops any lingering cynicism and truly embraces the Games.It was the most obvious manifestation in London to date of the sometimes uneasy, but ultimately profitable, mix of heady Olympic ideals and hard-nosed commercialism that has turned the modern Games into the globe-straddling event that it is.The genius of the International Olympic Committee’s commercial growth since the Los Angeles Games of 1984 has been to rake in huge sums from sponsors while enforcing very strict rules on how they can use the rights.As one of the very few events that the IOC allows them to overtly brand, the torch relay is where that symbiotic relationship – the organising committee Locog needs the sponsors to contribute £700m towards its £2bn budget, the sponsors want to extract every last drop of value out of their huge investment – becomes clearest.So it was that Coe began his press conference invoking the loftiest of Olympic ideals and ended it defending the involvement of Coke and answering questions on how many fizzy drinks his children guzzled.In common with their wider activity to date surrounding the London Games – which has tended to focus on warm and fuzzy corporate social responsibility activity rather than overt branding – all three sponsors have bought into the idea of using the relay as a means to run campaigns offering worthy members of the public the opportunity to claim their own slice of Olympic history and run a few hundred yards with the torch.A Locog team has spent two years painstakingly researching the 8,000-mile route and negotiating with local authorities. They hope that when the relay hits town, backed by wall-to-wall coverage from local media who will concentrate on the rich back stories of those running and the celebratory event that will take place every night (something between a Radio 1 roadshow and a county fair sponsored by multinationals, by the sound of things) Olympic fever will take hold up and down the country.Whether they succeed will depend to a large extent on those sponsors. If they get it right, Locog, the brands and the public will benefit. Get it wrong, and it could dent public enthusiasm.Sally Hancock, head of 2012 at Lloyds TSB, argued at the launch that in many ways the Olympics couldn’t have come at a better time for her company. Struggling to repair public trust and negotiating the internal challenge of merging two huge banks, the opportunity to create a feelgood factor around an event that is at once local and national in scale could be a huge one.But if the public is turned off and fails to buy into the concept – Locog has promised half the runners will be between 12 and 24 and 90% will be ordinary members of the public, to be nominated through four separate campaigns by the organisers and the sponsors– then it will feel like a long 8,000 miles.Locog will also have to get the balance right between safety and celebration. The defining public image of the Beijing international torch tour, which caused the IOC to turn it into a domestic event confined to the host country, was of a scrum of security guards bludgeoning their way through human rights protesters as bussed-in supporters of the Chinese government looked on.The UK’s experience will be becalmed by comparison. But Coe – who has often described Britain as a “slow-burn nation” that will take time to reach fever pitch over the Olympics – knows more than anyone how crucial it is that the relay is the moment at which the flame ignites that enthusiasm.And by the time the torch reaches the Olympic stadium, the eyes of the world will be on it. Which raises three obvious questions: Who will light the cauldron? How? And where will it be (there is still debate within Locog about whether it should be in the stadium, on top of it or on some sort of structure nearby)?The most memorable final torchbearers – Muhammad Ali in Atlanta, Cathy Freeman in Sydney – have held resonance beyond merely their status as sporting heroes in their home country. And the more spectacular the method of lighting the cauldron (the archer in Barcelona, the flying Beijing gymnast), the greater the risk of global humiliation.The task for Danny Boyle, the Trainspotting director already planning the opening ceremony in an east London warehouse, will be to come up with something to top what has gone before. Bookmakers immediately installed Sir Steve Redgrave as favourite, but will the emphasis on youth that characterised the bid promises lead organisers to a younger face? Coe, who might have been a leading contender were he not already so intimately involved with the staging of the Games, has already ruled himself out. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThe London 2012 torch mixes the Olympian and the corporateRelated posts:London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame routeLondon 2012 Olympics countdown clock stopsLondon 2012: Ten best of the web
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May 19 2011, 5:24am | Comments »
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London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/18/london-olympics-organisers-appeal-to-protesters-not-to-disrupt-flame-route

Lord Coe says he is confident balance can be struck between security and celebration as he unveils locations of the Olmpic torch’s 70-day journey around the UK to herald the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games.This article titled “London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route” was written by Owen Gibson, sports news correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th May 2011 16.03 UTCLondon 2012 organisers called on protest groups not to disrupt the 8,000-mile journey of the Olympic flame around the UK, after unveiling its route for the first time.Lord Coe, chairman of the London organising committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), said he was confident the balance could be struck between guaranteeing the safety of the 8,000 torchbearers and ensuring a celebratory atmosphere.“We will make sure that the torch flame gets around the UK in the safest and most secure way, but at the same time we want communities to celebrate it and not [put it] behind a cordon of steel. I think we’ll get the balance right,” he said.He appealed to protest groups not to target the route of the torch, which according to tradition will be lit on Mount Olympus before beginning its journey around the UK at Land’s End on 18 May next year.“This is friendship, this is respect, this is showcasing extraordinary talent in local communities. I really don’t sit here thinking this will be a catalyst for massive demonstrations. I think people get this,” he said.The Beijing torch relay in 2008, the last that ventured beyond the borders of the host country before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) changed its policy, was chiefly remembered for protests and heavy-handed security. In Vancouver, protesters disrupted the last few days of the event, sparking counter-demonstrations from those supporting it.Coe, unveiling the first 74 locations on the torch’s 70-day tour of the UK, said the relay would be vital in igniting enthusiasm for the London Games beyond the capital and insisted that it would not be a giant marketing exercise for sponsors.“I am proud and excited as I envisage the moment that really marks the start of our Olympic celebrations in the UK and far beyond,” said Coe, who ran with the torch ahead of the Vancouver Games.“As it made its way around Canada, it drew renewable power from every community it passed through. As it made its journey across that huge land mass, Vancouver’s Games became Canada’s Games.“That is London 2012′s intention too. Ours will be a Games that takes place on your doorstep.”The 8,000 torchbearer places are divided between Locog and the three “presenting partners” – Coca-Cola, Lloyds TSB and Samsung – who will help fund the events that will take place at each overnight stop.As the only part of the Olympics that can be branded, it is likely the sponsors will have a heavy presence but, like Locog, they have promised to make the vast majority of their torchbearer places available to members of the public.Coe said more than 90% of places would be taken by the public, with half of the torchbearers aged between 12 and 24.Locog has already launched its own nominations campaign, inviting the public to put forward members of their community with inspiring stories.The sponsors will take a similar approach in distributing the tickets to the public and staff. The cast of public torchbearers is likely to be augmented by athletes and celebrities.The announcement has also sparked speculation about the likely identity of the final torchbearer who will light the cauldron in the Olympic stadium at the climax of the opening ceremony, with bookmakers installing Sir Steve Redgrave as favourite.The final route will take the torch to within an hour of 95% of the population across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and six outlying islands. It will visit the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Shetland, Orkney and the Isle of Lewis. Coe said Locog was also in advanced talks to take the torch to Dublin.British IOC member Sir Craig Reedie said the route would also pass UK sporting landmarks including Wimbledon, Old Trafford, St Andrew’s and Much Wenlock in Shropshire, the birthplace of the modern Olympics.The event will also be crucial to the cash-strapped British Olympic Association. Under the terms of its recent settlement with Locog after it backed down in a row over the division of any surplus from the Games, it will receive the royalties to two branded items of Olympic merchandise.In Vancouver, more than 3.5m pairs of red mittens were sold to those who lined the route to raise money for Canadian sport. The BOA will unveil its branded merchandise next year. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame routeRelated posts:London Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment processLondon 2012 Olympics countdown clock stopsIran claims London 2012 Olympics logo spells ‘Zion’
May 18 2011, 11:57am | Comments »
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Olympic stadium completed on time

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/29/olympic-stadium-completed-on-time

London 2012 Olympic Stadium designers hail ‘the beginning of the end’ of the construction phase as the main arena comes in on schedule and under budget.

This article titled “Olympic stadium completed on time” was written by Owen Gibson, for The Guardian on Tuesday 29th March 2011 19.51 UTC The designers of the Olympic Stadium in east London have hailed its completion as “the beginning of the end” for the construction phase of the 2012 Games. As International Olympic Committee inspectors arrived in the city for a three-day visit to check on progress, organisers hoped the good news on the completion of the Stratford stadium would overshadow an ongoing row with the British Olympic Association over how any hypothetical profit would be distributed. Lord Coe, the chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, watched Frankie Fredericks, a four-time Olympic silver medallist, lay the last piece of turf on the infield. The £486m stadium is the second major venue on the Olympic Park to be finished, after the Velodrome was unveiled earlier last month. “I do not want anybody to run away with the idea that this stadium is ready to stage a track-and-field championship tomorrow,” said Coe. “But as a chairman of an organising committee to be able to tick off this venue is terrific. It is fantastic. I think it will be an intimate theatre for sport and it has fantastic legacy potential, too.” Work began on the 80,000-seat stadium in May 2008 and the Olympic Delivery Authority, which is responsible for spending £8.1bn of public money on the infrastructure to host the Games, said its completion was a “huge milestone”. “The Olympic Stadium has been finished on time and under budget,” said ODA chairman John Armitt. “To complete a complicated project such as this in less than three years is testament to the skill and professionalism of the UK construction industry.” Rod Sheard, of stadium architects Populous, said he was looking forward to watching “this innovative design perform for the first time”. He added: “Its completion marks the beginning of the end of the construction phase of London’s Olympic Games.”

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March 29 2011, 3:35pm | Comments »
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Will the 2012 Olympics be a sell out?

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/24/will-the-2012-olympics-be-a-sell-out

Now the London 2012 Olympic Games tickets have been on sale for a week, the success of the event in London will be determined by the sports fans.

This article titled “Will the 2012 Olympics be a sell out?” was written by Owen Gibson, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 24th March 2011 11.21 UTC It is an extraordinary ticketing process in more ways than one. Ten days into the application process for 6.6m of the 8.8m tickets to the biggest sporting event ever to hit these shores and it remains hard to precisely calibrate the level of enthusiasm for being there. The keenest have constructed elaborate spreadsheets and affixed colour coded Post-it notes to their already dog eared Guardian guides as they try and spread their bets between events they are desperate to see and their chances of getting the hottest tickets (opening and closing ceremonies, velodrome, evening athletics sessions among them). For others, next August still feels like a long way away – particularly if there are more pressing financial concerns. My barber reckons he’ll leave it until closer to the time and see what’s left, our childminder has become so used to picking up tickets at the last minute from eBay or Viagogo that she too can’t see the point in shelling out more than a year before the Games. For some football fans, there’s the annual debate about whether to renew their season ticket to be had first, for others a discussion about whether to forego the family holiday in favour of the Games. The fact that Locog has promised a ticket resale system has perhaps encouraged those inclined to wait it out. Locog has successfully communicated the “marathon not a sprint” message to avoid a rush on the first day that applications opened – but could be a victim of its own success if people translate that as a signal not to hurry at all. Expect the reminders about this being the best chance to secure tickets for the events you really want to see to increase in frequency as the closing date on April 26 approaches. For the media too, there seems to be uncertainty about how to judge success. The usual media narrative around the sale of tickets for big events (Glastonbury, Take That, Champions League final) runs like this: huge hype around the onsale date, followed by a mad rush, creaking technology and a spate of stories about tickets being sold for exhorbitant sums and online scams. Because this process is so different, we have instead already seen the first stories hinting that sales have been “steady” rather than spectacular. In truth, it is hard to criticise Locog for doing exactly what they said they would do – give people time to find their way through a complex process. During this period of stasis, Locog – which can monitor what registered users are doing – believes many people are still calculating their options and trying different combinations of tickets in their online shopping baskets before hitting the buy button. Such is the scale of the task – 645 sessions across 26 sports at five main price points – that it was never going to be simple. Locog deserves huge credit for thinking long and hard about how to balance the need to raise the £2bn required to stage the Games with its promise to make it as accessible as possible. The eye watering prices for the most expensive (including that £2012 opening ceremony ticket) were justified on the basis that it was better for that money to flow to Locog, where it could subsidise cheaper price points, than touts who would mark them up anyway. But even given the number of £20 tickets (2.5m), the pay your age scheme, the concessions for over 60s and the free tickets for some school kids there is no getting away from the fact that the sums involved soon add up – particularly if you are buying for a whole family, and particularly if you are coming from outside London. There are already some grumbles about the high prices of the packages being sold through Thomas Cook and for all the entreaties from Locog and the Mayor to the hotel industry, staying in London during the Games was never going to be cheap. Which? has also raised concerns about the fact that money could come out of ticket buyers accounts on May 10 but it could be as late as June 24 before they are told which tickets they have. For most, it is likely to be a big outlay in one go. And while some have alighted upon the solution of applying for a Visa card with an interest free period to spread the cost, it is something of a surprise that Locog have not put in a place a more formal scheme to pay in installments. While reluctant to go into detail about levels of demand for individual sports and sessions, organisers say they are pleased with the level of steady engagement and that the spikes of demand are largely where you would expect them to be. Sports that are less familiar, but on the Olympic Park, are unlikely to prove too difficult to shift as people look for a relatively cost effective way of grabbing a slice of the atmosphere. More problematic could be the events at the cavernous Excel. And there must be a nagging fear that the there is a band of mid range tickets – those around £300 that are not the prized blue riband ones that people will want at all costs, nor the relatively cheap ones that will give you a slice of the experience – that will prove most difficult to shift. Somewhat ironically, given the extent to which it dominates media coverage and conversation in this country, football is likely to give organisers the biggest headache. With more than a million tickets to sell to a population who perhaps see the Olympics as an antidote to football’s dominance for the rest of the sporting calendar, just a few weeks after Euro 2012, it is a big ask. Bear in mind too that the Olympics (under 23 with a handful of over age players) is not the pinnacle of achievement as it is for most other sports, while the political issues surrounding the British team appear endlessly intractable. And while 2012 represents a huge opportunity for women’s football in this country if organisers can fill the Ricoh Stadium in Coventry or St James’ Park to see, say the Japanese women’s team take on the Swedes on a night when Team GB is going for gold elsewhere the Locog marketing and ticketing gurus will deserve every one of the plaudits that will flow their way. Locog chief executive Paul Deighton has set a high bar by promising to marry an electric atmosphere with full stands in all venues, while selling out all tickets. It is something that has never been achieved in recent Games. He has the British love of sport and major events of any kind on his side. But our natural cynicism and tendency to wait until the last minute might yet leave him with some nervous moments.

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March 24 2011, 1:28pm | Comments »
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London’s 2012 Olympics must be a ‘regeneration games’

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/londons-2012-olympics-must-be-a-regeneration-games

Unless the London 2012 Olympics deliver their promised regeneration legacy for East London, the whole project will have ultimately failed

This article titled “London’s 2012 Olympics must be a ‘regeneration games’” was written by Dave Hill, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 15th March 2011 12.57 UTC There are 500 days to go, the tickets are on sale and the big question on Radio 5 Live this morning was, “Are you up for the Olympics?” Well, I am, in spite of everything. Everything? Well, there’s been Locog’s miserable decision to switch the marathon route away from the East End, enabling overseas TV viewers to be spared seeing what real East Enders look like and instead compare their chocolate box mental images of Buck House with scenic pictures of the real thing. There’s the mad prices of some of the seats and the lurking whiff of ligging and privilege. There’s the colourful tale of Boris Johnson, his “fund-raising champion“, her former lover and the eighty grand that unhappy gentleman coughed up to help an arty monument tower immodestly above the Olympic Park. The result, being bolted together as we speak, is formally called the ArcelorMittal Orbit, though London blogger Diamond Geezer thinks only by people who write press releases. Then there’s the logo, which I still can’t learn to love. There’s the unending, well-meaning bilge about the Games inspiring a modern equivalent of Muscular Christianity, when we all know perfectly well that Britannia’s couch potatoes will take still deeper root when high definition telly makes it plainer to them than ever that serious sporting exertion involves pain. Most of all, there’s my bedrock scepticism about the Olympic project as a whole: I like sport, but the industry that attends it is absurd; I like the idea that London 2012 will bring prosperity to what has long been the capital’s poorest compass point, but am wary of the very concept of urban regeneration. Who really profits in the end? And yet I’m “Up for the Olympics” anyway. For one thing, is there a choice? The rash of post-credit crunch commentariat demands that London 2012 should emulate the austerity Games of 1948 struck me as joyless and contrary. There was no point in rowing back by then. The Games have long been a case of in for a lot of pennies, in for a lot of pounds and work like crazy to make the investment pay. For another thing, I live near the Olympic Park. Once these words are safely launched I’ll be running from my doorstep to the stadium and back as part of my London Marathon training schedule. Over the months I’ve watched the various venues grow from seed. I challenge anyone to stand on the Greenway linking Stratford and the River Lea and remain unstirred by the romance of the Olympic vision even if, like me, you fret that history will judge it foolhardy. I don’t mean patriotic dreams of sporting glory, intoxicating though they are. I mean those hopes that the running and the jumping, the pedaling and the diving, will indeed prepare the ground for the gradual creation of new London neighbourhoods that bring new jobs and homes to the Londoners who need them most and exemplify the best in big city planning. West Ham’s securing of the stadium as their new home was a hopeful sign. Neither their bid nor Tottenham’s was ideal, but the principle that the publicly-funded Games infrastructure should have some continuing public use has been honoured. Will the same spirit guide the sorts of homes built on the wider Olympic Park – the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as it’s become since the general election – over the next twenty years? Will as many as possible be affordable to low-paid and even averagely-paid Londoners? Will the press and broadcast centres, which have formed before the sometimes disbelieving eyes of residents of Leabank Square, really give career opportunities to locals who lack them now? I could be applying for my Freedom Pass by the time answers to such questions are truly known. Tomorrow morning, the London Assembly will be trying to find out if those answers will be “yes”. Unless they are, more ominous one will soon arise. What were the 2012 Olympics really for?

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March 15 2011, 8:11am | Comments »
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West Ham win delivers Olympic Stadium option nobody wanted

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/11/west-ham-win-delivers-olympic-stadium-option-nobody-wanted

West Ham United Tottenham Hotspur Why couldn’t they have organised a stadium sharing system with West Ham and Tottenham Hotspur both playing at a rebuilt Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London? After having taken away the running track, of course.

This article titled “West Ham win delivers Olympic Stadium option nobody wanted” was written by David Conn, for The Guardian on Thursday 10th February 2011 21.40 UTC The expected decision to hand the Olympic Stadium to West Ham United, a £600m jackpot for the club’s owners, David Sullivan and David Gold, will deliver precisely the post-Games option nobody would have sanctioned at the beginning: a permanent athletics track with 60,000 seats around it. Sullivan has said they will make it work, for supporters, financially and for community use, and that after looking closely at the design he has changed the view he held when he and Gold took over the club, that: “I don’t think running tracks work, particularly behind the goal. The customers are so far back it doesn’t work.” There are two accepted principles in planning a stadium to host the Olympics or other multi-sport events, both of which will have been overridden if West Ham’s bid is accepted. First: the only way a major stadium can be financially viable after the tournament, certainly in this country, is if it is occupied by a football club. That was resisted in the Olympic board’s original decision to reduce the stadium after the games to 25,000 seats with a permanent track. That decision was made partly out of distaste from the then mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, the Olympics minister Tessa Jowell and the bid spearhead Sebastian Coe for handing a glistening asset built with public money to wealthy Premier League club owners. Second: after the Games themselves, during which 80,000 spectators and global billions of viewers will be enthralled by the athletics, no similar crowd will ever watch what happens on the track again. Except possibly once in the stadium’s lifetime, for finals day of a World Athletics Championships. That is why retractable seating over the track, as at Stade de France, is widely seen as a good solution, or the City of Manchester Stadium option, of taking the track away completely, as Spurs were bidding to do in Stratford, and relocating it at a refurbished 25,000-seat Crystal Palace. That was why the design Coe, Jowell and Livingstone approved was temporary above 25,000 seats. Richard Caborn, the then sports minister, argued vainly for West Ham to occupy the stadium with retractable seating but he was overruled. West Ham’s proposal is to build the seating back up to 60,000 permanent seats, using £95m to install proper facilities and a more durable roof. Their pitch is that the stadium will be “intimate”, with none of their fans as far from the action as the outermost seats at Wembley – but Wembley is a 90,000-seat venue. In the proposed post-Olympic stadium, West Ham fans will have a track between them and their team – a minimum 35-metre distance according to the rival Tottenham bid, not confirmed by West Ham. Spurs pointed to major clubs in Europe, including Bayern Munich and Espanyol, who have moved or are moving out of their originally Olympic stadiums for newly built, dedicated football grounds with no tracks, and at the underuse of tracks left in modern Olympic stadiums. West Ham, however, are propounding the view, which Caborn supports and the Olympic Park Legacy Company is expected to approve, that incorporating a track is important symbolically. West Ham have said there will be 20 first-class athletics events in the stadium each year, although they have not specified what they are. Generally only the Diamond League event, once a year, which features Usain Bolt and other box office stars, attracts a capacity crowd to a maximum 24,000-seat Crystal Palace. UK Athletics will have to work extremely hard to promote its sport and prove the track is not the white elephant Spurs are arguing, retained for a gesture. Football will pay for the stadium, as the Olympic board did not want to accept first time round. West Ham insist they can fill it, saying they have 17,000 fans on a paid-for waiting list, as well as the 33,000 average crowd at Upton Park this season. “We anticipate a 60,000 sell-out for the big games,” West Ham say, with Gold promising to make tickets cheaper than standard Premier League prices, affordable to less well-off east London supporters, with some given away to local schools and community groups. The £95m for converting the stadium to a permanent 60,000 seats with the improved roof consists of a £40m loan from Newham council, a partner in the move, £35m provided by the OPLC and a projected £20m from selling Upton Park. The financial requirements on the partners in the separate company which will take over the stadium, principally West Ham, are to maintain it with no further cost to the tax payer, pay a rent, share some of the income and distribute profits for community activities. Neither West Ham, Newham, nor the OPLC will say yet what the rent is, how revenue will be shared, or what the profits are expected to be, even though the stadium has been built entirely with public money. West Ham have pledged that they can meet all the costs whether they remain in the Premier League, with its £45m average TV income and possible 60,000 crowds, or are relegated to the more straitened Championship. If it all does succeed as West Ham promise, it would result in the profitability and value increasing of a club who were close to insolvent before Gold and Sullivan bought 60%, for £30m each, last year. They have said that, as West Ham fans, they do not ever intend to sell, and want to own the club “for generations”. There are, though, no guarantees, and the partners, both of whom made their initial fortunes in pornography, made £27.5m each when they sold Birmingham City to Carson Yeung’s Hong Kong-based company in 2007 and 2009. Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Thai prime minister, who had been convicted of corruption offences in Thailand, made a £130m profit when he sold Manchester City to Sheikh Mansour in 2008, the club’s value heightened by the occupation of Eastlands, built with public money for the Commonwealth Games. That was a scenario Coe, Jowell and Livingstone wanted to avoid, by sanctioning the reduced 25,000-seat bowl for which no viable legacy could be found. The OPLC has not yet said whether it has introduced any provisions to claw back money if Gold and Sullivan do, after all, make a super-profit from the Olympic Stadium.

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February 11 2011, 5:08am | Comments »

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Get Andy Roberts Sampler CD

The Andy Roberts Sampler CD has four tracks including Gernika. Available from Havering Folk Club on Wednesdays or from Andy Roberts Sampler CD page.

Andy Roberts Sampler CD

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Andy Roberts Photos

More than 3,000 pictures in sets imported from Flickr here on

Andy Roberts Photo Blog

London Theatre Breaks

Andy Roberts is an editor writer at:

London Theatre Breaks

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