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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The London 2012 torch mixes the Olympian and the corporate
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May 19 2011, 5:24am | Comments »
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Marks & Spencer makes Paris comeback with Champs Elysées store
New Marks and Spencers shop to open in Paris France 10 years after controversial retreat. Items on offer will include food – by popular demand.
This article titled “Marks & Spencer makes Paris comeback with Champs Elysées store” was written by Kim Willsher in Paris, Dan Milmo and Marie Winckler, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 17.54 UTC Shortbread and Earl Grey tea are heading back to the Champs Elysées later this year as Marks & Spencer returns to France, a decade after its retreat across the Channel prompted street protests in Paris. The retailer replanted a British flag in the heart of the Gallic retail industry by announcing, 10 years after it quit the capital amid stern criticism from trade unions, politicians and ardent muffin fans, that it would open a shop on Paris’s most famous boulevard before Christmas. The retailer is opening a three-storey outlet on the Champs Elysées, towards the end of this year. What is more, following a clamour by British organisations in France and threats of a boycott, it will be selling not only women’s clothing and lingerie – as first thought – but also food. Thoughts of ready meals and cheddar cheese may still appal a nation that gave the world haute cuisine. But French foodies have a grudging respect for the venerable British retailer, and Parisians were excited about the “grand retour”. Comments on French newspaper websites were overwhelmingly positive. Audrey Guttman, 23-year-old Parisienne arts consultant, said: “Special occasions in my childhood were peppered with Marks and Spencer delights such as Bugs Bunny-shaped fried chicken and Percy Pigs soft candy. I was devastated when they left, and the same items coming in from London just didn’t quite taste the same afterwards.” However, like many she was doubtful about the uncool choice of location: “Really, Marks and Spencer, the Champs-Elysées?! It’s not 1999 anymore!” French blogger Wendy Nourry Breguet, 25, added: “As a Frenchie, Marks & Spencer has always been an Ali Baba’s cave of food, fresh products, spices, foreign foods, which are absent from most French shops.” Pierre Cornette, a 28-year-old gallery owner was less convinced: “M&S plays on its super image in France for quality and tradition, but I can’t really see how it’s going to sell its English products to a Paris clientele, above all in this age of organic produce.” As well as the 1,000 sq metre Champs Elysées shop, there will also be five Simply Food stores at “transport hubs” such as railway stations in Paris and a “handful” of larger shops in and around the French capital. A website, trading in euros, will be launched and will be the group’s first to permit international purchases and deliveries across France. The original idea was for the new store to sell only clothing and home goods, in accordance with the lease on the prestigious Parisian floorspace. But a campaign persuaded executives to change their minds. British-born Pamela Lake, a Parisienne since 1963, who spearheaded the “no food, no go” campaign, said she and her British and French friends were delighted by the company’s apparent change of heart. “It would have been commercial suicide to do otherwise,” she said. “I shall be there for my double cream, bacon, sausages and Indian food.” She added: “I phoned my friends this morning and said ‘we’ve won’. Everyone was so pleased. When M&S closed here it was practically a day of national mourning for us in Paris. Now the company has admitted it was the biggest blunder they ever made.” She said French friends who joined the campaign would be looking forward to getting their Christmas crackers, mince pies and Christmas puddings. “They’ve also missed the Stilton cheese,” she said. All M&S stores in continental Europe were closed as the company battled to turn around its British business. Last year the former boss Sir Stuart Rose said the decision to pull out of Europe was a mistake, calling it “tragic”. The company’s chief executive, Marc Bolland, said the company was “very excited” about its return: “Over the past 10 years the number of demands … from people for us to come back has been enormous.” He added: “Our company has changed in a positive way and France has moved on as well. We want to come back in an extremely positive way.” Bolland has declared he wants to speed up the group’s international expansion and said there was scope for faster growth, particularly in Asian markets. M&S has 358 stores in 42 overseas territories.
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April 1 2011, 4:36pm | Comments »
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Japan fears radioactive contamination of marine life
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/japan-fears-radioactive-contamination-of-marine-life
Fukushima coastal waters see high levels of radioactive iodine, which could build up in seaweed commonly eaten in Japan.
This article titled “Japan fears radioactive contamination of marine life” was written by Ian Sample, science correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 30th March 2011 17.57 UTC High levels of radiation in the sea off the coast of Fukushima have raised concerns over harm to local marine life and the risk of contaminated fish, shellfish and seaweed entering the food chain. Tests on seawater near the nuclear power plant showed that levels of radioactive iodine reached 3,355 times the legal limit on Monday, one of several peaks in recent days that have fallen rapidly as radioactive substances decayed and were steadily diluted and dispersed by ocean currents. Officials are watching levels of iodine-131 in seawater because although it has a half-life of eight days, meaning it is half as radioactive after that time, the substance builds up in seaweed, a common food in the Japanese diet. If consumed, radioactive iodine collects in the thyroid and can cause cancer. The International Atomic Energy Agency said iodine-131 in seawater would “soon be of no concern” presuming there are no further discharges of contaminated water from the power station into the sea. The IAEA added that Japanese authorities have released the first analyses of fish, caught at the port of Choshi, in Chiba prefecture south of Fukushima, which found one of five to be contaminated with a detectable level of caesium-137, a far more persistent radioactive substance, though at a concentration that was far below safety limits for consumption. Many countries, including Britain, have begun radiation testing of fish, shellfish and other fresh produce from Japan or have imposed wider bans on imports from the region. Fisheries are not entering waters within the 20km (12-mile) exclusion zone around Fukushima, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The fate of many local seafood and shellfish farms, including scallops, oysters, sea urchins and sea snails, was sealed more than two weeks ago when the tsunami wiped out beds and destroyed fishing vessels and ports around Fukushima. In Iwate prefecture, authorities say the disaster may have wiped out businesses that account for 80% of the revenue of the region’s fisheries. At the Fukushima power plant, engineers continued the arduous task of trying to pump contaminated water from turbine rooms and trenches, which is hampering work to connect the reactor cooling systems to the national grid. Tepco, the power station operator, plans to spray parts of the site with a resin to stop radioactive dust blowing off the site and is considering shrouding the reactor buildings with sheets to reduce radiation being released into the air. Fish and other sea creatures are unlikely to be seriously harmed by the radioactive leaks, even in the most contaminated areas. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, fish in three freshwater lakes within the exclusion zone became contaminated with radioactive caesium but showed no obvious health problems, though some fish were born with reproductive abnormalities which may have been caused by radiation, said James Smith, an environmental physicist at Portsmouth University who studied fish in the area. While fish accumulate radioactive contamination, this happens less in the ion-rich waters of the oceans than in freshwater lakes.
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April 1 2011, 9:46am | Comments »
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Fukushima fallout: the risks to health
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/15/fukushima-fallout-the-risks-to-health
The radioactive elements Caesium-137 and iodine-131, which increase the risk of cancer, are the main threats to those in the area around the Fukushima nuclear power station
This article titled “Fukushima fallout: the risks to health” was written by Ian Sample, for The Guardian on Tuesday 15th March 2011 20.30 UTC Radiation is being carried into the area around Fukushima by a mixture of radioactive products. The two main threats to human health come from caesium-137 and iodine-131. Caesium-137 can cause burns, acute radiation sickness and even death at high doses. It can contaminate food and water and, if ingested, gets distributed around the body, where it builds up in soft tissues, such as muscles. It has a half-life of about 30 years, meaning it takes that long for its radioactivity to fall by half. Over time, it is expelled from the body in urine. Iodine-131, if inhaled or swallowed, will concentrate in the thyroid gland where it can accumulate and cause cancer within a few years. Low doses can reduce the activity of the gland, and make it produce lower levels of hormones. The threat is more serious in children, who have more active thyroids. Officials have distributed potassium iodide pills to people in the exclusion zone around the plant as a prophylactic.; the pills saturate the thyroid with normal iodine, so it cannot absorb as much of the radioactive form. Iodine-131 has a half-life of only eight days, and so decays much more quickly than caesium-137.
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March 15 2011, 3:35pm | Comments »
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New Zealand earthquake strikes Christchurch, killing at least 65 people
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/22/new-zealand-earthquake-65-dead
This article titled “New Zealand earthquake strikes Christchurch, killing at least 65 people” was written by Ben Quinn and Mark Tran, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd February 2011 13.18 UTC At least 65 people have died and more than 100 are missing after a powerful earthquake struck the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch, collapsing buildings, burying vehicles under debris and sending rescuers scrambling to help people trapped under rubble. The 6.3-magnitude quake struck the country’s second largest city on a busy weekday afternoon. The mayor of Christchurch, Bob Parker, has declared a state of emergency and ordered people to evacuate the city centre. “Make no mistake this is going to be a very black day for this shaken city,” he said. Power and water was cut and hundreds of dazed, screaming and crying residents wandered through the streets as sirens blared throughout Christchurch in the aftermath of the quake, which was centred three miles from the city. The US Geological Survey said the tremor occurred at a depth of 2.5 miles. After rushing to the city within hours of the quake, the prime minister of New Zealand, John Key, said the death toll was 65, and may rise. “It is just a scene of utter devastation. We may well be witnessing New Zealand’s darkest day.” The spire of the city’s well-known stone cathedral toppled into a central square, while buildings collapsed in on themselves and streets were strewn with bricks and shattered concrete. The multi-storey Pyne Gould Guinness Building, housing more than 200 workers, has collapsed with an unknown number of people trapped inside. Television pictures showed rescuers, many of them office workers, dragging severely injured people from the rubble. Elsewhere, police said debris rained down on two buses, crushing them, while emergency workers were moving to rescue survivors trapped in other partially collapsed buildings across the city. New Zealand’s TV3 said 24 people were trapped on the 17th floor of the 19-storey Forsyth Barr office building, near the cathedral. The building was intact but a stairwell had collapsed, it said. Christchurch hospital had to deal with many injured residents. “We’ve had a lot of people at the emergency department … a significant number, a lot of major injuries,” said David Meates, the chief executive of the Canterbury health board. “They are largely crushes and cuts types of injuries and chest pain as well,” he said, adding some of the more seriously injured could be evacuated to other cities, where hospitals have been put on alert and prepared to accept casualties. All army medical staff have been mobilised, while several hundred troops were helping with the rescue, officials said. A woman trapped in one of the buildings said she was terrified and waiting for rescuers to reach her six hours after the quake. “I thought the best place was under the desk but the ceiling collapsed on top. I can’t move and I’m just terrified,” office worker Anne Voss told TV3 news. Emergency shelters had been set up in schools and at a racecourse, as night approached. Helicopters dumped giant buckets of water to try to douse a fire in one tall office building. A crane helped rescue workers trapped in another office block. “I was in the square right outside the cathedral – the whole front has fallen down and there were people running from there. There were people inside as well,” said John Gurr, a camera technician who was in the city centre when the quake hit. The city’s historic cathedral was one of the buildings that took significant damage, while cars were buried under rubble and roads buckled as the tremor opened fissures in the ground. “It is huge. We just don’t know if there are people under this rubble,” a priest standing outside the rubble of the damaged cathedral told Television New Zealand. Search and rescue teams are working through the night to look for survivors, the civil defence director, John Hamilton, said. “We have to be prepared to accept that it is going to be a heavy toll,” he said, adding that it was unclear how many people were trapped in buildings. “There could well be people who are stuck in buildings overnight. I can’t confirm, but I would expect that’s in all probability the case.” All airports and airspace in the country were shut down and all flights into, out of and around the country were put on hold immediately after the earthquake. Airways NZ, New Zealand’s national air traffic control organisation, is based in Christchurch. Local TV showed bodies being pulled out of rubble strewn around the city centre, though it was unclear whether any of them were alive. It was the second time in five months that the city has been struck by a major earthquake. Last September’s 7.1-magnitude earthquake was 30 miles west of Christchurch. About 100 people were treated at hospital with earthquake-related injuries then. Christchurch has been hit by hundreds of aftershocks since that earthquake, causing extensive damage and a handful of injuries, but no deaths. New Zealand, which sits between the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates, records on average more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which about 20 would normally top magnitude 5.0. Christchurch is home to about 350,000 people and is a tourist centre and gateway to the South Island.
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February 22 2011, 7:53am | Comments »
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No Weekend Engineering Works
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2010/06/28/no-weekend-engineering-works
Such is the routine nature of weekend engineering works ruining any prospect of going out around London on the public transport system that when they have a rare weekend without any engineering works on this particular line, National Express to Liverpool Street Station, they need to make a poster about it in order to remind people that there might just be some transport available. Otherwise everybody would just assume that weekend trips are more trouble than they are worth and stay at home. weekend engineering works Of course once you get into Liverpool St Station on one of these rare weekend trains, there’s no guarantee that the onward journey will be as smooth. The Circle line, District and Hammersmith and City lines are likely to be severely disrupted or not running at all so that leaves the Central Line or “London Sauna” as better described.
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June 28 2010, 7:39am | Comments »
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Windows Genuine Advantage Fail
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Windows Genuine Advantage Fail at Liverpool Street Station
October 22 2009, 5:23am | Comments »
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