(no subject)

[juliet]

London has got the Olympics!

Edit: And the Red Arrows just did a fly-past over my building - central London now has red, white & blue smoke drifting over it. Cor.

Comments

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!

[juliet]

Indeed! I must start saving for tickets...

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Is that a good thing?

[juliet]

I think so. It'll involve some fairly heavy investment in London's infrastructure, & in the regeneration areas around E London; as well as other bits of the UK which will be hosting other bits of the Games.

And, less pragmatically, it's the *Olympics*, which I have loved since I was a little girl :-)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Is there any infrastructure investment that could be started now and yield results in time for the Olympics?

[juliet]

That was certainly what the bid was predicated on. Whether or not you believe it is another matter - & there's no way of telling before it actually happens, or fails to. I am optimistic; other people apparently less so.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

From scratch, no. But there are some things that have been planned to the last rivet and are just waiting for the bid to win to be put into effect. For example, the Stratford International - Woolwich DLR extension will definitely happen, as will the track improvements to increase the capacity of the NLL.

Saying that, I will be astounded if Crossrail/link happens in seven years.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Crossrail won't - the bid didn't include it - but a lot of the track renovation and updated signalling that Crossrail would require will be done.

[juliet]

Ah - I was under the impression that Crossrail actually *did* have funding etc now, but just looked at their webpage & discovered that the Bill ran out of time last session & has just been reintroduced. Ah well.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thanks - this is good news (though AFAICT the NLL becoming part of the DLR was a done deal anyway)

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Done deals have a way of becoming undone in the murky world of public transport planning.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

It'll also involve forcibly relocating lots of poorer people out of central London, shutting down Tube lines for months at a time beforehand to get them ready for the Olympics, and suspensions of civil liberties and the privatisation of public space during the event itself (i.e., if you live in the Olympic zone, forget about wearing anything with a political slogan outside of your house; or, for that matter, anything with the logo of a rival to an Olympic sponsor).

[daneel-olivaw.livejournal.com]

Not to mention making town an insufferable place to live from the start of the ramp-up to the end of the closing ceremony. And the infrastructure investment was being made *anyway* (this being one of the reasons they lost previous bids).

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

This will force the infrastructure improvements to actually happen, tho. We have a terrible history of even well planned transport schemes going off half-cocked in this country until some big event happens to give the work some impetus. See Jubilee line extension, which took the bloody Millenium to actually make it happen.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Yes, but given the choice between investing a decent amount of money to carry out the renovations in a timely fashion, and investing the bare minimum and shutting down tube lines for many months at a time, at massive inconvenience to those who actually live and work in London, guess which they're going to choose.

[daneel-olivaw.livejournal.com]

Oh, and this says nothing of (one of) my favourite rant(s), that being that 90% of people in the UK don't live in London, and quite a few of them (I'd argue the majority) live in places in far greater need of investment that London. I'd have happily seen it go to Manchester (for example), but their bidding for the Olympics got kyboshed when London started their M3 T00!1! thing.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

The IOC had made it clear that only London would have a chance, despite the success of the Commenwealth Games in Manchester.

And half the population of the UK do live in the Southeast, and east London is in dire need of regeration. Not saying that other places don't also need that, but the Olympics couldn't help there.

[flick.livejournal.com]

if you live in the Olympic zone, forget about wearing anything with a political slogan outside of your house; or, for that matter, anything with the logo of a rival to an Olympic sponsor

Really? How can they enforce that? How big is the zone?

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Look at Athens 2004 - "Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games." See here for further examples of how draconian the measures were for the Greek Olympics.

Enforcing the flow of revenue

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

In Sydney it was a big chunk of the inner city near various venues. There, if you lived in the zone, you were not allowed to let your friends (or any other non-residents) park in your property, as it would undercut the parking providers.

I imagine either the police would get a host of new public order offenses to enforce or private security goons officers who would be legally empowered, for the duration of the Olympics, to make arrests, issue fines and such.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Ooo I just heard them too!

[juliet]

I got to the (very large) window in time to see them - spectacular!

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I saw a corner of them fly past when I was at lunch.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's what thet noise was....

[weatherpixie.livejournal.com]

Thats the 2nd time the arrows have buzzed my building, they were round last week for the WW2 thing...