Thursday 26 July 2012

London Olympics 2012 - A Rogues' Gallery of Sponsors




We were promised the greenest most ethical Olympics ever. A look at the list of international sponsors showed that this would be an impossible dream. And despite all the belief in the great god of "the market" they still get exclusive rights in an area where we have also been responsible for part of the funding through our Council tax. Then Dow "Bhopal" Chemicals and Lloyds Bank, a suspect in the Libor rate fixing scam were added as local sponsors.

It was promised that jobs on the site would be given to local people. The Olympic Delivery Authority has argued that as this promise was made by the bidding group, which is an entirely separate organisation, they were not bound by it.

It was argued that it will increase participation in sport yet they concreted over a large part of the greatest area of public football pitches in the world. They say they will restore it afterwards but will the funding to do this be available and you can safely bet some developer has his eye on it.
There are still displaced small businesses that are waiting for their compensation but that pot of money has been completely used up.

However, Olympic lanes or no Olympic lanes, next Friday is the last Friday on the month and Critical Mass is still going ahead - after all it has been happening on the last Friday of the month since long before Britain decided to bid for the games.

On Saturday there is a demonstration against the corporate Olympics assembling in Mile end Park at 12 noon, marching to Victoria Park where there will be "People's games for all".   http://www.counterolympicsnetwork.wordpress.com/. The news is that Tower Hamlets council has withdrawn permission for this demo but it is still going ahead.

Written by Peter Budge, Haringey Green Green Party


2 comments:

London Olympics said...

Good Info. yup there are lot of money transactions like this happens at big events and these local sponsers will never give up such great chances.

Steve_Barker said...

Link not quite working, a comma instead of a dot. Should be:

http://counterolympicsnetwork.wordpress.com/