GOLD RUSH
by
Kari Scott Kramer
______________________________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(JOURNALISM)
August 2009
Copyright 2009 Kari Scott Kramer TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract iii
Introduction 1
I 8
II 11
III 16
IV 18
V 20
VI 23
VII 28
VIII 31
Glossary 33
Bibliography 34
ii
ABSTRACT
“Gold Rush” focuses on the British government’s broken promises to regenerate London and improve the lives of the city’s people in preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The piece presents evidence of unrealistic goals made by Games’ officials in conjunction with the U.K. media’s idealistic hype surrounding the preparations and progress of the beloved, world-renowned 16-day sporting extravaganza. Together the politicians and press fantasize about a fairytale festival of unity, pride and patriotism, but during their search for gold the author visits the modernization of historic sites, talks to deprived and disadvantaged citizens and shows a fragile sense of existence as the local people reveal what they’ve really been going through for several years leading up to this expensive and destructive fleeting event.
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INTRODUCTION
The 2012 Summer Olympics hasn’t officially started yet, but so far the 16-day circus has been a few of the longest years for London. Four years ago on July 5, 2005, Team Great Britain scored with a successful bid to host the Games, promising to regenerate five boroughs in east London including Newham, Greenwich, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest where poverty, crime, crowdedness and contamination had been ignored for centuries. The whole ethos was driven by “legacy” and the benefits for Eastenders. The London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) pursued the Olympic dream not only to help the land, but also to inspire youth to take up sport, work towards a healthier population, improve transportation, provide more jobs for locals, build new homes for the residents and give the economy a boost. But after years of promises, time will tell the problems and scandals surrounding the event. Whether the media reflects in the Sun or the Mirror breaks the news, the shattered image of these alleged goodwill Games is becoming clear during seven years of bad luck.
As of July 27, 2009 there will be just three years to go until the opening ceremony; on October 31, only 1,000 days – but it’s becoming less of a media countdown and more of a conundrum. From Barcelona in 1992 to just last year in Beijing, the experience leading up to the Olympics has been a continuous one of displaced residents, local unemployment, exorbitant costs, abandoned arenas and overall excess.
The Olympics have ousted more than two million people in the last 20 years, especially those poor and struggling, according to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions. The cost of living can rise dramatically in particular for the most vulnerable residents who live in low-quality housing. The Barcelona games are celebrated as the catalyst for one of Europe’s most successful
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regenerations, but for local people who did not own property in the area it was disastrous. New home prices in Barcelona rose by 250 percent between the Olympic announcement in 1986 and the actual event in 1992.
Studies into the legacies of Barcelona and the 2004 Athens Olympics suggests that job creation tends to be temporary, often filled by migrant and transient workers, with little or no change in overall employment rates, according to the London East Research Institute at the University of East London. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a left-wing U.K. think-tank, compared the construction of the 2012 games with the 2004 Athens games, when 60 percent of the 30,000 workers who built the facilities were not from Greece.
With people out of work, who can afford the income inconvenience that comes with the event? In 1970 Denver was rewarded the ‘76 Games, but a 300 percent rise in costs led Colorado voters to reject the event just a few years before it was to take place. In the only city to disown the Games, Richard Lamm of the Rocky Mountain News fronted a populist crusade into the governor’s office. "The organizing committee was in way over their heads. They overestimated the benefits and underestimated the costs,” Lamm said.
After spending multi-billions on massive buildings, London will spend even more downsizing their new world-class sports facilities to avoid becoming Montreal in 1976 when the Canadian city took over for Denver. Like London, the venues were built in the poorer area and most have not been touched since. The Olympic stadium is rundown and only periodically used for monster truck races. The Olympic swimming pool became nothing more than a large waterless pit while other venues have just been torn down. When Montreal recently staged the world swimming championships, the city built a new facility. Considered one of the biggest financial disasters in
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the history of the Olympics, the costs of Montreal rose 13-fold in a window of just six years. The debt for the stadium was only finally paid off in December 2006, 30 years after the event. Their Olympic stadium, originally nicknamed "The Big O" for its shape, has since become known as "The Big Owe.” Montreal's key architect from the time believes that London might be heading for a similar crisis with costs ending up around $40 billion. “They should cut their losses and stage all events in established venues across the southeast – show how the budget can be cut for England and the unfortunate nation who comes after,” citizen Paul Davis said.
Five years after hosting the 2004 Games, Athens has former sites where only the tumbleweeds race each other. England intends to tear down 80 percent of the buildings after the games in order to avoid spending money caring for “white elephant” mega-structures. The future of the brand new $150 million fencing arena is doubtful without any planned subsequent uses and no post-Olympic tenant. Money will go towards converting a fresh 80,000-capacity stadium to an athletics venue for 25,000. The country is investing billions in venues that replicate functional alternatives – the new $1.2 billion Olympic stadium could have been sacrificed for the recently renovated $1.3 billion Wembley, the most expensive arena in the world.
The excess goes with the territory after following Beijing. Last year the Chinese land hosted more than 200 countries, a huge boost from only seven Olympiads before in Moscow when just 81 nations participated during the Cold War and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. At least 60 different homelands against participating led a massive boycott against the human rights wrongdoings exercised by the USSR. Some athletes that actually took part in the sporting events denied the concept of country and stood on the medal podium with the Olympic flag behind them and the Games’ anthem substituting a national hymn. People stood for something that mattered in the long run.
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The British Olympic Association did not observe the boycott and came in ninth in the world – their best accomplishment since taking home eighth from Melbourne in 1956 when a mere 67 nations participated. Though it’s been less than just 30 years since Russia, a lot of time has passed from the hour or so opening-ceremony when a minor portion of the planet marched in the parade of nations to Beijing’s 4-hour variety show. From the simplicity of patriotic anthems and colored flags blending together in a happy rainbow of harmony to power, propaganda, press censorship, repressed protests, epic pyrotechnics, computer-generated fireworks and lip-syncing profound themes like “Summon the Heroes” – at some point the reality ran out.
Each county wants to go down in the world record books for “best Games ever” but looking back it’s become a warped history lesson, the kind taught in fourth grade with mainly just the positive highlights, like the daring discoverers and classic conquerors. The lesson plan doesn’t include the illegal performance-enhancing drugs, bad sportsmanship and throwing the bronze medal in disgust, bombings, terrorist attacks and 11 Israelis dead, etc. The Games have endured, but at a cost.
London has embraced the cost, but it may be the last time a host city does. In March, Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo became candidate cities for the 2016 summer Olympics. The winner will be announced in October, but the four preliminary contenders have begun the contest already. We-Don't-Need-an-Olympics-in-Tokyo Network cites the closing of a number of children's hospitals while millions are spent just trying to get the Games. Anti-Olympic group No Games Chicago spokesman J.R. Fleming insists his city should withdraw its bid, citing cost overruns of $1.2 billion in Salt Lake City in 2002. "I don't think any American city can take the risk," Fleming said. "You don't have money for housing. You don't have money for education.
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But you can find money for a three-week party seven years from now? It doesn't make any sense,” he continued.
British officials are trying to make sense of the event by repetitively defending it with their promises of a better tomorrow, but given the history of the Olympic Games, can Great Britain break from tradition of being a bull dog with its citizens, or will the host of the 2012 Games actually offer a new model on how to stage the world’s most followed athletic contests? Early evidence suggests unhappy results for the locals, even if the nation as a whole stands to benefit.
A few hundred businesses that operated in the London Olympic boundaries were relocated and several were inevitably crippled despite the fact that one of the main intended legacies of the event is job creation. A New Economics Foundation report found that only 11 percent of all contracts had gone to local businesses out of the 500 contracts awarded. The contracts were so immense that local businesses could not match bids by major corporations.
The regeneration may sound pleasant as the development organizations describe reviving two square miles of derelict and tainted industrial land to create a large urban space complete with thousands of new homes, surrounded by parks, open space, restored wetlands, 30 bridges, five miles of cleaned-up waterways along the River Lea, five new world-class sporting venues and public transport improvements. However, regeneration may often lead to gentrification and assets of the communities are left struggling to survive or they get transferred away since residents and workers tend to get priced out of the area.
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“The Olympics could actually help Britain to spend its way out of hard times. This is economic gold at a time of economic need. It’s much more than a big party, although there will be the most extraordinary national celebration,” said Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell.
The plan seems to be for a very big party, and like most big parties there will be a huge hangover and regrets of the night before. The morning alarm screeched and some woke up to the consequences of China’s dark dreams. The International Olympics Committee justified its 2001 decision to hold the games in Beijing by saying the event would open Chinese society, but the communist nation still evicted and removed thousands of Beijing’s less picturesque residents from their homes and out of camera range leading up to the 2008 summer games.
As with Beijing, East London land recently went up for grabs. There have been concerns, not only to the perceived U.K. land grab from small powerless businesses and individuals, but also to possible profiteering through buying land on the periphery of the zone. There is a major opportunity for the London Development Agency (LDA) to benefit from future monetary rises by acquiring investment land with huge property and growth potential at bargain prices.
Britain may have picked up a little bit more than 19 gold medals from China – potentially a lesson from the Chinese regime on totalitarianism. Around 350 London-based companies were served with compulsory purchase orders and more than 80 percent had to fight for a financial settlement after getting treated unfairly, threatened, bulldozed, moved and overall “screwed” by the LDA’s “mafia-style” tactics according to Seamus Gannon who ran a concrete recycling company in Stratford – the suburb allocated for the Olympic stadium. As of February, 76 of the 193 companies previously located on the heart of the Olympic site had not been fully reimbursed for their financial losses.
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Nearly four years ago, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) began a program to demolish hundreds of buildings starting with Marshgate Lane where at least 200 businesses were cleared out to make way for the Olympic zone. It was no more of a wasteland than any other unlovely industrial estate in any corner of the country with its plain factories, warehouses and commercial spaces, nature reserves, housing estates, churches and sports facilities. The employees didn’t go to work wearing fancy suits and weren’t involved in Britain's great growth industry, but many were forced by heavy-handed LDA tactics into unfavorable locations or have been underpaid for the costs of the upheaval and inconvenience.
The London Development Agency jumps to the claim that “it has helped relocate” these businesses, in addition to 425 residents and 35 traveler families, but still several have spoken out about having been trampled in the gold rush. “Maybe one or two were reluctant to move out, but most were very happy to take the money,” Stratford Olympic site tour guide Sally Empson said hesitantly.
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I
Two months and several August tributes after Great Britain’s surprisingly successful performance at the 2008 summer Games – the UK earned fourth place in the medals tally behind China, United States and Russia – the Evening Standard tried to keep the hope (and hype) up as the economy was faltering. On October 16, 2008, the story “London Salutes Olympic Heroes” shared the front page with a recession piece that began with the line “The city pressed the panic button again today …” Inside was the repetitive compilation of smiles, hugs, happy tears, raised flags, pumped fists, fireworks. Across the spread in bold: “16 days we will never forget” but apparently the city forgot and needed a reminder at the core of a damaging financial crisis. Five weeks and numerous praise pieces later, leader of the Hackney Conservatives Matthew Coggins addressed the Games and admitted, “the vision is fading.”
In its quarterly inflation report last November, the Bank of England warned that the economic landscape had changed dramatically since August. The British economy could shrink by two percentage points over the next year, much worse than previously expected. Britain is likely to suffer more from the economic downturn than any other major country particularly crippled by the crisis with the bank bailout, the housing market collapse, and the general inadequacy of the Labour Party.
The Olympics may have had an inspiring positive effect on the spectators, but the weakening economy negatively affects everybody, even some athletes. British Olympic rower Tom James had intended to pursue professional interests other than athletics in his off-season. “It’s important that I have a career lined up after London 2012, so I was going to spend my time getting some work experience. I had a position lined up in the city that was going to take me through from 8
November to March. Unfortunately, that’s fallen through because of the credit crunch,” James told the Times.
Workers are needed for this extravaganza, so at least new jobs will be provided for the locals to boost the waning nation. The figures at the beginning of December showed that of the nearly 3,050 strong workforce currently erecting the progress on the Olympic Park, nearly a quarter were local residents and over half are from London and just three out of 10 construction jobs on the London Olympic site were going to foreign workers.
But a different story emerged three days later. Britain is welcoming the nations of the world to start the Olympic competition early. The Institute for Public Policy Research, a London-based organization with the motto “challenging ideas – changing policies” concluded that few local people in east London would actually benefit from the Olympics jobs boom as thousands of immigrants would be needed to finish the setup on time. The IPPR found that almost all of the construction jobs on the building sites will have to be filled by migrants outside the European Union. Because it would supposedly take too long to train indigenous workers up to the required standard, construction sites welcomed skilled immigrants willing to take work below their education level for low pay.
The Mayor’s London Plan, which offers specifics of the Olympic strategies, stated, “Economic development should be geared for the long-term opportunities,” in bullet point 5.55. But that can’t happen when the authorities are scrambling for a quick fix to complete a project twice the scale as Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5, the largest freestanding structure in the United Kingdom, in less than half the time – just 7 years for the Games’ facilities compared to the 19 years spent on T5.
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"One way in which the big contractors are getting round and massaging the figures for local labor is by bringing foreign laborers into the Olympic boroughs and putting them in hostels. They are then counted as local people but in fact they have been shipped in from all parts of Europe,” Hackney (MP) Member of Parliament Diane Abbott told a Commons debate last November.
Newham saw the biggest surge in new National Insurance numbers, a social security equivalent, of any part of Britain since London won the games in 2005. "If I was the Olympics minister I would be getting concerned. It is totally lawful, but British taxpayers are paying for jobs for foreign workers and it is not what we signed up for," said Labor Party MP Frank Field, publisher of the National Insurance figures.
The Olympic Delivery Authority guaranteed a skills legacy for east London and is in the forefront of the Government's agenda under which Gordon Brown pledged "British jobs for British workers." Protests in London erupted in February with the disgruntled shouting their frustrations about this broken promise. “We are a sovereign state, and it is one of the top priorities for our government to provide its citizens with employment,” one marcher exclaimed.
“The divide between what people want and what our political elite give us is huge. Did we ask for uncontrolled migration only to have millions on [welfare programs like] Job Seekers and Incapacity Benefit within a few years?” Londoner Alecia Brown wondered.
Last November, unemployment surged to 1.8 million; there are now 12,000 unemployed in Newham, or 10.7 percent, the second highest in London. By next year 650,000 jobs will be lost in London, which already has the second highest unemployment rate in the country, causing mass unemployment to return to the capital for the first time in nearly 20 years.
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II
The originally proposed budget for the 2012 Olympics was $5.1 billion but this was nearly tripled to $14 billion last year. “It's amazing how much money is needed to see who can throw a stick farthest. Should there be an event to see which country can be fastest out of recession? Given the current financial climate, the main media center for the London Olympics should be a tent with a sandwich bar,” said Neil McGowan of North Ireland.
The media, particularly broadsheet publications, have downplayed the financial problems the nation faces by putting a golden gleam on the Games. Last August in the middle of the country’s success, the Evening Standard published a non-editorial piece: “All the old questions about London’s ridiculous cost, broken promises, draining effects on grassroots sport and limited or non-existent regeneration legacy have been swept away in a tsunami of ecstatic headlines about the ‘Golden Wonders,’ the ‘Great Haul of China’ and any other pun the newspapers can think of,” wrote Andrew Gilligan.
The emphasis on the nation’s Olympic effort also has drawn the ire the nation’s news consumers, who complain that England’s pressing domestic problems are obscured by newspapers’ infatuation with the 2012 Games. Writer Matthew Norman wrote in the Evening Standard, “I can never watch the endlessly enchanting and articulate Michael Johnson [four-time gold medal winning sprinter] without wishing I had a womb to enable the carriage of his babies …” but while male reporters get compensated to romanticize athletics and explore feminine yearnings, the people have to pay. It’s the ordinary citizen struggling to survive that the leaders fail to listen to.
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“Newspapers are becoming irrelevant. Young people are being knifed and killed in the east streets but where is the media-led campaign to do something about this? Why are they not pressuring [former Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s buffoons into taking some corrective action?” Melchoir Lazarus, 22, asked. “It just goes to show what a circus this country is and what bullshit the media is, but we all knew that anyway,” he said.
It’s hardly a surprise that politics and papers are pals. London Mayor Boris Johnson was once a journalist at the Times and assistant editor at the Daily Telegraph. News outlets train under the direction of the government’s propaganda. Many of the most credible publications of the country ignore the reality of humanity, tarnishing themselves while varnishing politicians. But even with all the spin that a flying discus is given, it eventually falls flat and thuds to the ground. The same goes for politicians when they speak for themselves and not via the media.
In April 2008, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone maintained that the budget wouldn’t reach beyond the then estimated $9 billion. “I’d be quite proud if we kept it at that. If it starts going over $12 billion that will be a defeat,” said Livingstone then as the cost of the Games pushes $17 billion now.
British currency has depreciated almost 30 percent against the U.S. dollar within seven months. It is now cheaper to live in London than in New York for the first time since 2002. “Will we have any gold left in the reserves to make the medals? It was obvious to any person with his eyes open that this country could not afford to host an Olympic Games, whether the bill totaled £9 billion [$14.8 billion] or £9.99 [$16.40],” taxpayer and accountant Ash Gittens said.
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Taxpayers could try looking for a silver lining in the gray rain clouds above London, but they become poorer as it continues to pour. The dreariness doesn’t let up and the officials are personally responsible for the storm. But what do they care as long as they don’t get wet when they’re protected under the 2012 umbrella? At the last count there were 200 officials in the ODA. The lowest-paid member of its management team is on a £243,000 [$400,000] salary, and the highest earns £624,000 the equivalent to more than $1,000,000. LOCOG’s head is paid about $850,000 and the members get a reported $1,750 just for attending a meeting. Then there’s the Mayor’s Olympic staff, the Home Office’s Olympic staff, Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell’s 63 civil servants …
Three thousand limousines will be obtained to escort Olympic officials, family members and hangers-on to the east via a special red light free "zil lane” which will be banned even to athletes' cars. These same officials had the London taxpayers build them a unique train service, the Javelin, which they now don’t plan to use. The 2012 project, critics declare, is exploding into an inflated bureaucracy with a small sporting festival attached.
Managing the scheme is now budgeted to cost more than $100 million, up from just a quarter of that in 2005. “The taxpayers will always bail them out and the Olympic bosses will still get to line their back pockets. The spirit of the Olympics is long dead – this is all about a few making money,” said resident Roy Anderson.
“These Olympics are the greatest thing to happen in my country, in my city, in my lifetime. The magic of it is way beyond any point in the economic cycle,” Jacques Rogge president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was quoted in the London papers.
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“‘Greatest thing to happen in my country?’ Greatest disaster for those of us who don't have the Olympic cash machine disgorging into our wallets,” continued Alecia Brown, a recent college graduate while reading the news during her work break where she gets paid minimum wage at a clothing store – the only job she could get under the tough circumstances. “I'm sick of the pontifications of these obscenely wealthy and overpaid uber-bureaucrats and professional liars who are creating so much misery in east London,” she said.
As certain people and occupations get deprived, apparently there is more than enough money and work to go around in the Olympics planning sectors – but what will become of these employees once they’ve lost their jobs at the end of the closing ceremony when the last firework has burst and disappeared into thin air like the Olympic funds? They might end up like the Greeks after the Athens games in 2004 when 70,000 people needed to find new livings. The Greek government was forced to cut public services because the event over-ran its budget so dramatically. “Does anyone apart from the deluded fools and pompous, arrogant, ego-maniac politicians really believe that thousands of long-term jobs will be created once the event is over?” Hackney resident Ash Gittens asked.
“Had we known what we know now, would we have bid for the Olympics? Almost certainly not,” Jowell admitted last November. After receiving a backlash from the public, the media and her counterparts, she conducted damage control a few days later when asked by BBC2’s The Daily Politics whether the government should have pursued the bid in the first place. "We certainly were right because of the sporting legacy that the Olympics will create, but as it turns out, facing a recession deeper than any that we have known, the Olympics is – I mean, it's economic gold at a time of economic need. It is creating jobs not just in the East End of London, but also creating business and commercial opportunities for firms right around the country. It is a £6 billion [$10
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billion] shot-in-the-arm." Jowell said, speaking these familiar scripted comments a week after Olympics chief David Higgins assured International Olympic Committee delegates, “The preparations are already delivering a shot-in-the-arm at a time of need.”
The potential shot in the arm may be a shot in the dark. Last June, London’s 2012 official Web site promised that 8,000 jobs would be created in Hackney Wick from the conversion of the potential International Broadcast Center/Main Press Center into “east London’s Soho” but the developers haven’t been able to raise the money and the idea may very likely be scrapped as no officials currently have any comment on the topic. Olympic history shows that when pressure mounts on budgets it is the small but essential items that make the difference to local people that are the first to be cut. This must not be allowed to happen,” stated point number 84 in a January 2007 government report by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport regarding the Olympic Games’ funding and legacy.
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III
The total budget likely won't spiral any higher, but any future extra costs will have to be covered by cuts in other areas because "there's no more money," Jowell informed the media. After the carnival leaves town, London will have one amazing swimming pool based in Stratford with a seating capacity of 2,500 but not much else. The aquatic center costs rose from $115 million to $450 million in three years. The London Pools campaign identified nine facilities in the capital that closed last year and 16 more that were under threat. In addition, 10 percent of school pools have been drained because there’s not enough money to keep them maintained. Encouraging sports participation? People get taxed for a facility they have no access to while the one they had closes down. Apparently the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; one gold is more desirable than several bronzes spread around for everyone to share.
To make the Olympic budget work, nearly $3.5 billion was taken from the national lottery funds, denying money that would ordinarily support grassroots sports, as well as community and volunteer groups. The majority of the funding for the construction, transport, regeneration and legacy work for the Games is coming from the lottery cash. There is a lack of sports facilities around the Olympic Park in East London. Recent reports point out newly-built academies where pupils have no proper playing fields. “The lottery funding has been robbed to fund the Olympics when the government claims the Olympics will provide a real legacy of increasing participation in sports,” said children’s soccer coach Dale Brunton.
A year ago, even as Beijing’s Olympic anticipation surged, a survey of 2,000 people found that just one in five adults across the U.K. felt the Games would inspire them to exercise. Interest is declining with kids, too. The number of teenagers watching the first 11 days of the Beijing
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competition dropped four percent from the previous 2004 games in Athens, according to a survey by Advertising Age, a publication dedicated to news, analysis and data on marketing and the media.
When nearly 1,050 Londoners responded with their opinions about the 2012 legacy in a poll carried out August 27-29, 2008, at the peak of the Beijing excitement, only six percent believed it was very good while 69 percent didn’t know, didn’t care or were neutral. Given a choice of sports facilities, 41 percent of the people agreed that they would like a swimming pool near where they live – the top answer. When asked what the government should do to ensure an Olympic legacy, the most popular vote with 61 percent was “prevent existing school and council sports facilities from being sold off.”
Instead of balancing the needs of their own people, the government stretched beyond its means performing back flips to impress the rest of the world. Dan Ritterbrand, London Mayor Boris Johnson’s campaign manager, has the job to trademark the capital. “As any consumer brand re-launch, it gives us an opportunity to talk about ourselves differently and how we want to be seen to the world,” he said.
Down in the tube, crinkled newspapers are strewn on the seats. A headline in the London Times reads, “2012 – A Golden Chance for London to Sell Itself to the World.” Above a window in a carriage an Olympics advertisement states, “Because now, we feel bigger than a tiny island.” The message is getting out. Britain is surrounded by water and is starting to drown. Sometimes smaller is better. Despite high degrees of difficulty, it’s the petite gymnasts that score the most, not necessarily the ones dressed up in elaborate sparkling costumes. 17
IV
The sparkle of the Olympic torch traces back to ancient Greece but old traditions were extinguished quickly when it became a guiding light for protestors en route to Beijing last year. Now there are no plans to take the flame out of Britain as the Olympic committee has banned the international leg of torch-passing relay. A symbol of peace, hope and inspiration barely flickers.
There’s still the traditional Olympic logo, though. London’s resembles a distorted swastika. The cost of it came in at roughly $650,000 – this sum would have been enough to cover the costs of the pool at Waltham Forest College until 2012 and beyond. It’s another $8 million for the Olympic mountain biking venue that will be built at South Weald in Essex. The event will last six hours, including two medal ceremonies, and the facility will be torn down the moment it is over. With that money, the pool at Waltham Forest College could have been maintained until 2074.
An author writing for the London 2012 Web site claims that “the London Bid has the whole-hearted support of British Government, the British Parliament and the British people,” but current statistics show that only 28 percent of the people support the cost of the Games. A survey from Opinium Research suggests that two-thirds of people were opposed to the cost of Olympic success funded at the expense of other good causes. In September 2007 a YouGov survey for the Taxpayers' Alliance found that 20 percent would like the money used to reduce tax while 44 percent thought the stated $14 billion cost would be put to better use in schools and hospitals.
“They whine about the cost of Olympic success and how many hospitals could have been built with the money, but if we took a lead from our athletes and did a modest amount of exercise, we would not need as many,” wrote David Bond of The Daily Telegraph.
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Besides the lottery, another fraction of the funds is drawn from Londoners’ council tax, a cost residents are expected to pay based on their residential property. “You really have absolutely no idea how much over-taxed, recession-battered, repossessed, jobless Britain will want to man the barricades by the time 2012 and its very silly logo come around,” Gittens said.
“London taxpayers can now start shelling out for four-year early handover parties and crap logos – happy days. I think that we should accept that it’s going to happen and just go with it. We can then turn around and say ‘I told you so’ when it all fucks up – the British way,” Gittens’ flatmate Jim Wiltshire of Hackney said.
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V
In 1948, following the end of World War II, London hosted the first Olympics since Berlin’s in 1936. Still rationing under difficult circumstances, there was no money for stadiums, no labor for building, just housing in military camps and schools for competitors, and hardly enough food for just the residents – forget feeding the thousands of visitors who were expected to attend. Labeled the Austerity Games, there was no “big party” – the city could barely afford a tea party. With the government unwilling to fund anything, every quid the organizing committee spent had to be counted.
Competitors were asked to bring their own towels. Supplies of basketballs, footballs and boxing gloves were ordered only after guarantees that they could be sold off later. When cycling at the Herne Hill velodrome overran one night, cars had to be driven in to illuminate the remaining races since nobody installed floodlights. They embraced the old friendly, modest ideal of simply taking part and making do.
“After all those dark days – the bombing, the killing, the starvation – the revival of the Olympics was as if the sun had come out … Suddenly there were no frontiers, no more barriers, just the people meeting together,” Czech distance runner Emil Zatopek was quoted in the Times. The participants were just satisfied that the Games still had some life in them. After all these stark days – the building, the billing, the recession, even if nothing else thrives, “at the very least the Games will survive,” said Sebastian Coe, Chairman of LOCOG.
London has earned its turn again, but it’s not just the earnings of Londoners that are a concern as costs have spread through the U.K. and up to Scotland. “There is an awful lot of money being 20
siphoned off to go to the east end of London, and while we wish everybody the best in 2012, we don't want to see our heritage put at risk," said Scot Arthur Bell. “We have big ambitions for our own legacy,” he continued responding to Coe and his counterparts throwing the word “legacy” around like a ball. But as with baseball and softball which have been recently eliminated from the Olympics, there’s no room for this ball game either.
“Stop talking about legacy, which never happens. Every Olympian knows that legacy is grass growing over defunct velodromes, cracked concourses and ghost villages. If improvements were needed, why not just make them, without tacking on a velodrome?” Wiltshire asked.
“Regeneration is the trendy arse-covering buzzword but the Olympic games don’t mean too much north, south, east or west of Stratford and Hackney Marshes,” said 19-year-old student Jamie Graeme of Tolworth in southwest London said.
Outside the civil war of words in the U.K., France attacks too. There were only four votes dividing Paris and London in the International Olympic Committee’s final round of voting to determine the 2012 host city. Paris had always been the frontrunner but in the deciding presentation the French got fried by alleged British lies.
The London committee pulled ahead right before the finish line by pulling on the voters’ heartstrings. In its video presentation, a young Japanese girl from London watching the 2012 Games on television grew up to become an Olympic gymnast. A group of children of 20 different nationalities tagged along with the officials and soccer star David Beckham. In comparison, most of those who spoke at the Paris presentation were middle-aged males in suits.
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"The people from London 2012 were much better salesmen than the people from Paris. But it is much more difficult when you have the contract and you've made a lot of promises that are not linked to reality," ex-Paris 2012 boss Philippe Baudillon said. During the selection process the British announced that their project would only cost approximately $3.5 billion thanks to the use of existing infrastructures including Wembley and Wimbledon. “That budget was, from the outset, "fantasy," Baudillon added.
"While I don't think there was a fundamental intention to cheat, there was a certain desire to gloss over things. If there was a bill between 100 and 200, they had a tendency to put 100," a former Paris committee member said. Rather than simply doubling, the cost of the Olympic stadium nearly increased 13 times, starting at $62 million and going to $790 million. A 2003 IOC report with recommendations to limit the size, scope, cost and impact of the Games was meant to start with London 2012.
After the upset of the French defeat, Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë said, "They have not respected the rules established by the International Olympic Committee. I do not say that they were flirting with the yellow line, I say that they crossed the yellow line.”
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VI
Riding the overground line through Hackney and looking out the windows into the concentration camp that Stratford has become, passengers gaze at the excavators that have the outlines of war tanks, and the mounds and ditches of dirt that may be engulfing heaps of lifeless, discarded bodies. On that site, lives are laid to rest in shallow graves just barely covered over. A few months ago 50 pylons carried energy across east London, but now the cables have been torn down and buried underground. Lord Coe, 2012 organizer, spoke at the funeral site, “It’s going to change the skyline dramatically, and this is a fantastic project because it’s not just about the removal of the power cables, this is about the creation of a new city inside an old city.” And it’s about the people losing their power.
Bulldozers and cranes plod around the Olympic stadium framework. Two boys about 13 wearing backpacks and riding bicycles stop along the temporary barrier, crane their necks and gaze at the structural skeleton as if it were an extinct creature in a natural history museum – once upon a time it was once full of life but now just an exhibit. The end. They lose interest within a couple of minutes and peddle on without reading the writing on the walls. “Change,” “demolish. dig. design.” and “everyone’s 2012” colorfully embellish the plastic panels along with other positive slogans, statistics and sponsors. The Olympic Delivery Authority’s promises mark the territory like exaggerated excerpts from promotional pamphlets.
It’s a pleasantly sunny and clear afternoon in January and the “tainted” and “polluted” River Lea is a crystal spring reflecting golden rings compared to the grimy River Thames. Covering the side of a bridge is another message, more massive than the others: “ODA corrupt.” Nearby a red metal sign apologizing for the “inconvenience” has been tagged over with a zigzag of silver spray paint.
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But while some fight with their words, others just fit. A small street outside the perimeter of the construction site has been untouched but not unchanged. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em on the gravy train with a rundown chicken and kebab take-out topped off with a fresh new sign, The Olympic. It’s less KFC, more IOC. “The planning framework should focus on a whole new urban area with a distinct character of its own, changing the image of the area as a place to live,” stated bullet point 5.90 of the Mayor’s London Plan.
New developments are changing the area’s character in significant and controversial ways as the classic city adapts more to the contemporary. London is spreading outward and even thrusting further upward with a 72-story building, called "the Shard," to be built for completion in 2012 near Tower Bridge in the east. It will be Britain's tallest skyscraper and one of the highest in Europe. Prince Charles has objected to modern architecture saying that a new skyscraper will mean "not just one carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend, but a positive rash of them that will disfigure precious views and disinherit future generations of Londoners.”
The scene may be set, but when the world forgets about London in September ’12, will the east go back to its old ways quicker than Michael Phelps doing the breaststroke? Or will the Olympic village be transformed into the heart of east London, a venue where those not already evicted from their homes and businesses can come and live in an ideal utopia? Murder Mile in Hackney could be called a different name but it won’t disappear. The area can get a makeover but the citizens that walk the streets with knives will still lurk. Violence and homelessness can’t easily be gilded.
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“The east end of London is poor because that's where poor people have always lived. Once they're not poor they move out and other poor people take their place,” said east resident Sandra Dixon.
“I come from the east end of London so I am really excited by the plans for the development of the area,” said millionaire athlete David Beckham who has lived in several mansions so far removed from the east end of anywhere.
Originally the Olympic Village was to have 4,200 much-needed homes to rent or buy immediately after the games. A year ago that was revised down to 3,300. Six months it went down to just 2,700. The number of houses has been scaled back from the original plan. Teachers, nurses and public service workers almost certainly won’t be able to afford the estimated $500,000 cost per apartment. “Few of the locals are likely to still be around to enjoy the view once these apartments become available,” wrote Martin Slavin on gamesmonitor.org.uk.
There has been a massive increase in property prices in Beijing, on an average by almost 10 percent according to the China Daily. House prices in London and the southeast have already risen well above the national average with prices two to three times what they were a decade ago. In Hackney, the average price in 2006 was $500,000. In 2007 it was $600,000, a 20 percent increase.
Hackney residents have been turning to debt counselors to ease their financial worries. The number of cases has more than doubled in a year with an average of 266 visitors per month last November compared with 113 in 2007. “You cannot grow up with money all around you, go to Eton on a scholarship and attend Oxford and understand what people in deprived areas are going
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through,” said one London Assembly member. It’s possible that the project will alienate the people it needs to make it a success.
Urban renewal must reflect the needs of residents and not replicate the bad feelings in Barcelona, Sydney and Athens where some neighborhoods lost housing to the Olympics development while infrastructure improvements mainly benefited international guests and property investors. The regeneration of the area “is staged not for those who inhabit these places, but for those who consume them as visitors,” said Josh Ryan-Collins, researcher for the New Economics Foundation and co-author of the report “Fool’s Gold.”
At the business conference in the London region of Southwark on April Fool’s Day, commercial property agent Richard Kalmar asked guest speaker Jowell to clarify what benefits the area would get from the 2012 games. "There are already commercial hotel developments in the north of the borough that almost certainly would not have gone ahead if it was not for the prospect of the 2012 Olympic games," replied Jowell.
At least the commercial hotel industry will thrive. Maybe the homeless locals could move into the rooms after the world goes home. They’ll need some kind of transition because after centuries of difficult inner-city experiences, an effective regeneration has to be rooted in and grow out of the local community gradually. "The IOC itself has to realize you cannot use the games to make revolutionary changes in a city or country,” said Baudillon.
Not only will the regeneration likely fail to reach beyond the perimeters of the new park and its venues but the event is expected to ultimately lead to more job losses and less physical activity according to a May 2007 report for the Greater London Authority. Researchers analyzed the
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aftermath of the Olympics in Athens, Sydney, Atlanta and Barcelona and found that venues "struggled to make their mark" in improving employment and sports participation. “At the end of the day, Hackney and Newham are still very deprived areas and pockets of ugliness,” tour guide Empson said.
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VII
"We could inspire economic prosperity that is sustained long after the closing ceremony and which will pay for the Games many, many times over," said Blair in 2006.
The former Prime Minister signed off on a 250-page strategy document called “Game Plan” in December 2002 several years before London won the bid – back when leading economists and civil servants found that the main benefit of staging the Olympics would be a morale-boost for national party and that there would be little or no benefit other than that. The report was “an inconvenient truth,” said Professor Stefan Szymanski, an economist at Cass Business School. “The justification for bidding should have been based on evidence placed in the public domain, instead key evidence was suppressed or ignored,” he continued.
Livingstone divulged his knowledge regarding the underestimated cost and the government report revealing that the whole event had little merit beyond the jolly-up. The price of his admission has angered Londoners. “Any project that relies on national pride is dodgy. For the Government to have a revenue-come-propaganda exercise of this size funded by the unsuspecting is a masterstroke,” said London School of Economics political science student Tarik Kapetanovic.
Once upon a time nearly 30 years ago in a land far off land in the eastern hemisphere, Sebastian Coe, an expensive figure behind the London 2012 Olympics, dominated the 1500 meters track and field event in Moscow’s 1980 Games. Getting the last say in an east end set a precedent for future days. He got his first taste of triumph then, and now Coe may just be stalling the end of his glorious run by taking a final victory lap. “He is officially a Lord – for anyone who watched Coe run at the height of his career he was unquestionably a God or at least a hero,” wrote Ian O’ 28
Riordan for the Irish Times. Struggling citizens see him and his counterparts differently. “The main reason to hold the Olympics is for publicity of politicians, celebrities and athletes,” said Alex Irving of Brixton, a dangerous area in south London.
Journalists like O’ Riordan and Norman from London’s Evening Standard might believe athletes are superstars on golden pedestals deserving of special VIP treatment, but they’re not the only ones. British cyclist Bradley Wiggins said, “I was disappointed after winning gold in Athens that I didn’t have a higher profile. Winning two golds this summer and the whole cycling team doing well has meant my Olympic fame has lasted longer.” He might have liked to receive more for riding a bike but he eventually got off his wheels and got real. “As I learnt in 2004, you have to move on. You can’t live off Olympic success for the rest of your life,” he said.
For the athletes the east end will provide world-class sporting venues and international eminence, but the residents are apparently the winners with more jobs (that are mostly going to foreigners), new homes (that they won’t be able to afford), access to sports facilities (basically just one massive pool), inspiration for children to exercise (even though obesity levels continue to rise after almost doubling in England in the past 14 years), and a regenerated area with 15 miles of fresh roads (that will be named after famous sports figures to constantly remind them of the challenging changes).
"Why would I want to live in a street named after sports personalities? There are many heroes in a local community who do not get recognized for their hard work,” said resident Mike Booth. “The term ‘celebrity’ is cheaply earned and often short-lived these days, so streets might have to be re-branded on a regular basis,” he continued.
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A Hackney Today article asked, “What’s in a street name? Much of an area’s history can be wrapped up in the names of the streets.” But what if the area loses its history? A resident of Clays Lane believes he already has, saying, “The LDA made repeated reference to sustaining and supporting local communities, but it was as though we had already ceased to exist.”
East or central, Clays Lane or the Astoria, the names change but the story’s the same. London’s Crossrail underground train to be built where the historic Astoria stood will link the ends of the city together but disconnect the underground music scene. On January 14, 2009 the iconic venue held its “Demolition Ball” concert. Local singer/songwriter Drew McConnell played a mellow collection of melodies until offhandedly mentioning between songs, “Boris Johnson, what a cunt” to cheers louder than a pub full of soccer fans watching England score in a World Cup match.
From lyrics to politics, music had become a thing of the past. On stage the King Blues stopped their set to rant about the government’s “war on culture.” The second significant site to close within the past two years besides the Hammersmith Palais, online petitions outlined support for the spot that since 1976 spotlighted the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana.
“This was my life here,” emerged the words behind a graying beard. The sunken eyes above it slowly looked around at everyone dispersing to the outside after the show. Outsiders again, the doors closed and they were locked out. Once huddled close with familiar strangers, tossing beers from the balcony, getting bounced out into the night and telling stories of it the next day. “I’m proud to have been the last man ever to have been thrown out of the Astoria,” one guy boasted, but he was not the last to make his mark on the place. Days later the windows once covered with flyers for upcoming shows were boarded up, the letters had been removed from the marquee, there were no words left except the scribbled Sharpie tribute, “goodbye Astoria, we love you x”
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VIII
A spectacular games and nothing else matters. Put on a glittery show, throw up a couple of impressive buildings and the world is your friend. The 30th Olympiad may not be for another three years, but according to the Evening Standard it has already started. The publication eagerly counts down the 1,000+ days until the opening ceremony. “Beijing is old news now,” journalist Peter Reed wrote. Last October Nick Mathiason of the Guardian pointed out the short attention span, writing, “The games thrilled, now it’s whatever.” After only a couple months recent history had been forgotten.
The British athletes may have received gold in cycling but the people are more worthy of platinum in cynicism. “I suspect the thrill was way overplayed by a frenzied media when London ‘won’ the Olympics,” said London citizen Kim Koba.
With London succeeding Beijing it had eight minutes to wow the world in the handover of the ’08 closing ceremony. “This is London” had dancing workers reading tabloids and waiting for the morning bus. When it arrived the prancing commuters crumpled up the newspapers and threw them away into the crowd. If rebranding the capital was the name of the game, London forgot to follow the playbook. “A bloody double-decker for crying out loud, can you find a bigger stereotype of London? Unimaginative dross. The closest thing I saw to real London was the fight in the bus queue and even that wasn’t representatively violent enough,” one viewer said.
The plans for the opening ceremony are probably already in the works. Maybe they’re preparing to showcase pensioners complaining about the weather whilst some chavs stab each other in the background? Black Death and rats with the plague parachuted into the stadium? It may be
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wonderful, featuring a bunch of the usual Brit z-listers. Or how about 10,000 people, just standing around bitching about the country they're from? Part of Britain’s history may be erased by the current alterations but some things will never change. “Britain has done some amazing stuff – like inventing half the sports everyone will be beating us at, no doubt,” said sports enthusiast Sean Harry.
“I bet at the London Olympics opening ceremony they'll have those dancing twats that bash dustbin lids to the music. The world will be appalled. They will get to see loads of drunken chavs smashing shit up all over the Olympic village. They will find out about the huge amount of foreign workers here due to the fact the people are just on the dole and lay about,” said unemployed 20-year-old Lee Wykes of southwest London. He continued, “I am beginning to cringe already.”
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GLOSSARY
arse – backside (most commonly used as a negative)
chav – person of low intelligence who wears designer label copies, fake gold, is often a troublemaker and typically from the East end of London
dodgy – unsound, unstable, unreliable
dole – welfare, specifically unemployment benefit
dross – rubbish, nonsense, ridiculousness
dustbin – trashcan
Eton – prestigious University near Windsor Castle
flatmate – housemate
jolly-up – joke
overground – monorail
queue – line
quid – pound sterling (currently valued at $1.69)
tube – underground subway
twat – an offensive term for a person
white elephant – abandoned Olympic structure 33
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bates, Daniel. “Another £9.3bn down the drain? Ministers 'knew 2012 Olympics will bring little benefit to Britain.’” The Daily Mail. December 3, 2008.
Booth, Robert. “Charles does it again: skyscraper boom a rash of carbuncles, he tells architects.” The Guardian. February 1, 2008.
Hubbard, Alan. “Games will be More Harrods than Asda to make us Proud.” The Independent. November 23, 2008.
Mathiason, Nick. “The Games Thrilled. Now it’s ‘Whatever.’” The Observer. October 26, 2008.
‘O Connor, Ashling. “Fears that 2012 Olympics Preparation may Suffer in the Long Run.” The London Times. May 3, 2008.
‘O Connor, Ashling. “How the 1908 Olympics took Gold in Prudence.” The London Times. May 31, 2008.
‘O Riordan, Ian. “Athletic God Still Leading From Front. The Irish Times. November 15, 2008.
Osbourne, Alistair and Kirkup, James. “Tessa Jowell: Britain would not have bid for 2012 Olympics if we knew about Recession.” The Telegraph. November 12, 2008.
Peter Reed. “After the Gold Rush.” The London Times. December 28, 2008.
Samuel, Henry. “French Mock London After Tessa Jowell Airs Doubts on Olympics.” The Telegraph. November 14, 2008.
Sauer, Skip. “Policy Makers and Economic Analysis.” The Sports Economist. December 2, 2008.
Slot, Owen. “London Olympic Park: Businesses Fight for Compensation.” The London Times. June 3, 2008.
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