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Just had to capture these this morning!
Andrew Simms
@AndrewSimms_nef
Author of Ecological Debt, Tescopoly, & some other things. Fellow of nef. Co-founded the Green New Deal & onehundredmonths.org.
Its Saturday & I love sport, but there are many layers of wrong to London2012. Apologies, I’ll pluck these 15 thorns now, then say no more.
1/15 Suspension of free speech: under special powers it is illegal for local people visibly to criticise the Olympics. Incredible but true.
2/15 They were imposed on local communities and businesses who had no ultimate choice over the ‘regeneration’ of their neighbourhoods
3/15 They went massively over their initial budget
4/15 The polluting, climate-wrecking, renewable energy dropping, oil giant, BP, is their ‘sustainability sponsor’
5/15 Having fast food giant McDonalds as a sponsor makes a mockery of the healthy sporting example the event is meant to set (oh, and Coke)
6/15 Dow Chemicals is a sponsor although still embroiled in dispute over the lethal Bhopal disaster
7/15 Vast numbers of tickets went to corporations & dignitaries rather than ordinary punters, the people who are paying for it
8/15 Special traffic lanes will put the interests of VIP traffic flow ahead of the needs of some emergency services
9/15 The broken promises about mass sporting activity for young people
10/15 The broken environmental promises
11/15 The broken promise about the outside race routes that should have gone more around the host boroughs
12/15 They mask a global trade in muscle biased toward rich countries. Results flatter national resource. Why not redistribute Olympic cash?
13/15 Other parts of the country needed the new infrastructure much more than the South East
14/15 The fact that to enter the Olympic area you’re channelled through a shrine to crass consumerism – the appalling symbolism of Westfield
15/15 It is a monument to often hypocritical, rather pompous self-justifying, elite vain glory. Shame when sport is such a good thing.
