UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
Best of Britain: Waiting game
This week’s Best of Britain features several photos that are about waiting, whether it’s a referee pointing to his watch during a football match, people on shore watching crews trying to free the stuck submarine HMS Astute, or officials and leaders watching the construction of an Olympic venue.
Also included are photos of stag running through Deergate Park, a penguin bobbing for apples, cross-dressing Stoke City fans, or a solemn funeral for an aid worker slain in Afghanistan.
The London 2012 Paralympic Games is already changing lives
- Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson is Britain’s most successful Paralympic athlete, with a total of 16 medals, including 11 golds. She is part of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and Vice-Chair of the Sports Advisory Group. The opinions expressed are her own. -
One of the best parts of being involved in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games is that I get to see for myself how hosting the London Games is already changing people’s lives across the world.
In the weeks before today’s 1,000 days to go milestone I was in Jordan for the launch of International Inspiration. I had been asked to come and see what the London 2012 Games are doing for children there.
International Inspiration aims to changes the lives of millions of children throughout the world by giving them better PE lessons and sport and play opportunities. It’s absolutely core to LOCOG’s (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) commitment to use the London Games in a transformative way.
But it’s not just kids and young people around the world who are already getting involved and benefitting from London hosting the Games.
Millions of people here in the UK are already inspired by and involved, through the many sports participation programmes going on, by playing the National Lottery and by helping build the Olympic Park.
Once finished the Olympic Park will welcome people of all cultures, faiths and ages and be accessible to disabled people.
There is little indication that Olympics and other sporting events like it do increase public participation in sport. This requires investment in local sports facilities. In the case of London 2012 the Olympics has meant money has been taken away from community and children’s sports and given to this elite sporting event. All the indications from surveys to date are that, contrary to the assertions of Games promoters participation in sport in East London, where the Olympics are being held, has actually declined.
London 2012: Shopping for success
The frame of the 2012 Olympic main stadium stands out from among the piles of mud.
The skeletal metal structure, which will hold up the roof, rises above the construction site, three years ahead of the Games.
The only thing to challenge it is three concrete blocks – the shell of a massive shopping centre planned for the Olympic Park.
The Westfield centre may not be the centrepiece of the park in Stratford, east London, but it will be the main gateway.
Most visitors will have to walk through it to get to the venues. Organisers had once promoted the 242 million pound aquatics centre as the eye-catching gateway. Designed by the internationally renowned Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, it will feature a wave-like roof that is so complicated extra money was needed for its construction.
Now it appears it will only be seen after going past rows of shop window fronts.
Westfield will form part of the legacy, providing shops, restaurants and cafes for residents living in the 3,000 flats and apartments after the Games.
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The Wall
