Clerics and police have expressed concern, and now the Olympics minister has - London could see a proliferation in prostitution and human trafficking during the 2012 Games.

Some have warned the Olympics could see a repeat of the ”mega brothels” set up in German cities for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Tessa Jowell said: “I am concerned about that. I certainly became aware of it in the run-up to the World Cup.

“We need to send the strongest possible message that our Olympics will not be contaminated by this exploitation.”

In January, two Church of England dioceses set down a motion for discussion at the General Synod, or clerical parliament, for a government crackdown on human trafficking in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, saying “anything like slavery is wrong”.

They pointed to the World Cup in Germany, where they said city officials adopted a “pragmatic” approach towards catering for the sexual desires of the estimated three million football fans who attended the tournament.

“Sex huts” or “sex garages” for prostitution were set up, filled with 40,000 extra prostitutes, while special licences were issued allowing prostitutes to offer sex on the street, they added.

About 500,000 sports fans a day are expected to roll into London for the two-week long Olympics.

Concerns have already been raised about the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

While some studies suggested that prostitution levels may have in fact decreased during the World Cup in Germany, Jowell said: “I think this is a risk, it is a risk I am absolutely determined that London will mitigate, and that London will set an example for the world in future sporting events, basically outlawing trafficking, making it impossible for these young women, and young men, to be exploited in this way.”

“I think it is an issue that has to come out of the cupboard.”

- Hugh Robertson is the opposition Conservatives' Olympics spokesman. The views expressed are his own. -

With three years to go, it is remarkable that London 2012 is going so well.

London’s Olympics were launched with a massive government miscalculation that resulted in the budget having to be increased threefold, were based on a plan that required us to build two Terminal 5s in half the time and have had to contend with the worst economic recession in living memory.

Despite this, the construction process remains on time and nearly on budget, the organising committee have raised more than £500 million in sponsorship and our athletes have given London 2012 a considerable boost by winning a record haul of medals in Beijing.

However, among all the plaudits, it is sensible to sound a note of caution.

The construction process is only just over one third complete and much remains to be done to a tight and immoveable deadline. Many of the major operational challenges for The organising committee lie ahead such as balancing the budget, finalising the venues, ticketing and the content of the opening and closing ceremonies. Finally, it is a considerable challenge to get our athletes to replicate, or exceed, their performance in Beijing.

In short, if you were writing a school report, you would probably conclude that London 2012 has started well but much remains to be done. You would also warn against too much self congratulation!

The major outstanding issue is legacy. It is a worry that neither the main stadium nor the broadcast and media centre have key anchor tenants and there has been little progress on delivering the promise, made when we won the bid, to use London 2012 to reengage young people in sport.

This is important for one simple reason. If we transform the area around Stratford but leave no more people enjoying the opportunities available through sport, we will have missed a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Team GB has had a glittering Olympic Games in Beijing, with its best showing in the medals table for a century.

Performances by the country’s cyclists, sailors, swimmers and rowers have resulted in a gold haul of at least 16 golds, with a few days still to go.

Cyclist Chris Hoy, who became the first British athlete to win three gold medals in an Olympics, was one of a clutch of stars to make history.

Ben Ainslie became Britain’s most successful Olympic sailor, while Rebecca Romero became the first British woman to win two medals in two summer Olympic sports.

London 2012 chiefs had targeted fourth place in the medals table in four years’ time, but Team GB was already holding third place in 2008 ahead of Russia and arch rivals Australia.

Will Team GB be able to perform so well in 2012? Or has it peaked? What needs to happen to help it maintain expectations?

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said he wanted to get more women into Olympic construction jobs, but there weren’t many on view during a site visit this week.

Instead, there was Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell donning hard hat, safety goggles and Caterpillar boots. The floral jacket seemed a bit out of place, but maybe it was proof you could still be a woman in a man’s world.

She was there to promote a construction training scheme for the unemployed, especially those from run-down east London. The area will be the venue for the Olympic Park, including the main stadium, velopark and aquatics centre as well as the Olympic village and media centre.

The Plant Training Centre is part of the government’s 2012 legacy plans.

“For many, the legacy of the Games will begin now, by securing access to the jobs and opportunities which are being created,” said Councillor Chris Roberts, leader of Greenwich Council, which is one of the five host boroughs for the Games.

Even Prime Minister Gordon Brown commented: “The construction of the site can be the catalyst for lasting and social and economic change.”

The centre offers employment hope in an area where hundreds of thousands of traditional industrial, manufacturing and docklands jobs have disappeared over the decades.

During the past three months, 40 unemployed people have enlisted for the five to 10-day courses, run by the National Construction College.

They learnt to drive forklift trucks, forward tipping dump trucks, excavators or road rollers, with 78 percent passing. The plan is for 200 to go through the training by June 2009.

Not all took to it. For some, the chance to work on one of the most iconic projects the country has seen for a long time was not enough to get them out of bed.

The ones likely to succeed are those with the right attitude — and a talent for PlayStation. Apparently, the video game console is good for eye-hand co-ordination, skills needed in the construction industry.

One who did pass and who has since been taken on is Martin Eaton. The 47-year-old from Bethnal Green, in London, is working on the area which will form the archery venue during the Paralympic Games.

He understood the impact of the legacy.

“The Olympic Games was a factor behind me wanting to train as a construction worker because I would like to say I had a hand in helping it,” he said.

It’s a lot of mud for nine billion pounds.

Work on London’s Olympic Park is bulldozing ahead — literally. Dozens of diggers are clearing the site in east London before construction on the main stadium, velopark, aquatics complex, media centre and Olympic village can begin.

The site has become an industrial dinosaur over the decades, seeping pollutants into the soil and waterways.

Now it is has been stripped bare and is being cleaned before it can metamorphose into a sporting Mecca towards which all eyes will be turned in 2012.

Rubble from the blitz, fridges, oil, petrol, tar, arsenic and lead have all been cleared away.

Even Roman and Iron Age remnants have been dug up, including fourth century BC pottery where the aquatics centre will be and a coin from the time of emperor Constantine has been found on the main stadium site.

On what will be the velopark, landfill material is loaded onto a recycling machine and metals drawn out with electomagnets.

The planned aquatics centre is currently home to a 50-tonne washing machine which has decontaminated 800,000 cubic metres of soil to be reused on the Olympic Park.

Shopping trolleys and cars have been removed from the park’s waterways.

About 90 percent of the building materials from demolition have been recycled at a cost of about 200 million pounds.

A drive around parts of the 2.5 km square site shows very few buildings remain. The most notable structures are the pylons which will eventually be replaced by underground tunnels.

More than 150 buildings have been demolished, including a large warehouse which caught fire last year, sending huge plumes of black smoke across London.

Only piles of dirt remain.

Looming out of the horizon is Canary Wharf, a beacon of business. Like that shining development, organisers hope the nine billion-pound Olympic Park will become a focus for sportsmen.

British Airways has effectively spent 40 million pounds securing the right to show the Olympic logo on its planes ahead of London 2012, but smaller companies which unofficially try to plug the rings run the risk of getting into trouble with the authorities.

Dennis Spurr, who owns the high street butchers “The Fantastic Sausage Factory” in Weymouth where the Olympic sailing events will be held, received a phone call from Olympic heavies in London telling him to bring down his Games poster as the international logo is protected.

It featured the Olympic rings, shaped as sausages, below the word “fantastic”.

“I thought it was brilliant that Weymouth had got the Olympics,” he said.

“We are never going to see anything like that in Weymouth again. I was entering the spirit of it all.”

But he was reported to the Olympic authorities and told to take it down.

“I did not want any legal action,” Spurr added.

“I thought it was poor of them though.”

But one business beyond the reach of the authorities despite getting more free publicity on the back of the Games than it could possibly hope for, or afford, is “Bar 2012″.

Also in Weymouth, it had the name more than two years before London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics.

The bar wanted an exotic theme and went for 2012, the date on which the Maya civilisation predicted the world would come to an end, proprietor Jeremy Read explained.

Before that, it was called “The London”.

In fact, part of the London bid to stage the Games was launched from its premises at 20:12 on December 20, Read added.

The Sausage Factory affair has put him off trying to use any Olympic publicity — for a while.

“We tip-toed a little,” he said.

But Read said he planned trying something after this summer’s Beijing Olympics.

“I like the David versus Goliath scenario,” he said.

Prepare for an Olympic tussle.

After the controversy surrounding the London 2012 Olympic logo, reporters wondered just how wacky the design for the main stadium would be.

The jigsaw-like logo, which is supposed to resemble the date of the Games, was criticised for being too abstract, while its animated flashing version was said to pose a health hazard.

But when the press, sponsors and VIPs sat down on a pile of mud at the building site in Stratford in east London, you could feel the muted disappointment among the hacks. After all, hadn’t the cost of the stadium shot up by 77 percent to 496 million pounds?

Where were the towers or the arches? Where were the wings or the sails?

Not even being told we were sitting on the finishing line seemed to lift the spirits.

The designer tried to convince us, saying the wrap around the stadium may feature a mosaic, with pixelated images of athletes which will come into focus from afar.

Athletes attending did their best when they said they had goose pimples just seeing the warm-up area. And there was clapping among the VIPs.

But it was not another Wembley with its soaring arch, the designer himself admitted.

It was not a Cardiff Millennium Stadium with its metal arrows, and it was not a Beijing ‘nest’ with its intricate lattice of steelwork.

But it was practical, as the designer said. Temporary seating will be removed after the Games to leave a 25,000 seat stadium to be used for athletics and the community.

Let’s hope he’s right when he says its compactness will help create a special atmosphere inside.

Sebastian Coe said the negativity shown by Londoners towards hosting the 2012 Olympic Games doesn't get him down.

But he must have had the wind knocked out of him by the questions and sometimes anger shown by local residents and politicians in recent question and answer sessions.

During meetings with the London Assembly and Newham residents, Coe and various other important Olympic-planning bods were constantly put on the spot by doubters about the costs and financing of the Games.

"We're being taken for a ride over costs," said one councillor.

At one stage during a meeting at Stratford Circus Arts Centre, in Newham, near the site of the proposed main stadium, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell was forced to dismiss similarities with the much under-used and unloved Millennium Dome.

Coe and co were keen to stress the legacy the Games will provide, including providing employment, skills, affordable housing and business space. But residents were more concerned about the now.

What about the cyclists who have had to give up their track to make way for the Olympic park only for their replacement to be held up by a protected breed of newt?

What about the effects of contamination that has already forced the canoeing events to be transferred to another site?

What about the mum and dad who have to drive their daughter to Sheffield to train because there aren't diving facilities?

Surely the emphasis should be on the youngsters and their dream of competing in 2012 rather than on buildings, one councillor asked.

That prompted the double-gold medallist Coe to suggest the "world was beginning to wobble" if the councillor was implying he didn't understand the demands of training.

"Hit a nerve, have I?" she retorted.

And what about the cats being rounded up from the site, asked one woman? Well, 150 have been collected already, an official answered.

Coe must be wondering how much more cattiness there is to come