UK News

from Newsmaker:

Send your questions for Seb Coe and Hugh Robertson

To mark the one year countdown to the London Olympics, Thomson Reuters will hold a Newsmaker on July 21 at 18:30 BST with four-time Olympic medalist and chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Sebastian Coe and Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson MP.

The event will begin with a speech by Coe, who won gold in the 1500m at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, followed by a Q&A session with both guests, moderated by me, Global Sports Editor Paul Radford. The Newsmaker will be streamed live to the Reuters website and we'll provide rolling coverage of the event as it happens.

As well as questions from the audience, you also have the chance to put your questions to Coe and Robertson. Please join us on the day and leave your comments and questions below. You can also post your questions on the Reuters UK Facebook page or send them over Twitter using the hashtag #newsmkr or via @ReutersSports

Image -- The Chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), Sebastian Coe, poses with a prototype of the London 2012 Olympic Torch at St Pancras station in London June 8, 2011. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Oona King to run as Labour candidate for mayoral election

Once one of “Blair’s Babes“, former Labour MP Oona King has thrown down the gauntlet to former Mayor Ken Livingstone with the announcement of her official bid to become Labour’s candidate to run for London mayor in 2012.

King served as the second black woman MP in Britain after Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, who was elected in 1987.

Until her defeat by Respect’s George Galloway in 2005, King represented Bethnal Green and Bow in the Commons for 8 years from 1997 to 2005 under Prime Minister Tony Blair’s leadership.

In a 2007 autobiography titled “House Music: The Oona King diaries“, King details her life as an MP, including the challenges she faced after announcing her support of Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

King, currently head of diversity at Channel 4, will have to defeat anti-establishment Labour candidate Livingstone to compete against Conservative incumbent Mayor Boris Johnson in 2012. Last year, Livingstone announced a challenge to Johnson.

Livingstone was the first elected mayor of London. He was elected as an independent candidate in 2000, but in 2004 he ran for the post again under the Labour banner and served as mayor until 2008 when he was defeated by Johnson.

He was leader of the Greater London Council from 1981 until Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government abolished it in 1986.

Minister warns against “contaminating” 2012 Olympics

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.

from The Great Debate UK:

Government must deliver on Olympic legacy promise

- 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!

Can Team GB beat 2008 medal tally?

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?

Training for the Olympics – with hard hats

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.

London’s Olympic site stripped bare

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.

Olympic tussle over a name?

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.

An Olympian task trying to please the hacks

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.

from Ask...:

Coe undefeated by doubters – just winded

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?