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?

    ****For full Olympic coverage click here****

Boxing chiefs are to press for the inclusion of female fighters in the 2012 London Olympics.

They say theirs is the only sport in the Olympic programme without women and they await a decision from the International Olympic Committee by December.

Women did actually box in the 1904 Olympics and the sport has developed a higher profile in recent years thanks to boxers like Laila Ali and Jaqueline Frazier-Lyde, the daughters of old rivals Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier.

The International Boxing Association women’s commission vice-chairwoman Bettan Andersson believes having women’s boxing at the Olympics would help improve the overall image of the sport.

“If women come in, people will feel the sport is more common, not so dangerous, and that would be a very good thing for the image of boxing,” she says.

But not everybody agrees.

There are plenty who say that even men’s boxing is too brutal a spectacle to be part of the Olympics and that to see women belting each other in the ring would be even worse.

Better to open the door to the sports like golf and rugby that are lobbying for inclusion in the Games.

Do you think women’s boxing should be included in the London 2012 programme?

              **** For full Olympics coverage click here **** 

Who do you think is shaping up to be the biggest star of these Olympics?

After a week of stirring achievements, there is no lack of candidates — Usain Bolt’s almost casual 100 metres win, Michael Phelps’ record haul of gold medals and Rebecca Adlington’s first women’s double gold swimming feat for Britain are obvious headliners.

But what about cyclist Rebecca Romero who has become the first British woman to win medals in two different Summer Olympic sports? In fact the entire teams of the Brits on the bikes and in the boats have done us proud.

What has been the standout performance for you?

  *** For full Olympic coverage click here ****

Into the vaccuum of hard news leap the Olympics, with wall-to-wall coverage from Beijing of the last summer games before they come to Britain.

Some people love it of course, and could probably have told you what the world 100 metres men’s record was or how many times Mark Spitz won gold in the pool even before the avalanche of previews began.

Others always have been and always will be entirely indifferent to 99 percent of the sports featured in the Olympics and either reserve their passion for the World Cup or avoid the great sporting occasions altogether.

Are you getting into the swing of the Games as Friday’s opening approaches, and do you look forward to them coming to Britain in 2012?  

The over-60s will be able to take a dip at their local council pool for free across England from next year under government plans announced on Friday.

The scheme is costing 140 million pounds over two years, although part of the money will also be available for lifting admission costs for children under-16 and for maintainance work on ageing facilities. A similar scheme is already operating in Wales.

It’s all part of the government’s plan to get 2 million people off their couches ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games in London in July 2012.

Critics say it’s too little too late as Britain heads for an obesity crisis, with the government struggling to meet its target of reducing the proportion of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels by 2020.

What do you think? Is free swimming a good idea? Or just another unnecessary burden on the taxpayer?

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.