July 21, 2012 | Posted by Jonathan Turner
I’ve been out to view the torch relay twice over the last couple of weeks to see it in action before it makes its way in to London. We have been looking a issues ranging from the vehicles in the convoy, to the local authority run evening celebrations, to the product and promotional items given out by the Presenting Partners. The main beverage provider was only giving out its most high profile products which we were very disappointed to see. They did give out sugar free versions of it and weren’t giving it to children (just to adults who often
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July 20, 2012 | Posted by Emma Synnott
There is no doubt that the London 2012 Games set a ‘high dream’ for embedding sustainability: zero waste, low carbon, 100% public transport, providing real and sustained employment for local people and a community inspired to be more active and healthier. It is easy to stand back and throw stones where things haven’t gone to plan, and it is far more difficult to show leadership when dreams turn to nightmares. So it was a huge coincidence on the day that I was heading for the US First Minister’s residence to hear about their plans for their new ‘green’ Embassy building,
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July 19, 2012 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
Today WWF and BioRegional have published their report on the progress of the London 2012 Games in meeting its sustainability objectives. It has taken a huge collective effort to put these Games on track to be the most sustainable to date – from the organisers, to campaign groups like these, and to an assurance body like ours which is tasked with being the bastion of impartiality and good evidence. London 2012 will be my second Olympics, but I know that there will be particular aspects of these Games that will stand out. Beijing 2008 - "Cockroach Kebabs" I had the great honour to be part of the London 2012 observer team in Beijing and I learned a lot. It was immediately obvious that we were in a different part of the world when encountering the food. Stir fried bullfrog is a delicacy and the street vendors offer griddled insects on a skewer that I described as a “cockroach kebab” in a blog at the time. It probably wasn’t cockroach really but as I spend most of my time doing dull fact-based assurance it is sometimes good to use a bit of artistic licence in a blog. When we visited a
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July 18, 2012 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
London cabbies are revolting Walking past the Houses of Parliament yesterday I was surprised to see the traffic even more motionless than usual and a group of burly taxi drivers standing around in the street with their cabs idle. Assuming there to be an incident at Parliament Square I realised it was in fact the cabbies themselves causing the gridlock. They were protesting about lack of access to the 35Km of exclusive lanes of the Olympic Route Network. LOCOG would no doubt argue that the ORN is for vehicles transporting people and things that are essential to the Games operation. For example,
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July 16, 2012 | Posted by Shaun McCarthy
Tags: Athletes Village, Legacy, Olympic Park, refrigerants, waste
It is some time since I was invited to a slumber party so the opportunity to be part of LOCOG’s commissioning event for the Olympic Village was very welcome. They invited around 1,000 guests to spend an evening in the Athlete’s Village and to stay over in one of the apartments. A great honour and I thank LOCOG for inviting me along. On arrival we were transported by bus from Stratford station, my bus driver let his engine idle while we were waiting which is against LOCOG’s policy but I was assured by my fellow guests that their busses had
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