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Commission statement on allegations of excessive food waste

September 13, 2012   |   Posted by Jemma Percy

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On 31st August 2012 the Commission received allegations from BBC London News that catering staff were being asked to throw away excessive quantities of food immediately after cooking at the athletes catering facility at Royal Holloway village, which served athletes competing in the rowing and flatwater canoe/kayak events at Eton Dorney. Background The BBC had approached LOCOG several days before they contacted the Commission and were issued with a statement denying the allegations, saying that this was the action of one disgruntled ex-employee. There had been no communication between LOCOG and the Commission before being approached by the BBC. The Commission was presented with some of the evidence before the news item was broadcasted on 7th September 2012. After the broadcast new evidence that was not used was presented to the Commission in confidence. These included photographs, additional video footage and transcripts of interviews. We were advised that 6 whistle blowers had made the allegations; their identity remains confidential to BBC London News. Given the evidence presented, this was investigated under our emerging issues procedure. LOCOG and Aramark have co-operated fully with this investigation. Context It is important to understand the scale of this operation. Catering for elite Olympic and …

121105 Aerial shoot_Olympic Park

Assuring a legacy?

March 14, 2012   |   Posted by Shaun McCarthy

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It seems a long time since London was announced as the host city for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and those of us involved in the sustainability aspects of the bid tried to work out what a body to assure the sustainability performance would be like. We started with the rather cynical notion that there is no such thing as a sustainable Games, it is not possible to justify the gross consumption of resources to support a sporting event. We can only call London 2012 sustainable if there is a sustainable legacy. We think of legacy in terms of the environmental, social and economic legacy, primarily for East London but also for the UK as a whole, we also think about the legacy of learning and how this is applied in a wider context. The track record of past Games is patchy, the Olympics helped to put Barcelona on the map as a world city and helped to regenerate the east dock area, the legacy of Athens is almost non-existent and Sydney has done well after a slow start. Beijing is emerging with a legacy of sorts but time will tell. The time has come to consider London 2012 …

Shaun McCarthy - Live and Dangerous

Live and dangerous

May 20, 2011   |   Posted by Shaun McCarthy

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What is a “green job” anyway? As we move closer to the Games it is inevitable that the level of media attention directed towards the Commission will increase. It has been a great privilege to represent the commission at public events, to talk to the press and to take part in live TV and radio broadcasts. This week I was grateful to the organisers of Sustainability Now! for giving me my first experience of a live webinar. It was a bit of a weird experience. The four delegates were squashed in a tiny room in Blackfriars glued to laptops and talking through a telephone. There was a time lag for the audio meaning that you heard the other speakers a second or so after you heard what they had to say in the room. It is not the same as a live conference where you get a lot of non-verbal feedback by making eye contact with the audience, neither is it the same as doing TV or radio. In this genre your audience could be doing anything, digging the garden, doing the ironing or grooming the dog. In a webinar you can be pretty sure you have an engaged audience because …