Results tagged “2012”

• Crossrail: Ken Clarke says the Tories won't give it the go-ahead until they've thumbed through the finances, while there's a warning over anthrax or plague traces at a City tunnelling site
• Newham's obstreperous mayor reckons that the Aquatic Centre isn't tall enough for post-Olympic plans
• John Terry is to visit the steward he accidentally ran over on Tuesday night

Following forum style consultation with you, dear Londoners, the London Assembly today presented a document to LOCOG asking for clarification on 2012 ticket allocations, pricing, accessibility and availability. more ›

The completion date for the new, Thames-spanning station at Blackfriars has been pushed back by four months. Network Rail blamed the delay on additional repair work over Blackfriars bridge, which involves incorporating the adjacent, disused piers into a new cross-river structure. The cost of the project is also spiralling: a source at contractor Balfour Beatty, speaking to Building magazine, said that the final project cost had yet to be agreed, with the overspend currently rumoured to be around the £100 million mark. Blackfriars, which closed in early 2009, is now due to re-open in spring 2012, perilously close to the Olympic Games. more ›

There's 875 days to go. Tickets don't go on sale till next year but that's no reason not to be organised, people. With so many events and venues to choose from, maybe it's not a bad idea - if worryingly anal - to start organising your Olympic itinerary right now, as one online travel guide is recommending. Certainly, all the sports have their dates and venues set now, so a preliminary reccy could be handy, to ensure you can shufty between Dressage in Greenwich Park, Trampolining in North Greenwich, wiff waff at Excel, Badders at Wembley and the Fosbury Flops and all the rest back at the Olympic Park in Stratford. more ›

According to the ES, within a few months our boroughs will be able to bid for a slice of a £32m fund to make London look all Olympicky for 2012 and show off Johnson's half a million quid city rebrand. Vancouver failed to "dress" its skyscrapers (are we alone in thinking that would have been a colossal waste of money better invested in artificial snow?) but the West End, Royal Parks and Westminster will be covered with the new London branding alongside that controversial 2012 logo whilst other areas can invest in flags, banners and lighting shows to get on message for the duration of the Games. Speaking of which, have you softened towards the Olympic brand? more ›

An Association of British Orchestras survey reports that 7/10 Joe Public respondents want a big orchestral theme tune, performed by a British orchestra (naturally), for the 2012 Olympics. Inspired by the emotional and climactic 'Nessun Dorma' a la World Cup Italia 90 and the rock/opera crossover hit penned by Freddie Mercury for Barcelona 92 (that tragically, he never got to sing at the occasion and that was bumped in favour of a slightly creepy ALW Spanglish affair) if nothing else, we need to nail the musical element if we want to be remembered. more ›

• Boris has been busy hosting a mayoral migration meeting (but no, that doesn't mean he's going to migrate).
• London hotels ain't very friendly places to bring your pet.
• The BBC watchdog has spent an awful lot of licence payers' money getting itself some posh new HQ.

Approval has been given by Newham's mayor for a £3m structure designed to hide the insalubrious streets of Stratford from the prying eyes of Olympic officials and spectators as they're whisked to the Games. The only problem is, the structure could end up a bigger eyesore than the scene it is meant to disguise more ›

Look, see, on this here webcam. The Aquatics Centre on the Olympic Park has its first pool. The dive tank is the smallest in the complex and the first to be completed. The current inundation is to test the structure before work progresses on the other pools. Don't expect to go swimming any time soon, though, as the pool remains untiled. (Not to mention the lack of walls.) more ›

The Hammers' hopes of planting themselves in the Olympic stadium post-2012 have receded after Olympic minister Tessa Jowell rubbished the idea. Speaking during her taxpayer-funded jolly fact-finding mission in Vancouver, Jowell insisted that the stadium would be used to host England's second most popular sport, which, as we all know, is track-and-field. West Ham's new owners want the club to relocate to the stadium after the Games are over, and have suggested that Upton Park could be converted to an athletics track in a convenient quid pro quo; but Jowell is incensed that the matter has been brought up at all, and seems determined to bestow the status of 'white elephant' upon the cupcake. Given that Jowell probably has, at best, three months left in the job, there may be hope for the Irons yet. more ›

No one knows yet. Or if they do, they're not saying. The London Assembly, through their recently polished web site, are asking for YOUR ADVICE on how to price up the nine million tickets for the 2012 games. They've even gone all old-skool social media by launching a discussion forum for this and other matters Olympic. You can join in the conversation here (thus far, just six replies), or let us know below how much you would spend to watch an Olympic event, and which events should be the priciest and cheapest. more ›

• Vocation it may be, but staff at the National Gallery are still planning to go on strike.
• Badminton and gymnastics ARE going to Wembley in 2012, and that's that.
• Same year, different issue: rather a lot of Team GB are likely to be posh, it seems.

Work has begun on the green bits of the Olympic Park. At the moment, this consists of clearing industrial waste but that hasn't stopped the 2012 spin machine feeding us hyperbolic visions of the 'hanging gardens' of Stratford, that will eventually adorn the mega footbridge linking "East Westfield" to the Park. The bucolic plans feature an treelined avenue, meadows and "Great British Gardens". Shame they booted out our great British allotments to get there. more ›

We're the first to own up to a shaggy rather than sharply delineated definition of London. Windsor's been mentioned. London Gatwick is really Sussex but we don't mind. Ebbsfleet is pushing it, but they're getting a big horse. However, Calais, in our book, is definitely France. Not even in the country. So news today of it's spunky "Mission 2012" attempts to insinuate itself into Britain for the London Olympics has got our eyebrows raised. However, we're also having to suppress glee that a Calais councillor has come out and said, in respect of Paris' failed bid: "Don't tell anyone, but I always thought London was better for us." more ›

Last October, Hackney council ran a public consultation to grill locals on whether they wanted to see a 120m-high wind turbine erected on Hackney Marshes. more ›

The commission for Boris Johnson's much-mocked Olympic tower project has been won by artist Anish Kapoor, according to the Architects' Journal. more ›

An unverified report in Event magazine suggests that Earls Court will close after the 2012 Olympics. Capco, who have finalised a deal to buy the 70-acre site, plans to redevelop it into a "mixed-use but residential-led" project. A website, Your Earls Court, has been launched to explain how the development will proceed. more ›

With Victorian enclosures law in their armoury, NOGOE held a public meeting on Sunday about the plan to hold Olympic equestrian events in Greenwich Park. More than 200 people turned out, mostly over fears of damage to the World Heritage Site. With the feelings of the public meeting, 497 letters of objection already delivered and a 13,200 strong petition in his pocket, the group coordinator claims that "the overwhelming majority of local residents are against the use of Greenwich Park for the Olympics". A planning decision will be made in March. more ›

New Hammers head honcho David Sullivan has wasted no time in mapping out his plans for the club: he wants Champions League action within seven years, and a move from the Boleyn ground to the Olympic stadium, just two miles away, after the 2012 Games are over. more ›

An 1866 legal loophole might be the last bullet in the NOGOE protesters' arsenal, hoping to shoot down plans to stage equestrian events in Greenwich Park. The act against enclosures on 'metropolitan commons' is to be invoked for Blackheath's Circus Field which adjoins the park and would be used for logistics at the events. NOGOE will lodge the objection with Greenwich Council but as LOCOG point out, Circus Field is used for other events; the circus, for instance, with no objections being raised to its 'enclosure'. The formal consultation is over but you can still have your say via the Greenwich 2012 website. (Image / Greenwich Park in the snow by captainmcdan more ›

We mentioned this briefly yesterday, but it's such a beautiful image we had to draw your attention to it again. The Olympic site has been undergoing work to make its infrastructure more secure - power lines are now underground, and cyber security is being stepped up - but the most eyecatching development is an adjustment to stop "all of North London's sewage suddenly shooting on to the Olympics site" at a speed of 40mph, a prospect that Home Office minister Lord West finds "quite exciting I think". Imagine it: the Cupcake hushed, waiting for the start of the 100m final, when a squishy roar starts up outside... If anyone sees John Cusack on site, panic. more ›

• Would-be jet bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised in London, according to the Yemeni government
• In a related (and belated) development, university leaders are to discuss how to tackle on-campus extremism
• Medway Council are the latest to rubbish Boris Island, the Mayor's mooted Thames Estuary airport

As if in the business of bestowing New Year's Honours himself, yesterday Lord Mandelson of Mayoral Ambitions magisterially declared that as of 2012, Greenwich shall henceforth be known as The Royal Borough of Greenwich. more ›

Showing impressive creativity when it comes to their green credentials, the Met are recycling a lot more than their Christmas trees. Guns and knives siezed by the force are being melted down and turned into girders to be used on the 2012 Olympic site. If only we could further the cycle and see some of those girders turned into soft drink we'd have the hardest Irn Brun around. Joking aside, hoorah for the Met's environmental policy which has also seen cooking oil from their canteens become biofuel, police horse droppings make compost and if you got some costume jewellery or a photo frame for Christmas it may well have been made of bullets. more ›

The best gift Barack Obama will get this Christmas is a successful healthcare reform vote, but second in the list is surely the special edition West Ham United shirt that was presented to him (via a White House official) at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo. more ›

• Mentally ill man dodges minders on Stratford shopping trip and goes on the run
• Eurostar trains are up and running again
• Electrical fault causes the Royal Free Hospital to cancel all non-emergency surgery

We'd love to say they're pledging to get their super fast broadband rolled out to 10 million UK homes in time for 2012 purely as part of their commitment to the London Games and the Olympic value of excellence. Since they lit up the top of BT Tower for the 1,000 day countdown it would be fitting to work towards something within the Olympian timeframe. But it's much more to do with keeping up with slightly speedier Virgin Media who currently provide the fastest residential broadband (although our own experiences don't particularly bear this out grrrrr hiss). We only hope while they're focusing on their fibre optics they don't neglect those restaurant plans which are far more exciting for us than 100mbps. more ›

Thanks to a hefty cash injection from Visa's sponsorship of umbrella organisation Team 2012 it now looks like Team GB will be able to field competitors in every possible sport at the 2012 Olympics. Things were looking ropey not long ago but now every marginal sport will receive additional funding. Um, apart from table tennis. Can we blame this unexplained omission on Boris's Beijing wiff waff gaffe? Seems ping pong won't be coming home after all. more ›

Redbridge Council have denied reports from last weekend that League One strugglers Leyton Orient are set to move to a new ground in Fairlop Waters. The Sun had reported on "secret talks" between club and council, but a spokesperson has refuted the suggestion that the location on the borough's outskirts would become a new home for the O's; however, she did let slip that Redbridge in general is being considered as a destination for the club. Orient are keen to move from their limiting Brisbane Road home, and the chairman has proposed selling the ground. They have been linked with a permanent move to the Olympic stadium after the Games, though the suitability of a 25,000- seater stadium with a running track for a small but fiercely proud local club has been questioned. more ›