Olympic landscapes - quick view

The Olympic games in Greece evolved from ceremonial races or athletic contests, and became a Pan-hellenic ritual with a single site, requiring a temporary truce or ceasefire from warring city states http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/site.html

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The ideal of Olympian games was revived in Much Wenlock (in Shropshire, England) in 1850. The Much Wenlock games continue to this day. They did not achieve the success of the "Modern Olympics" because modest prizes were given. They were "professional" when that meant also POOR peoples games. http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk/ . Their premier event is still the 7-mile race, divided into age categories

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The Modern Olympics, whilst previously amateur, is now thoroughly professional. It has become highly contentious for having sponsors that include McDonalds (burgers) and Coca Cola, considered responsible for an epidemic of obesity, Dow Chemicals, a subsidiary of which was responsible for the Bhopal; Chemical Disaster, and for other sponsors (such as Atos) which benefit from tax breaks for their sponsorship. The Controversy is so deep that some consider the brand "Modern Olympics" as toxic. http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2012/07/20/an-expert-view-olympic-tax-dodging/

http://www.london2012.com/

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Anyway - I thought it might be handy to have a quick comparison of the Olympic venues.....

Diesel particulates - visible in London atmosphere - cause cancer, as dangerous as asbestos and mustard gas?

The World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer has explicitly said diesel fumes cause cancer http://press.iarc.fr/pr213_E.pdf . Diesel particulates and vapour were found to be carcinogenic  MP4 Video Link  (full info follow links on this page  http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/2012/mono105-info.php and Lancet ). Diesel fumes have been compared to asbestos and mustard gas in their toxicity.

Both the very small particles, considered most harmful to health, and much larger particles form a visible brown haze over central London. So often cancer is considered to have been caused by lifestyle choices such as smoking, and that is linked to poverty and lack of choices by poorer inner-city dwellers. And yet much of it may be caused by the lifestyle of richer, suburban and rural dwellers, who support their idylls off the labour of the inner city. For the health of society, and to make cities productive AND desirable locations to live, we need a new Clean Air Act - http://www.air-quality.org.uk/03.php - such as the one that cleared up London's choking, killing, smogs

22nd June 2010 before rain, Canary Wharf blocks all-but obscured by filth

29th June 2010, after rain, air visibly cleaner

The role of particulates in city-centre air pollution is well known - they are tiny pieces of diesal/petroleum smuts that can stick in your lungs like tar, increasing risk of respiratory diseases. They also trigger the release of stress hormones that release more cholestorol into the blood stream increasing the likelihood of heart attacks (see Environmental Health Perspectives  New England Journal of Medicine  ). And yet we blithely attribute many of these factors to other "lifestyle choices", shifting the blame onto the individual for their ill-health, whilst "fit" middle-classes live in suburbs with fewer particles and healthier air. Take a look at the two photographs above and below. Both are taken from the far east of London, looking towards the centre. The top one of each set was taken , on a sunny day, after a week of sunny days. The bottom is taken a few days later,  after some decent rainfall. In the second picture, the Canary Wharf office tower blocks are clearly visible, whilst they are obscured in the first. This visible pollution is

23rd June 2010 looking west, before rain  - line of filth visible in atmosphere

29th June 2010, after rain - note Canary Wharf Tower blocks in centre and line of filth in atmosphere gone

The photos were taken from the track across Crossness Nature Reserve in east London, on the floodplain on the south side of the Thames. It was drained by monks of Lesnes Abbey in the 13th / 14th century to provide grazing for commercial beef production for the City of London, and/or wool (London was a great exporter of wool in the middle ages). The reserve is a refuge for water voles, who face predation by American mink, amongst other things, elsewhere in south-east England  

Olympic missiles and the worst civilian disaster of WW2 in the East End of London

Graves of some of the 173 victims of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster. On 3 March 1943, as the British press had reported a heavy RAF raid on Berlin on the night of 1 March. The air-raid Civil Defence siren sounded at 8:17 pm, causing an orderly flow of people down the short flight of steps into the underground booking office area. At 8:27, an anti-aircraft battery a few hundred yards away in Victoria Park launched a salvo of a new type of anti-aircraft rocket. The weapon was secret and the unexpected, unfamiliar sound of the explosion caused the crowd to surge forward towards the shelter, a woman tripped on the stairs, causing many others to fall. Within a few seconds 300 people were crushed into the tiny stairwell. 172 people died at the scene, with one more dying in hospital later; 62 of the dead were children.

Relatives visit the graves regularly, many following an annual memorial service, with a larger event every ten years

Please donate to the Stairway to Heaven memorial

An Olympic surface to air Missile battery has been proposed for the water tower on top of the Bow Quarter, the former Bryant and May match factory,  scene of the bitter industrial struggle by matchgirls led by Annie Besant  

Former Bryan and May match factory with water tower, site of missile battery

The locations of the WW2 ansd Olympics missile batteries are remarkably close (see map below)

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Return to Greenwich...

Recent monitoring of work associated with the new Olympics equestrian venue allowed quite a few chances to ponder the London Landscape from a Greenwich perspective. Particularly during the wettest days of the year.

More photos Click Here 

More photos Click Here 

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More photos Click Here 

 

Guy Debord and the Olympic Route Network

Guy Debord mapped the mental unities of areas  of Paris, the distance between them and the routes between them, in the 1957 Guide Psychogeographique de Paris . The mental disjunction between areas, the dislocation to city life and the consequent alienation of citizens from their hometown were often the result of Baron Haussman's boulevards deliberately driven through districts, and then the growth of traffic making passage between areas difficult, dangerous and time-consuming.

So now, Olympic chiefs are demanding the removal of pedestrian crossings on the  (Ratcliffe) Highway, as part of the Olympic Route Network. See GLA-member John Biggs press release on Transport for London's callous disregard of Wapping residents concerns for the safety of children and old peple, in particular John Bigg  . These proposals will effectively cut Wapping off from the rest of London for pedestrians (and prevent my access to the river from Stepney/Whitechapel areas). Can the Olympic Games be so divisive, desructive, negative, dangerous, so ignorant, reckless, so smug, so CAR-BOUND! Prisoners of their privilege their stop-free glide in limousines at the expense - potentially - of children's lives. See also 100 days on Wapping Island