Have Your Say

Kay and I first went to a public consultation about the Rail Lands development in about 2004. A meeting was held at Sarah Bonnell school. Some people had been hired by an advocacy group of some kind in Newham to talk about the Stratford City development. 

The fact that I am so hazy with the details, who was involved, who organised the meeting says so much about the process of public consultancy around the development for Stratford City and the Olympics. As a punter, these are mysterious and inconsistent processes!

These projects are supposed to be publicly accountable, but the planning application for Stratford City took up a whole wall of the library and I remember the handful of people at Sarah Bonnell would be completely unlikely to have the time, energy or technical knowledge to go through any of it. I think most people were at that meeting because it was in a warm room with free tea and biscuits. It was humbling to see how little local dialogue was present.

In 2007 I submitted a letter to the Olympic Delivery Authority Planning Decisions Team in response to another piece of public consultation. No one ever replied. I have no idea if my comments about perimeter fences, cycling lanes and car parks ever made an iota of difference to anything. I even wrote to them to say that no one ever replied, and I got no reply to that either!

Lately, public consultations around these projects seem to have dried up. 

I was digging through some papers recently and I found some forms that were used for another Olympics consultation which I’ve scanned. 

This was held on the concourse outside Stratford Station in 2006 some time. I remember the weather being cold and grey. I’ve scanned some of the leaflets and questionnaires that they, whoever they were, were giving out. I was really struck by the simplistic tone of the materials, adults as well as children were being encouraged to complete them, but people were only given crayons to write with! The options given on the reverse seem really limited, and are obviously skewed to corporate stakeholders. I think it’s interesting that the forms ask for demographic details and postcodes several times, maybe this is the information that the organisers really want. Anyway, I think it’s unlikely that anything anyone wrote on those forms would ever make any difference to any planning decisions. That Have Your Say URL is not live anymore.

By the way, I’m particularly tickled by the sentence on the back of the pack that reads: “Huge numbers of people will play a part but local people will be most affected by the Games, and will benefit most from the regeneration that they bring.” Ha ha! Funny joke!

As I write this, I realise how much I’ve tried to be involved with public consultations for the Olympics, but how the system is designed to shut up people like me.

A further example of public consultation occurred last summer. An organisation called (I think, it’s hard to tell from their website what they’re actually called) Fundamental Architectural Inclusion, which is actually based in Stratford, held a community consultation in Stratford Park as part of the London Festival of Architecture. I came across it by chance and thought it would be good to attend because the organisers were showing a couple of films I’d really like to see. There were conditions for attendance though, these involved being seated by someone and taking part in a workshop. The other attendees were people from day centres and schools. This is not my demographic and I didn’t fancy being treated as though it was for an afternoon. But no, it would be out of the question to sit and watch the films only and not participate, and not to be seated at a table with the others by one of the attendants. I emailed Architectural Inclusion later on to see if they had copies of the films, or knew here I could see them, and I was met with a rather sniffy “No.”

Architectural Inclusion sounds like a great organisation, but my encounter with them was really depressing. It was as though they had no idea how to work with someone who wasn’t part of their target audience. All they could offer was to try and jam me in to a format that didn’t suit me at all. Basically they were saying: you can participate if you agree to be infantilised by us and play by our rules. Hmmm.

Charlotte

2012 Pomposity

 

Christine Ohuruogu! A woman of Newham! How could your image end up being used to sell Uhlympic ideology, sweatshop trainers and nationalism? Ugh.

Olympic Lies 2: The Handover

The Beijing Olympics didn’t quite cure China of its pesky predilection for censorship, as hoped. People in the free West finger-pointed and wrung their hands over how Olympics news was reported externally compared to what the Chinese media told its citizens. There was a kind of sense of pity for those poor Chinese dupes, ignorant of the bigger picture, waving their flags and loving the spectacle whilst untold abuses lurked out of reach.

I’m starting to wonder if something similar might be happening here. Not to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist or anything, but if this site – or I! – disappear with no explanation then you’ll know I’m onto something.

Ok, so “untold abuses” might be a bit strong when talking about the situation in the UK (though really, who knows), but I’m noticing a somewhat perturbing spilt between the public face of the Olympics and the private; the stuff that they (the ODA, and various Olympic stakeholders) want you to see compared to the stuff that’s really going on. As with the Tour and The Torch, it’s weirdly disconcerting to see something that you know and have experienced get spun out and transformed into something else in public. And this spin always aggrandises the aforementioned ODA, its stakeholders and advertisers at the expense of, well, the little people they depend on, that is: you and I.

This happened at the handover ceremony in central London on Sunday 26 August. 

By chance I came across the place where you could apply for tickets, and I got some. I was interested in watching a live crowd’s reaction to the live feed from Beijing. It was hard to find any clear information about what the event really entailed, possibly because none of the organisers knew, or they didn’t think it was worth telling the thousands of expected attendees what they were in for. All I knew was that it was going to be a fantastic street party!

What it was really like: 

The party was a series of metal barriers, first to keep the tourists out, then to keep the area around the stage carefully crowd-managed. I saw one of the barriers breached by panicked people trying to get over it so that they could see the stage. People were running and pushing in the crowd, it was scary. A security guy berated a woman who was trying to help her family over the barrier, they had become separated. Beefy security men confiscated people’s bottled water.

Dreadful entertainment. Really nasty low-rent stuff. Is McFly really the best that the ODA can do? Horrible Heather Small singing that pukey song about being proud. The cast of We Will Rock You. A terrifying, nationalistic, brain-washy, over-loud version of We Are The Champions. A competition to win t-shirts. Inane presenters. Is this what the Cultural Olympiad is going to be about?

Long queues to buy merchandise and burgers, £18 t-shirts (manufactured where? in China?) and expensive “collector pins”.

Blank screens with complaining people sitting around them, waiting for something to happen.

There was nothing to see, but people still watched hopefully

The BBC reported that 40,000 party-goers had enjoyed watching the live handover from Beijing, but this isn’t true because the screens were blank, the feed wasn’t working, and only a fraction of the people at the event could get to see the main stage, far fewer than the reported 40,000, since it was positioned in an awkward spot. Neither could anyone else in the Mall see because there was no broadcast feed from the stage, all we could hear was the sound.

Waah! We can't see!

Here’s the obligatory dodgy phonecam footage of the “fun” (.mov, 1.30mins, 2.2mb).

I know these are small untruths in the wider scheme of things, but it grates. A steady stream of tiny little harmless lies are beginning to add up to a picture of how great the Olympics is, how everyone (apart from a miniscule minority of party poopers, bad eggs and terrorists) is completely behind the games, how there was nothing worthwhile in East London until the Olympics came along, and yes, how winning medals is everything, about how great Great Britain is, how excellent the Union Jack is, how this country is a happy place where everyone just gets along, blah blah, etc etc.

Unless you go to any of these events and look at things with your own eyes, how would any of us know what really happened? Who do you trust to tell you? The PR of the horrendous 2012 blog, that seamless, robotic, smiley propaganda machine?

What I want is a truthful, adult, critically-engaged representation of the Olympics. I want independent reporting by people who were there rather than a regurgitation of ODA press releases. I want the beautiful, thinking people of the UK to be able to make up their own minds about things, to be encouraged to do so. My feeling is that the ODA and the IOC are going to fuck with my neighbourhood anyway, but that they can’t expect to do that without scrutiny.

No doubt I’m going to end up at more of these ODA-sponsored events. I’ve been to three of them now, and at each one I’ve ended up feeling cheated and used. I’d like to say that I’ve had my fill, but, like Homer Simpson I’ll probably keep coming back with a D’oh! each time. Hopefully I’ll learn to leave well alone in time, but right now I feel compelled to witness stuff so that I can better recognise the spin and the half-truths being slung my way.

Charlotte

The Torch

The eyes of the world have been on the flame today and the eyes and hearts of the world will be with us in Stratford in 2012.

That’s what the announcer said as we walked home. The Beijing Olympic torch did come to Stratford, just not the bit that was promised.

Loads has been written already about the anti-Chinese protests that centred on the torch, so I won’t go into that. I made a phonecam video about what it was like watching the torch’s non-appearance in Stratford. You can view it here  (.mov, 5.31 mins, 7.3mb).

What is interesting to me is the discrepancy with what Sir Robin Wales, the mega-pro-Olympic Newham Mayor, said about the non-event when we bumped into him in the street, and what his official line was, a week or so later in the Newham Magazine. Apparently the event was “A Blazing Success.” Sure, headline-writers have to be kept in work, and to Sir Robin’s credit he mentioned the people who didn’t get to see the torch scrummage round the other side of the Stratford one-way system, but it’s interesting to see how the disaster was spun.

Meanwhile, here’s what the bloggers on 2012 had to say about the day. Honestly, what planet are they on?

An inspirational day with the Torch

Warm hearts melted the big chill

Charlotte

Olympic Lies 1: The Tour

The tour of the Olympic site during Open House 2007 was when we knew for sure that we were being told a load of hype-filled lies by the ODA.

Getting onto the tour was a job and a half, the ticketing process seemed ridiculously paranoid and closed, but we managed to get through.

The day started out with a lot of hanging around. We were shown a video that featured many of the clichés that have come to nauseate us over the intervening months: athletes winning, a crescendo of operatic music, the moment of Jaques Rogge’s announcement played again and again and again.

The tour itself took place on a bus. There would be no getting out and walking around, we were told, because of the dangers of contaminating the site with Japanese Knotweed, which they were trying to eliminate. We were given maps which we weren’t allowed to keep, but they had numbers on them and no key, so it was impossible to work out what was going on where. Was this a deliberate strategy to confuse the plebs? Who knows. We were also told that filming and photography was forbidden. The tour guide referred to “people doing nasty things,” ie a terrorist threat.

The site was mainly earthworks and demolition. There was little to see. Highlights included a series of grim, tattered “Back the Bid” banners hanging from businesses that have been forced out by the Olympics, and a length of kid’s Olympic murals that will never be seen because they are on a site closed to the public. I also saw this sign knocked over, broken and mashed into the ground, but I’ll come back to that in a bit.

So the guide was someone whose name escapes me, but who is/was the head of HSE at the ODA. He was a middle-aged white guy, nicely spoken and possibly somewhat middle class. Why is that so unsurprising? He was clearly several social strata above the people in the bus and he addressed us in a way that was both on-script/on-message and very patronising.

So the HSE honcho did not go down very well. Firstly, he talked about getting rid of wood and bricks, of clearing the earth. But he made no mention of the people who are also being cleared away, other than to say that everyone was thrilled about it and grateful to the wonderful and fair developers. Clay’s Lane was described as student housing, but that’s not strictly true, it was a co-op community, and there were a lot of underclass people living there. There was a long-standing traveller’s community nearby too.

He spoke with this rather disturbing “we’re in charge” sort of attitude. Apparently, this part of East London used to be a bit of a dump and we should all be thankful that the ODA are coming in, heroically, and making it a “place where people want to live.” Not only that, but those who have left (ie been forced out) have left a lot of nasty, ugly, dirty buildings and land that they are now clearing up.

According to this guide, there was little of value around the site, nothing really worth saving. I wonder if he’s talking about the aforementioned Clay’s Lane estate, or Bully Fen Community Woodland (more about that here) or the Eastway Cycle Circuit? Or any of the places depicted here?

We were told that the Olympics are going to be great for the environment, yet the development is clearly an environmental disaster. There were mixed messages about the ODA clearing up the waterways, yet also needing to look after the wildlife that lives there. If those waterways are and were so polluted, how come there is/was wildlife to look after?

Someone in the bus told the guide to fuck off, but that was after he let slip the truth about what’s going to happen to a chunk of Hackney Marshes, currently used by one of the most popular Sunday football leagues in the country. The official line has been that a portion of this land will be tarmac for the Olympics, but that it will revert to football fields afterwards. This is clearly untrue, and the guide laughed it off and said that the land would have too high value as real estate after the Olympics. Those fields are going to be gone, baby.

It’s odd that the ODA decided to present the site as though they were talking to corporate sponsors, rather than people who live in the area, know it well, and have strong attachments to the land. It strikes me that the developers have no relationship to those they are displacing and inconveniencing, despite the showy attempts at public consultation. And the lies, they just keep on coming, the spin is so compelling, it’s like reality is an awkward intrusion.

Oh yeah, and despite the promises of an appearance, Daley Thompson was nowhere to be seen. Fucker.

Charlotte