London Olympics of 2012 'will not benefit' East London's poorest residents

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

As I have basically predicted concerning the Olympics and the poorer and underprivileged people of that area a study now shows that there will be little if any benefit for the poorest residents of East London.

While the Olympic ministers and all those are telling the world what great benefits the locals will have from this, this is all a load of hogwash, as usual, and they know and knew this very well.

The so-called “trickle down” effect does NOT work and never ever has worked.

The 2012 London Olympics will fail to leave the promised positive local legacy for the poorest residents of East London unless cast-iron guarantees are built into plan, according to a new study.

The Games have been presented by the Government and the Olympic delivery bodies as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help regenerate one of the UK’s most economically disadvantaged areas, London’s Lower Lea Valley.

But the Fool's Gold report by the New Economics Foundation (nef) claims that previous Olympics and other ‘flagship’ UK regeneration projects, whilst boosting international tourism, transport, leisure and telecommunications infrastructure, have failed to improve the lives of the poorest people in host cities.

This is just as we assumed and predicted when it all began, and we can be sure that no good will come of it, no lasting benefit, for the disadvantaged people, especially the young people, of East London. All that is going to happen is that all those venues, that is to say the sporting venues, will become out of reach for any of them to use and, like the Dome, they will either become a white elephant or simply a commercial venture that was paid for, yet again, out of the pockets of the poor men and women in this country, that is to say, the honest taxpayers.

Fool’s Gold identifies the ‘trickle down’ economics that underly the approach to regeneration at the heart of the Olympic bid as the root cause of the problem.
This assumes that investment flowing into deprived areas will stay put. In practice, as nef research has shown, it leaks out to consultants, developers and large companies which are best able to exploit new commercial opportunities.

In other words, the poor residents will get no benefit whatsoever but the rich will get even richer, especially those companies that are making a killing from it already.

Small local enterprises are unable to compete and local people who don’t own their own homes are priced out of the housing market because gentrification inflates the cost of living well above their income levels.

Fool’s Gold identifies clear warning signs that London 2012 may be going in the same direction as previous Games in its failure to live up to regeneration promises:

The enormous debts built up by Olympic delivery will have to be repaid, and the easiest way to do this will be to sell off Olympic land to the highest bidder.
Serious doubt has already been cast on the projections used by the Government to calculate the £1.8 billion to be raised by land sales after the Games to repay public and National Lottery money used to buy land for the Olympic site.

A problem the current slowdown in the housing market will only accentuate, placing yet more pressure on the London Development Agency to maximise revenues.

There also remains the other question as to whether the 2012 Olympics can be held in 2020? Why that question? This is quite simple, methinks, for we have yet to see a project such as this to be finished on time and within the budget.

I would love to be able to, come the time, to report that everything has been finished within the set time frame and with the budget not having overrun and also that the locals have benefited and will be benefiting for many years and decades to come from the new infrastructure and that that has been set up. But, I must say that I am not that optimistic and this report certainly does not make me optimistic in that department at all. In fact the opposite is the case. Not as much as to the fact as them getting all the tings ready; that is not really the issue here anyway, but as to the fact of benefits for the poorest of the residents of East London and, like that report, I am afraid that I cannot see it.

Surprise? No... this is New Labour we are talking about... a pink party that has about as much to do with the real Labour party and a party for the people as the state of Israel has with the Israel of the Torah.

© M Smith (Veshengro), April 2008