UPDATE ON MANOR GARDEN ALLOTMENTS FEATURED IN BBC2'S 'BUILDING THE OLYMPIC DREAM' SERIES. By Julie Sumner

After belated planning permission was finally acquired, £1.3M hurriedly spent on building temporary plots, the ravaged Manor Gardening Society (MGS) had earth under their feet again. Perhaps the hope that bursts through with the first broad bean shoots would begin to heal the wounds.

In July 2008, at an ODA open meeting a Leabank Square resident, Sona Abantu-Choudhury, was told that the only convenient location for a soil washing machine was opposite his estate and that it was essential this machine worked late into the night. At that time the machine was washing away until 10pm! Residents were complaining about the disturbance this machine was causing them and Mr Abantu-Choudhury pointed this out to the ODA representatives at the meeting. Far from showing sympathy they insisted this was the only option. Later, after a further meeting the ODA agreed to reduce the wash cycle to 8pm, although residents were told this alteration meant the machine would have to continue in operation for several more months.

The BBC documentary, ‘Last Stand at Stratford’, part of the series ‘Building the Olympic Dream’, shown on BBC 2 on Wednesday 11th March was to have featured those being evicted to make way for the 2012 Olympics over three programmes. However, BBC chiefs decided to cut their participation to one programme. Consequently the Travellers, who were filmed for almost two years, were left out altogether. A number of residents at Clays Lane were included in the filming but in the event I was the only resident featured. Lance Forman of Forman’s Salmon Smokery ended up representing the businesses while the Manor Gardens Allotment holders survived as the only community on show.

Flagged up recently on our newsgroup was an article on the opendalston blog on the financial difficulties facing developers Barratts, contractors for the so-called Dalston Olympic Transport Interchange and numerous building projects around Stratford High St.

Lisa Smith from the Clays Lane traveller community: "You could see the dust and dirt going like a cloud, going by you. Everyone's had sore throats...sore eyes,lip infections. We've been to the doctors...we've had to have antibiotics, creams to put on lips to get rid of it. Everyone's...come out in spots." From: More4 film June 2007

One of the proudest boasts of the 2012 London Olympics was that it would create the largest new urban park in Europe for 150 years. I asked a Freedom of Information question (see attachment) to discover how the ODA had arrived at this description. They were unable to provide any clear information. All they could say was that they had consulted with 'CABE Space and the London Parks and Green Spaces Forum (who) had assisted the ODA in preparing benchmark studies on parks around the world and in London including previous Olympic Parks.'Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord: Europe's biggest new urban park at over 200ha, some 500 acres, was completed in 1999 retaining the industrial archaelogy

Of course, the largest new park is no longer as large as it was having shrunk by 19 hectares. But even when it was 129 hectares its claim to be the largest new urban park in Europe was questionable. A friend recently sent me a link to a park in Duisburg, Germany, constructed on a site with many similarities to the Lea Valley, as it was a former industrial area. At over 200 hectares it is considerably larger than the much vaunted 'largest new park in Europe'.

The Duisburg industrial park shows how the Lea Valley could have been developed in an imaginative way, which illustrated the industrial history of the area, by creating a park based around the rivers and canals linking sites like the Tidal Mill at Three Mills

Olympic promise inflation has hit a new high with Gordon Brown’s assertion that, in addition to 30,000 construction jobs, "there will be 50,000 jobs permanently created as a result of all the facilities that the Olympic site will make possible for the future", as reported in the Evening Standard ‘PM hails Olympic Job Prospects’. This claim has to be set against the original evidence from the London Development Agency to the Compulsory Purchase Inquiry that the 2012 Olympics would create 6,000 net new permanent jobs! Even that figure was open to question.

Predictable practical problems with the Prescott Lock, compounded by financial conditions, are "making barge traffic unviable", it was reported at a November meeting of the Thames River Users Consultative Forum.

By Sam Urquhart

A Freedom of Information Act request submitted by gamesmonitor.org - a group which diligently scrutinizes the preparations for the 2012 Olympics - has unearthed a fascinating tale of official cowardice, quasi-censorship and pandering to corporate, not civic, priorities.