London is being advised by Frank Kelly, professor and director of the King's College London (KCL) Environmental Research Group, to learn from Beijing's example and restrict traffic during the Olympics to combat air pollution. This is making Beijing feel rather smug, especially as the same Professor Kelly was amongst those raising concerns about air pollution there back in 2008.

by Mike Wells

The Giant Cover-up: the Warning Marker Layer covers up to a million square meters of contaminated ground on the Olympic Site

"The Olympics is a great brand." So says David Higgins, Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority. One of the words Higgins would not like attached to his brand is – rubbish. Yet rubbish features large in relation to the London Olympics. The Main Stadium, Basketball Arena, Velodrome, and the Media Centre are all built on rubbish, or to be more exact former rubbish dumps. Most of this rubbish (with associated contamination) remains under these venues.

Collaborative study by a group of masters’ students, mostly international, taking the MSc Environment and Sustainable Development at the Development Planning Unit – University College London.

The study, based on fieldwork undertaken in 2008, set out to

The dismal record of mega event evictions, media manipulation, lying and overspends continues. Sochi is striving hard to compete with Delhi and Beijing as the most brutal event in recent years.

Stories of environmental disasters continue to surface with a new report that Sochi lacks sites to dispose of garbage and construction waste. At the moment waste is dumped on a site which frequently sees blazes and the waste is said to be polluting the Pitkha River, which runs into the Black Sea. Environmentalists are also protesting at development plans which threaten the landscape of parts of the North Caucasus which are protected as natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

In the autumn of 2007 the ODA knocked down my home along with 106 other houses on the Clays Lane estate. In November 2009 it won 'The Legacy Award - Sustainability' from an organisation called Constructing Excellence. One of the 'Key Achievements' claimed by the ODA, when it presented its case for this award, was its demolition of our homes along with another 108 buildings on the Olympic Park.

A quick mention for the excellent Bow Back Rivers pages on the londoncanals.co.uk website.

Compiled in the period just before the Olympic onslaught hit the area, it's the definitive tour round all the waterways with their cocktail of history, industry and rampant wildlife which makes me realise how many places I never got to before it all disappeared.

According to planningresource: ODA unveils plan for open spaces

On the Newsgroup Charlie points out it's last chance to object to the Planning Application (application ref 10/90250/FULODA ) for the 'Snorbit'

©William Heron

Dow Chemicals are to be announced as the IOC's new Global Partner?