Why is it ‘far from laughable’ and ‘dangerous’? Do you think they’re going to wire up their young victims’ brains? Or are they going to bore people to death when they turn up on your doorstep with clipboards?

NOGOErs like Jan welcomed the self selecting unscientific poll carried out by a politician with an agenda against the Olympics – as proof that Greenwich residents don’t want the 2012 Games to take place in Greenwich Park.

Yet NOGOErs like Jan seek to discredit a poll carried out by their opponents that comes up with a completely different set of results as being nothing more than a “marketing push”

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil anyone?

Having paid 15 million US dollars to LOCOG for the Games, never in a million years were Nielsen going to admit that people didn’t want equestrian events in the Park.

Greenwich Councillors – are you reading this – especially Dick Quibell.

http://www.sportspromedia.com/deals/_a/nielsen_deal_a_huge_boost_for_london_2012_olympics/

This Locog/Nielsen ‘marketing push’ relationship is the perfect fit for getting favourable and desired results – far from laughable and positively unhealthy for the consenting participants and dangerous for the unfortunate victims.

So all this nonsense coming from the NOGOE camp that LOCOG is employing spin doctors to distort the facts is laughable when NOGOE’s founder member is himself, yes, a spin doctor.

“The Norman conquest of 1066 saw the introduction of the manorial system in which common land and rights of common have their probable origins. After the harvests had been gathered in each year from the cultivated land of the manor, the open field strips and hay meadows were made available for common grazing by the animals owned by all those who lived and worked on the manor: these were known as the common fields. In addition, there was usually poorer quality land within the manor which was not cultivated by the lord or his tenants, but might be available for grazing by livestock: this was the ‘waste of the manor’.”

Michael Goldman is only 79 – not 89. He looks 59.

What is actually said in the Environmental Statement in support of the planning application is that the Park would be “closed to public access for a four-week period from around 7 July to 3 August 201 . . . from around 4 August, large areas of the Park would re-open, subject to security approval, once the jumps and other event facilities have been removed” (Statement para 3.3.7)

There is lot of wiggle room in that promise: “around” a date is not the same as “on” and reopening would be “subject to”. My guess is that LOCOG would be hard pressed to get all the jumps out in three days and that security might well not agree to the reopening of the Park, at least until the Modern Pentathlon athletes have run across the bottom of the Park on 11/12th August, in clear sight of anyone standing in the part to be reopened.

How confident would anyone be at this stage that 4 weeks would truly be no more than 28 days?

May I also clarify NOGOE’s position on entertainment of the planning application, to which
Blisset referred. NOGOE accepts that the Council is able to “entertain” the application in the sense of considering it. However, it has a duty not to allow any part of Blackheath to be enclosed and, after six weeks, neither the Council nor LOCOG have come up with any argument to counter what we believe to be the correct statement of the law

And on partial Park closures (see Jimmy with his spin obsession), a careful read of the Environmental Assessment will reveal that LOCOG intends to fence off a 6 kilometre x 10 metre strip of ground that twists and turns throughout most of the Park from March 2010 for preparation of the cross country track, so no tobogganing for the next two years, no cricket for the next three summers or even a straight walk across the Park. The Assessment also reveals that after the arena has been built in 2011 on he parterre in front of Queen’s House for the Test Event, it will not be restored until after the Games are over. So no activities on the most popular part of the Park for at least two years. All in all, it would perhaps have been better if the Park has been totally closed for 9 months and then returned with no damage to the ecology and without a mark on it.

That brings me to me to the final point, which is that it not true for LOCOG spokesman to say that “we will return Greenwich Park to The Royal Parks in the state in which we received it”. That is the old scrip that was used before the planning application was submitted.

We now know from the Assessment and supporting papers:

• that trees would have been lopped,
• the track of the cross-country course, having been spiked, fed and watered for over 2 years, would be of a wholly different appearance to the rest of the Park grass for many years into the future;
• that as a last resort for archaeology, LOCOG say that “investigation and subsequent ‘preservation by record’ [would be required] where no other mitigation is possible, generally where hitherto unidentified resources are found to be present.” In other words, there are potential archaeological remains not currently known about that might have to be destroyed after some photos have been taken in order to deliver the Games.
• that LOCOG can only hope that the acid grassland that it proposes to dig up would be successfully restored (but not before 2015); it says that a scheme has still to be devised, so it seems that there is no precedent for the proposed procedure
• that LOCOG must similarly hope that the wildlife will not be adversely affected (apart from what it describes as “a limited increased mortality to species attracted to invertebrates [affected by the light pollution from the security lighting], including noteworthy moths and stag beetle”). But it has not carried out a recent survey of the stag beetle population and says that it will conduct bat surveys in 2010 and 2011 (last year’s survey was done at the wrong time of the year).

I could go on, but NOGOE’s letter of objection can be read in full at http://www.nogoe2012.com/downloads/2010-01-13-nogoe-preliminary-statement.pdf

If you mean Michael Goldman, he is 89 and retired.

Please read for yourselves, people, what LOCOG say in the planning application about Park closures – most of the Park for months and months on end, and I am sure that elf and safety will see to it that the Park will in the event be closed entirely for much of that time.

The Park is too small for the cross-country and the 23,000-seater stadium.