London 2012 Olympics Tickets and Tours: Organisers Already Looking Beyond London 2012

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Genuine effort or is this just an interesting photo op? The BBC reports that a group of young people from depressed east London will help decide the future of the 2012 Olympic site, the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) has said. Aged between 13 and 21 and from the five host boroughs, they will visit the site over the next five months.

OPLC Chief Executive Andrew Altman said the idea was to give young people "a sense of ownership" of the site. The panel's 22 members come from Newham, Waltham Forest, Hackney, Greenwich and Tower Hamlets. The group will make several visits to the Olympic Park site, which straddles parts of the five boroughs. The different areas will benefit from regeneration as a result of the Games. The youth panel will also visit local schools and make suggestions as to what events they would like to see in the Olympic Park site after 2012. They will also get to have a say in the long-term planning and urban design of their local boroughs.

Mr Altman said: "We want young people to feel a sense of ownership towards the Olympic Park because they will be the generation that will most experience the change to east London over the next 25 years." Panel member Shaneice Bailey, 14, from Cardinal Pole RC School in Hackney, said: "I joined the Legacy Youth Panel to develop my confidence and share young people's views with others and to have our say. "I joined the youth panel also because I am interested in sports and the Olympics and want to find out more about what is happening first hand."

Olympic organisers have long been at pains to involve British youths, often with mixed results. London's Olympic logo for example received mixed reviews despite trying desperately to be hip.

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London 2012 Olympics: London Stadium Ahead of Schedule

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It's all doom and gloom in England these days. With the pound sinking and British economy in ruins, London is spending massive amounts of taxpayer money on Olympian development projects. Case in point: the Olympic stadium is going to cost double the initial estimate. There is a long history of cost overruns associated with hosting the summer Olympics and London's summer games are no exception. By my calculations, the games normally cost taxpayers 2 to 6 times initial estimates and sadly London's Olympic stadium is proving me right.

Initial estimates put the Olympic stadium's pricetag at £270 million (approximately US$405 million) however the costs have, ahem, gone up somewhat. According to the Guardian, the stadium will now cost a staggering £537m (US$752m). The 80,000-seat stadium is located at Marshgate Lane in Stratford in the Lower Lea Valley. Organisers broke ground in mid 2007 although the official construction start date was scheduled for May 22, 2008. However piling works for the stadium's foundation unofficially began four weeks ahead of schedule.

Chief architect Rod Sheard, of HoK Sport, said the stadium would make a big impact, but not in the same way that previous Olympic stadia had. "This is not a stadium that's going to be screaming from the rooftops that it's bigger and more spectacular," he said. "This is just a cleverer building. This is a cleverer solution." The design is apparently modular but comes at a pricetag.

Unlike the profligate Chinese, London 2012 summer games organisers were at pains to reduce, re-use and recycle their various stadia. The design concept is for an 80,000-seat stadium for the summer games. Post-games, the stadium will convert to a smaller 25,000-seat structure that can be re-used for (paying) smaller venues. That was the concept. The reality is proving a bit more problematic. While London 2012's promotional video (see above) suggests a transformer-like switch from 80k seats to 25k, the conversion will eventually cost £100m which in Olympic parlance means £200m-£600m.

Regardless, I think the design is quite striking. Unlike the logo fiasco which does truly look like Lisa Simpson performing a lewd act, the stadium is beautiful. Unlike every other Olympic stadium, the Brits are keeping to a strict construction schedule and may even complete the stadium on time (an Olympic first). Hopefully the removable stadium seats won't collapse while Spyns' clients are watching the opening and closing ceremonies.

For more information about Spyns and our tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympics, please visit our websites http://www.london2012-tours.com/ http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720.