Even in the heady days of 2005, before the advent of sub-prime mortgage based financial ruin and monolithic austerity cuts, many were a little anxious about how the estimated cost of £9 billion that the games was suggested to cost would be funded. At this point it is worth noting that the costs of building the venues and infrastructure are separate from the cost of organising the games. The cost of the new venues such as the new Olympic stadium and the Aquatics centre are publicly funded, whilst the event itself is funded by private money. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (a.k.a LOCOG) is a private sector company owned by the British Government.

Being such a global event meant that the Olympics would inevitably be heavily sponsored and it doesn’t take a marketing genius to anticipate that the companies that would be able to afford to sponsor the games include some of the largest brands on the planet. The London Olympics has 11 Worldwide Olympic Partners (including Visa, McDonalds and Coca-cola), 7 Official Olympic Partners (such as Lloyds, EDF and BP) and 7 Official Olympic Supporters (amongst whom are Deloitte and Cadbury). The role of business in funding the Olympics is not something the organisers have tried to hide. Yet it has become impossible to avoid the opinion that the Olympics is as much about creating as huge a profit as possible for the companies that are sponsoring it as it is about athletes competing for medals in events that will be the culmination of years of training and sacrifice in moments that will define their entire lives.

As much as anything the organisers of this Olympics have trumped up the importance of leaving a legacy for London once the games have concluded. Clearly this is an attempt to avoid being stuck with the embarrassment of building huge new venues at great expense that nobody ever uses once the games are over, as reportedly was the case in Athens in 2004, and this is obviously a good idea. But the Olympics are also an attempt to show off London as somewhere companies can come to invest precious money in, and bring with it the magic formula of jobs and growth that post-financial apocalypse London and Britain is so desperate for. This is the legacy that’s meant to benefit Londoners (and, by proxy, the rest of the UK). A few new parks (which will be privately owned), a few new transport routes, and a massive statue do not a legacy make.

According to the London 2012 website “The Games will leave a key legacy of national benefits in culture, sport, volunteering, business and tourism”, which sounds a bit vague. What isn’t vague are the rules and regulations that the organisers of the games have put in place to protect the business interests of their sponsors. A 21 page document on ‘brand protection’ stipulates the do’s and don’ts for businesses thinking of cashing in on the Olympics in ways that might infringe on the profits of those sponsoring the games. This goes so far as to state that certain words cannot be used together to imply an association with the Olympics. These are called Listed Expressions. The document states:

“The Listed Expressions are….any two of the words in list A below OR any word in list A with one or more of the words in list B below:

A
Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve
B
London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver, bronze

For example, the following phrases use the Listed Expressions and someone would be likely to fall foul of the law if they used them without LOCOG’s authorisation:

–– ‘Backing the 2012 Games’
–– ‘Supporting the London Games’”

So if you’re a small company based in London hoping to create a bit of business when the Olympics come to town and wish to create an advert or a promotional offer you cannot use the name of the city in which you’re based in conjunction with the number that depicts what year it is in case you happen to take a few pounds away from Coca-Cola or Visa. My own rather rudimentary research suggests that the total profits in 2010 of the 11 Olympic Worldwide partners came in at just under $90billion. This article in the Guardian shows the extent to which the almighty brands sponsoring the games are being protected by laws and regulations on copyright and what the Olympics organising committee calls ‘ambush marketing’.

Other examples of how the sanctity of the Olympic Games’ sponsors is being kept sacred include allowing McDonalds to be the only branded food in the Olympic Park and Athletes Village. Just imagine for a moment just how much money that guarantees McDonalds over the two weeks that the Olympics is held. Buying Olympic tickets or want some souvenir tat from the official Olympic shops? Then if you’re paying by card it has to be a Visa card (“As a proud sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, only Visa (debit, credit, and prepaid) can be used to purchase tickets.”) Proctor and Gamble (annual profit in 2010 = $12.7billion) have teamed up with the Mayor of London to ask Londoners to volunteer to clean up the city using Flash, Ariel and Febreze, products made by Proctor and Gamble.

Whilst the profiteering enjoyed by some of the globe’s larges businesses that pretend to be at one with the Olympic spirit is unbearable enough, what I find completely at odds with the idea of a legacy is the impact of such protectionism upon the people who live, work or travel in London. We’ve already seen examples of the heavy handed security that make up laws in order to prevent people from taking photos or filming, completely legally, on public land, and this is months away from the start of the games. Transport for London are telling us to prepare for two weeks of travel nightmares when the games take place, whilst some roads, called Games Lanes, will be for the sole use of “athletes, officials, media and others who will make the Games happen.” The people of London are essentially being told to bend over backwards.

In his re-election manifesto, London Mayor Boris Johnson claims “In these difficult economic times, the 2012 Games will now show off this city as the best big city on earth.” You’d expect to be able to take a photograph of a major landmark in the ‘best big city on earth’. You’d also hope that the interests of some of the biggest companies on the planet might not take outright precedent over businesses and companies based in the best big city on earth. Johnson modifies his statement a little later to say “It is critical we use the Games to showcase London as the best big city in the world to invest in.” It’s as though the thinking is that investment automatically equals a better city, which it doesn’t. It’s hard to see how this is anything other than a government body scouting for investment from a selection of global companies who know that they’ll come out with a massive profit at the end of it. In their eyes the promise of new jobs seems to cover the requirements of legacy and improvements to the city, even though there will be no real effect on the people who live here now and will still be here once the Olympics are over and McDonalds, Visa and Coca-Cola have gone home.

Further reading:

Anna Minton – The London Olympics: A Festival of Private Britain.
John Hillary – Reclaiming the Olympics.

http://file-magazine.com/

There are local, national and global influences on almost every part of the world and over the past few years a tangible negativity has developed and hangs like a cloud above the city I live in. There are places that escape this but the anxiety that’s palpable amongst many is never far away. There is an almost endless daily pressure in living in a relatively safe and wealthy city where we are being told constantly that we are facing imminent crisis and the potential collapse of everything we recognise and hold dear.

Everywhere the landscape is changing. We are told that our economy is about to collapse, threatened by corporate greed, benefit cheats, tax avoidance, the collapse of the Eurozone, sub-prime mortgages in foreign countries, bankers, government overspending and government spending cuts. We are told that our country and identity is under attack from immigrants, bureaucrats and terrorists. Our journalists are hacking into the voicemail messages of dead children. Our politicians have been spending tax-payers’ money on decorating their second homes. Our police are in the pockets of the press and the political elite. Our coalition government harps on incessantly about the need for jobs and growth, jobs and growth, jobs and growth whilst an ineffective political opposition seems incapable of finding its feet. Long established high street stores are disappearing without a trace, replaced by pound stores and betting shops. We are bombarded with adverts everywhere we look, adverts that are forever growing in size and find more and more inventive ways to occupy more and more of our landscape. Each advert tells us that this product will be the thing that brings us true happiness, but when I look around me nobody seems happy or content. Celebrity has become a new industry and even a job title. There is an industry of people who’s fame depends on their existence and vice-versa. Millions of people seem happy to lap it up daily, seeing celebrity as something to aspire to, giving them the platform and the oxygen they need to exist, naming their children after them. Entrepreneurs are the new rock and roll stars, the armed forces are our patron saints. Suddenly it seems that everyone is angry about something. Protest has become a highly visible and constant part of our landscape for the first time in decades. The internet is littered with endless tirades on every topic imaginable. Newspaper’s letters pages are filled with argument and counter argument. Anybody with an opinion and a sense of grievance, whether it’s expert or ill-informed, has somewhere to spit it out. Against this constant and confused backdrop we are attempting to live our lives as best as we can.

It was Raoul Vaneigem’s quote that put the meat to the original bones of the idea for the series. I can’t pretend to have read or fully understood all of The Revolution of Everyday Life but I’ve dipped in and out of it several times over the years and of what I can understand there’s nothing I’ve ever disagreed with. There are many quotes in the book that sum up perfectly how I feel about our society and it’s daily routines, the utter madness that mankind has developed itself into becoming through its existence to get us to where we are now. There are several quotes of his that I could have chosen to open the series, though I think that the one that I’ve chosen is general enough to set the tone for what I’m trying to address in the photos, and here I think I understand the essence of what Vaneigem and Guy Debord were getting at in The Revolution of Everyday Life and The Society of the Spectacle.

I’ve flirted with psychogeography, another strand of  Situationist thinking, in the past but with this series I decided to stick to certain areas of London that I’m never far from and I know relatively well. I’ve always been influenced and affected by the part of the world that I inhabit. I’m constantly amazed by people who aren’t, people who don’t look at the environment around them and let it inspire or defeat them. Seen within the confines of a routine that appears at times to have no exit, it amazes me even more. I can’t help but be shaped by what’s around me and in this series I’ve tried to give an idea as to the things that I pick up on and how they influence my environment and, as a result, the influence they have in shaping my view of my environment.

The first photo is taken from the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and looks across to the basilica of Santa Maria della Salute and the area of Dorsoduro on the southern tip of the main islands of Venice:

The second photo overlooks the Grand Canal in the afternoon sunshine from the famous Rialto Bridge:

Here are a few photos from the Block the Bill demonstration: