Scary Olympic Stats
Blimey. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here, but send you straight over to Andrew Gilligan's analysis of the figures in the Council's planning applications documents for a pre-Christmas scare.
Of course Gilligan's going to be looking out for the really frightening stuff, but it would seem he's found plenty of it already - and he's not finished ploughing his way through the tomes yet...
Of course Gilligan's going to be looking out for the really frightening stuff, but it would seem he's found plenty of it already - and he's not finished ploughing his way through the tomes yet...
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
11:07
23 Comments:
This whole thing is a bizarre farce. It seems blindingly obvious that the park is NOT a good location for an olympic event, especially one which could be so damaging.
The idea of preserving some parts of the park by "record" is disgraceful; wiping out possibly thousands of years of history for the sake of 2 weeks of events.
Somebody is obviously too proud to admit how foolish these plans are. We need to take some action.
..a charade of a sham of a farce...depressingly pathetic
I'm gutted, much like Greenwich Park will be.
"some heritage features will be “preserv[ed] by record,” ie permanently destroyed"
Preserved "by record"?!?! Please tell me this is a joke!
Based on a 2 minute search and find, 'Preservation by record' would appear to be a last resort applying to underground archaeology (p193 of Pt 2 of the ES Vol 1), rather than a suggestion that the Queen's House faces bulldozers.
"Construction and removal of the main 23,00-seat showjumping arena will create an estimated 6,420 lorry movements to the park - an average of 43 to 58 per day .(ES 3.4.17). This phase will close large parts of the park for a total of eight months in 2012, from April to November inclusive (ES 3.2).
Other items of plant in the park will include 160-tonne mobile cranes, 5 tonne mini-excavators, bulldozers and JCBs (ES 3.4.23)."
Christ, think of the traffic problems
This is absurd.
How can anyone be in favour of this??
It will be a nice walk accross the park to the play ground with the children past the lorries, bulldozers and excavtors.
It'll be like a real world version of Bob The Builder. The kids'll love it.
"Can we wreck the park? Yes we can!"
I know Andrew Gilligan is a hostile witnes, but even allowing for that, I find this pretty scary.
I'm particularly worried about the low branched cedar(I think?) trees in the north part of the flower garden - the low branches constituting a major part of their beauty.
From what I've read elsewhere (though judging from this document I'm not sure anything previous can be believed) the lower Garden isn't going to be used.
Sorry - of course that should read 'Flower garden..."
Do you remember that cartoon animation which depicted Constable's haywain at Flatford Mill when suddenly the scene is invaded by the spectre of progress and suddenly bulldozers et al start moving in and destroying the peace. Well, that's what we're faced.
And yes, those shocking statistics about the comings and goings of all the lorries etc.
I seriously struggle to believe that all this is to be allowed to happen.
For sure Britain has become a PLC and while we are the shareholders we seem to get outvoted all the time by the big merchant banks etc.
Pretty disturbing.
But as a regular use of the park, and as someone who needs to walk through it regularly as well as using it for leisure, what I need to understand this properly is a map of the park with shading showing which parts will be shut, when and for how long, as well as lines tracing the routes of any barriers. Does such a thing exist?
Seems OK to me. If we are going to be welcoming the world to Greenwich I would like to think that the preparation and recovery will be done thoroughly and to the highest standard.
This 'preservation by record' sounds very cheeky though.
Just a thought- it would be very interesting if during the preparations the remains of the ancient palace were uncovered. Maybe then all the nasty horses, their riders and the attendant inconvenience would be packed off to Badminton or similar- or maybe not!
Hmmmm, traffic was always going to be an issue but parts of this (and I think Daryl will back me up here?) are BLATANTLY contrary to what we were told at the 02 by Roberts, Coe and Co (ugh) way back when.
For example, we were definitively promised no long term damage to the park.....and "removal of heritage items" is unquestionably contrary to that; though I'll be interested to hear what it really means.
I also distinctly recall an implication that the temporary roping off of the course would be for weeks, not years!!
TGP (or anyone) is there anything practical we can do?
Sadly Gwladys, the palace is pretty firmly under the Old Royal Naval College. They dug it up (or what bits of it they could) in the 1970s. I think that the new Discovery Centre will be displying stuff they found, which has been languishing in a warehouse somewhere unlikely (up North, I think) since then.
I don't know of a map shading out which bits of the park are going to be shut off - I doubt they're going to want to advertise such things.
Did you see they're going to knock the gates down to get the HGVs in?
And there we were, worrying about a few horses trampling down the roots...
So what do we do? How can we make sure this will not happen? Is it too late? Are there any planned demonstrations or protests?
This paper's pretty new, but I daresay NOGOE will have something to say about it.
http://www.nogoe2012.com/
There are maps in the council application showing the areas of the park which will be out of bounds, and when: basically the large flat area between the Queen's House and the hill up to the Observatory will be unusable for all of 2012 and some of 2011, with other parts being fenced off as 2012 progresses.
The flower garden and the deer hide are the only pieces of the park which won't be fenced off (apart from one day), although a sizeable piece of the heath on the other side of the wall will be fenced off. That was kind of genius, because they can continue to claim that they aren't closing the park, even though they effectively will.
But reading through that submission, I can't see how it won't be steamrolled through council: the level of spin is lightyear's ahead of the Hospital's submission for the market / hotel. It is an astonishing piece of work, and even though they are being disingenuous throughout (percentage of locals in favour, photographs of the area showing the site impact but conveniently forgetting to include the 10 foot high fences which will disect and eventually enclose the park topped with CCTV, etc) it seems unthinkable that Chris Roberts and his gang won't be steamrolled, election or no election.
I would love to think that our representatives would look at the massive impact on the park, the hundreds of huge trucks trundling through our streets constantly, the digging up and removing of the wonderful park gates, the loss of our amenities and disruption to our lives for two years, the inevitable lacksadaisical 'repair' to the park (their own figures say it won't be back to the current condition until at least 2015), but I just don't believe that our council cares about the local community because they are effectively untouchable by the electorate no matter what, even if Roberts has done a chicken run to a more obliging ward.
The submission states that they considered Badminton, Windsor, etc but chose Greenwich because its got a nice backdrop and it's close: clearly nothing the locals say matters more than that.
When Tessa Jowell made a You and Yours broadcast about the Olympics (ages ago) she said that the decision to use Greenwich Park had been taken and that was that. Apparently taken by people who did not know the park (saw it as a bit of green on the map with picture postcard views) and who have NO IDEA of the archaeological importance. "...heritage features....preserved by record..." would refer to archaeological features, but there is not now enough time to do a proper investigation. The prehistory is what is unique, not just for Greenwich, but for London and the country. Lost or damaged for two weeks (at the most) for riding-on-television.
'preserving the park by record', all too depressing for words...
Well, after reading all that through I know where I'll be during the olympics: chained to the park gates to stop them pulling them down. Might even try and get as many people as possible to camp on the green in front of the Queens house. I reckon we could beat the numbers at climate camp.
I am most definitely up for mounting a local "chain yourself to the gates" protest. I'm sure many more locals and enviromentalists will turn up to protest too!
As this is a planning application, we can presumably put in formal objections. Does anyone know the best way to go about this and when the deadline is?
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