The notion of a foreign takeover at the east London Olympic site is nonsense

A job is a job, but there is something special about working on the Olympics, Jack tells me. “I mean bloody hell, we’re building the Olympics. You only get to do that once in a generation.”

But just who is building the Olympics? According to stories in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, the chief beneficiaries have been Polish carpenters and illegal migrants. “Those stories,” he says, wearied, “are not even half true.”

Workers on the Olympic site are banned from public pronouncements, so Jack, as we will call him, is keen not to be caught speaking out of turn. But he is keen to talk about the international effort that is transforming this long-neglected corner of east London.

The notion of a foreign takeover is nonsense, he says. Latest figures say 78% of the workers “inside the fence” are British. That’s not to say they all look like Churchill. “I have friends there with origins in India, Romania, Sri Lanka. From all over. One of my friends from India speaks better English than me.”

And what of the others? Well, there’s the Irish, the largest non-British group, but also Romanians, Lithuanians, Poles, Aussies, Bulgarians, Ghanaians, Nigerians. Many of the security guards are former Gurkhas, he says. “Lovely guys. They are the first faces you see.”

As an activist with the construction union UCATT, particular things make Jack proud of what’s happening inside the fence: the way workers from different countries are obliged to mingle during training periods; the workmate interpreter system that assists those who don’t speak fluent English; the on-site classes for those who want to learn. The variety of food produced by the African and Romanian chefs. The pulling together. “On the Terminal 5 project, I remember tension between Indians and Pakistanis at certain points,” he says. “Not here.”

Nothing is perfect, says Jack, but there is pride that for all the knitting together of different types, the stadium project has not yet resulted in a single death. Sydney had one; Athens many.

It’s punishing work. Maybe that helps. “If you are digging a hole with a Jamaican in the middle of a thunderstorm,” he says, “by the time you’re finished, he’s your mate.”

]]> http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/hideously-diverse-britain-who-is-building-the-olympics/feed/ 0 http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/twin-terror-threat-to-london-olympics-skynews-via-yahoo-uk-ireland-news/ http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/twin-terror-threat-to-london-olympics-skynews-via-yahoo-uk-ireland-news/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:45:05 +0000 admin http://www.london-2012-olympics.net/2012-olympic-news/twin-terror-threat-to-london-olympics-skynews-via-yahoo-uk-ireland-news/ Terrorists could use a “blended attack” to hit both physical targets and disrupt cyber systems simultaneously during the London Olympic Games in 2012, a security expert has warned.

Nick Cohen’s article (“The IRA’s culture of silence extended to child abuse“, Comment) would have been more powerful had he included the fact that sexual violence against children does not have political allegiances. Surely you cannot be so naive as to imagine the Protestants and their armies have no paedophiles? Nor the police? And that neither covers this up? That the Catholic priesthood seems riddled with paedophiles is actually rather different. As no one seems willing to mention, they are required to practise celibacy with its obvious repercussions. Catholic the IRA may be but celibate, hardly.

The English, who set up the whole mess of Northern Ireland in the first place, and tolerated a situation where the sizable minority got the worst housing, jobs, education and so on because of their religion, are always happy to demonise Gerry Adams, whereas he is just another prominent figure who inspires fierce loyalty or hatred, both of which distract from the need to expose this tendency to cover up, wherever it hides.

Mora McIntyre

Hove, Sussex

■ Proving that no one is all bad, Nick Cohen has it right: no one in the Irish Republic has really wanted Northern Ireland for as long as almost anyone alive can now remember, and that state could not begin to assimilate a cultural minority a million strong. No wonder the Republic’s voters so massively renounced any claim to the Six Counties.

What Cohen does not add is that, if anything, the Republic would find it even harder to assimilate Northern Irish nationalists, who would be rather like hopelessly unrealistic third-, fourth- or fifth-generation colonial returnees to Britain from Africa or India, only far more numerous and far more concentrated geographically. Who on earth would want that? No one in the Irish Republic, that is for sure.

David Lindsay

Lanchester, Co Durham

Major parties deserve disdain

Andrew Rawnsley is right to fear a low turn-out at the general election (“See the records tumble at next year’s election epic“, Comment), but the expenses issue is not the only thing that may put off the public. What major difference is there between the two major parties? Both refuse to set dates for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, neither promises anything substantial on affordable housing, better public transport, pensions or jobs for all that want to work.

C Hopper

Swansea

A gold medal for waste

So Steve Redgrave (“Real test for sport is after 2012“, News) is concerned about the poor forward planning for the “sporting legacy” of the Olympics. I’m worried, too, as this “legacy” seems to be the chief justification for this ridiculous, overblown money sponge that is the scourge and ruin of some hapless world city for two wretched weeks every four years. Unfortunately, it’s our turn. Extra interest in sport will soon wane and we’ll be left with several huge stadiums standing empty and useless. If the money is there, spend it countrywide on hundreds of small sports clubs, playgroups and youth centres which are desperately needed and would be a true and lasting “legacy” at a fraction of the cost.

David Bauckham

London SE7

Why the UK is a Muslim target

You devote your first three pages to the attempt, apparently by a Muslim extremist, to blow up an American aeroplane, and in your first leader you call for aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, (“One year on, we need progress in Gaza“, Comment) but surprisingly you fail to make any connection between the two issues.

On terrorism and violence, the most important question for any politician should be “Why?” rather than “How?” or “What?”, but it is the question that is studiously avoided by virtually everyone. Unless we deal with the reasons why young Muslims can be seduced into blowing themselves and their fellow passengers into oblivion on flights or on the London underground, we are doomed to ever more intensive and tedious security at airports and elsewhere. Long-term security can only come by removing the reasons why the USA and the UK are regarded as legitimate targets by certain groups of Muslim extremists.

Anyone who takes the trouble to watch the Al Jazeera channel will see a very different but well-documented slant on the news which makes it clear that the Muslim world is, understandably, deeply affected by the continuing plight of and the violence against the Palestinians, by the continued American presence in Iraq and by Nato propping up a corrupt regime in Afghanistan.

Michael Meadowcroft

Leeds

Let there be justice in Israel

My heart goes out to the Israeli human-rights campaigners whose plight was highlighted by Rachel Shabi (“Fatah ceasefire in jeopardy“, World). It is one thing for Israel’s propaganda machine to “shoot the messenger” as all of us in the west who are seeking justice for the Palestinians have found to our cost. It is quite another when internal critics face the same treatment. “We lost our empathy skills,” says activist Naomi Zion, “and when you lose that you lose your humanity.” Critics of Israeli policies will say with some justification that the state lost its objective view of humanity long ago, along with human compassion in its treatment of the Palestinians, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, shredded to pieces by settlements and settler-only roads, checkpoints and the hated wall.

It is one of the most human of characteristics to stand up for justice in the face of tyranny, and Israel’s human-rights groups need our support for their bravery. Let us remember that “shoot the messenger” has on more than one occasion – think Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and countless Palestinians – been taken literally by the Israeli occupation forces.

Ibrahim Hewitt, senior editor, Middle East Monitor

London NW10

Farewell the probation officer

As an ex-probation officer who refused to become an “offender manager”, I was interested to read your article “Civil servants ‘interfering’ over court sentences” (News). The public should understand that there is no longer any such person as a probation officer working in this country today.

Whatever they call themselves, those civil servants who supervise offenders in the community are obliged by their employers, the National Offender Management Service, to supervise offen
ders in a harsh, negative, overly strict prison-oriented fashion. There is no longer any civil servant paid by the state to rehabilitate offenders, even if the offender is on the mildest community order, which is allegedly for the rehabilitation of the offender. The probation service has lost all independence.

The National Offender Management Service should “reinvent” the role of probation officer as social worker, particularly for those offenders on community rehabilitation orders.

Will Watson

London N10

Let me lend Hands a hand

Your article on multimillionaire Guy Hands (Mammon, Business) mentions the “possibly apocryphal” story that he initiated a strike on the set of Heaven’s Gate at Oxford. As his fellow strike-leader (we negotiated victoriously with Michael Cimino in person), I am happy to confirm the tale – and, having never laid eyes on him since while amassing net assets of approximately zero, would be delighted to retell it at his “estate and vineyard in Tuscany”.

James Hawes Cardiff

]]> http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/letters-child-abuse-is-not-the-sole-province-of-the-ira/feed/ 0