through europe

Today went down for a 'walk' starting at Stratford Station through the Carpenter estate organized by tenants under siege from Newham Council and the Corporate Olympics and felt sick with anger. Remembered that had been on a 'walk' some 6 years ago when the Olympic Committee came to 'see' London and its suitability for the Olympics to say that we didn't want it. We were far too few so that if it was noticed at all on a very cold day, it would have been counter-productive. But we did see what some of its implications would be -existing sports grounds being mashed up and Hackney marshes encroached on. That time it didn't take in the Carpenters estate.
Processes of class-cleansing have taken place in Hackney and been understood as such.  Knowing too that Global Sporting Spectaculars  in Beijing, Delhi and South Africa have been used to give a boost to this process in other cities and that it is already happening in Brazil where both the next Football World Cup and Olympics are due. Today though could see how comprehensively strategic the process is, how planned and how 'in your face' it is. First thing we see is that down the side walls of two oldish high rises in which people live there are huge (100 feet tall?) and aggressive advertisements for Gillette. This in addition to the ubiquitous Coca Cola and McDonalds flim-flam.
On the estate there are hundreds of empty flats.On the Council waiting list there are 32,000 and there will be many thousand more who can't even get on it. The council say they are unfit and have steel shutters over them. Our tenant guides say this is not true and even if they had not said it we could see it with our own eyes, how in the same two storey blocks some were lived in and others shuttered up. Lots of them. And the function of this we see as we pass one shop that is open, is to MAKE THE PLACE LOOK RUN-DOWN and therefore in need of regeneration.
How sick is this!