On Friday I had the good fortune to potter around the Olympic park to get a sneak preview of how it looks.
Well, I’m pleased to report that it all in all it looks genuinely spiffing. No real lowlights, in fact, but some mediumlights (think Mid April, 4pm, high cloud cover) to go with the magnificent highlights. Let’s start with the mediums before we go living it up with the highs:

Mediums:

- The Chinese had the emblematic “birds nest” stadium. Our main stadium looks more pragmatic – it’s a very flexible structure, so that the stadium can be reduced in size after the games.

- Just hoping that the Legacy Committee that was set up last year does its job brilliantly – this probably should have been set up even earlier.

Highs:

- A belting aquatics arena (pictured) that looks like a cross between a manta ray and a cow’s tongue.
- A lovely central park that will join London with the river Lea – the perfect date spot for sporty types
- The fact that they had a “health centre” for the soil, which was lifted up, lovingly cleaned, brushed up smart and sent back into the ground with a proud new coat of tarmac.
A lot to be proud of here, and (astonishingly) all set to be completed well on time.

In an attempt to demonstrate how highly responsive OOH advertising is, the Outdoor Advertising Bureau (OAA) has posted a range of controversial slogans across a variety of outdoor formats.  These include ‘Educashun isn’t working’, ‘1966 it won’t happen this year’ and ‘Career women make bad mothers’.  Due to outraged responses from the public, the latter is being taken down, which I assume the OAA have taken as confirmation that they have proved their point.

However, I’d argue that the British public would have had equal issue with any such statement, whether it was displayed online, on radio, on TV or indeed just shouted out by Jonathan Ross.  Of course a statement like this will warrant response, but this is not comparable to a regular advertising campaign so I struggle to understand what constructive gain has been achieved by this exercise.  All they seem to have proved is that some people physically look at buses and that a strong message is key to garnering response.