the London Olympics

Comment by Stacy Herbert:

With the relentless assault of PIPA, SOPA, ACTA type ‘intellectual property’ type laws having taken up activist attention, it seems we weren’t ready for the IP police. No doubt they will remain deployed post-Olympics and, in fact, be coming to a town near you.

Britain flooded with 'brand police' to protect sponsors

Olympic security is in disarray, but organisers are taking no chances with corporate deals...

the Independent,

16 July, 2012

Hundreds of uniformed Olympics officers will begin touring the country today enforcing sponsors' multimillion-pound marketing deals, in a highly organised mission that contrasts with the scramble to find enough staff to secure Olympic sites.

Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not staging "ambush marketing" or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and BP. The clampdown goes on while 3,500 soldiers on leave are brought in to bail out the security firm G4S which admitted it could not supply the numbers of security staff it had promised.

Yesterday, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, refused to rule out that even more soldiers may be called upon to help with security, but dismissed the issue as merely a "hitch". However, as well as the regular Army, the Olympic "brand army" will start its work with a vengeance today.

Wearing purple caps and tops, the experts in trading and advertising working for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are heading the biggest brand protection operation staged in the UK. Under legislation specially introduced for the London Games, they have the right to enter shops and offices and bring court action with fines of up to £20,000.

Olympics organisers have warned businesses that during London 2012 their advertising should not include a list of banned words, including "gold", "silver" and "bronze", "summer", "sponsors" and "London".

Publicans have been advised that blackboards advertising live TV coverage must not refer to beer brands or brewers without an Olympics deal, while caterers and restaurateurs have been told not to advertise dishes that could be construed as having an association with the event.

At the 40 Olympics venues, 800 retailers have been banned from serving chips to avoid infringing fast-food rights secured by McDonald's.

Marina Palomba, for the McCann Worldgroup agency in London, described the rules as "the most draconian law in advance of an Olympic Games ever". The ODA and Locog (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) say the rules are necessary to protect brands.

"These rights are acquired by companies who invest millions of pounds to help support the staging of the Games," Locog said. "People who seek the same benefits for free – by engaging in ambush marketing or producing counterfeit goods – are effectively depriving the Games of revenue."

Some £1.4bn of the Games' £11.4bn budget comes from private sector sponsors. The International Olympic Committee's 11 global partners, including Coca-Cola, Visa and Proctor & Gamble, are contributing £700m while £700m comes from London 2012 partners, including Adidas, BT, EDF, and Lloyds TSB.

The scale of the brand enforcement squad is nonetheless likely to intensify criticism that the Olympics has become too corporate. Paul Jordan, an expert in brand protection at Bristows solicitors who advises firms on the rules, said they were almost certainly tougher than at previous Olympics. "No other brands would have people walking the streets being their eyes and ears, protecting their interests," he said.

A spokesman for the Olympic Delivery Authority, whose team of 286 enforcement officers have been seconded from 30 local councils, said it had a duty to ensure businesses were meeting the rules.

"We are using experienced local authority staff who currently enforce street trading and advertising legislation. They have all been fully trained," the spokesman said.

"Deliberate ambush offences will be dealt with using the full enforcement powers conferred on officers."

US agents to secure London Olympics after G4S fiasco

The British government has been forced to draft in US security agents at a number of airports including London’s Heathrow to cover for its fiasco of trusting the private firm G4S with a key part of Olympics security.

Press TV,

16 July, 2012

The Department of Transport has hammered a deal with the US Transportation Security Authority to use US security officers at several British airports from one week before the Olympics to one week after the Paralympics end, the Sky News reported.

The British Home Office is under huge pressure to fill in the gap created by G4S’s failure to supply 13,700 forces for Olympics security.

The Home Office has already asked the army and the police to provide it with more forces for the Olympics security after G4S announced it has only 4,000 staff available for the Games.

The British army is now deploying almost one fifth of its total strength to the Olympics while 9 out of 12 police forces will be watching the Games.

However, the security black hole has forced the government to even bring in security staff from the US to secure the Games.

Olympic arrivals messed up on 1st day

London has messed it on the first day of athletes and other Olympic VIPs arrivals after the US athletics team were stranded in traffic for four hours before arriving at the Olympic Village.

Press TV,

16 July, 2012

US Beijing Olympics hurdling gold-medalist Kerron Clement embarrassed British officials who introduced the VIPs lane for a 45-minute journey from Heathrow Airport to the Games Village, tweeting his frustration that the team could not make it to the village after four hours.

Clement tweeted that they got lost on the way to Stratford where the Olympic Village is located after an over-night transatlantic flight from the US.

“Um, so we've been lost on the road for 4hrs. Not a good first impression London,” he tweeted before running out of patience and writing “could we get to the Olympic Village please.”

His tweet ran contrary to what the Games organizing committee LOCOG claimed to be a “completely successful” first day of arrivals.

“It is day one of team arrivals. We have successfully completed a large number of bus journeys so far today, from the airport, to the village and the training venues. Whilst there may have been one or two journeys taking longer than planned, the vast majority were completed successfully,” a spokesman said.

The US athletics team was not the only casualty of a 236,955-passenger rush to London on Monday as a media shuttle bus also got lost en route to Stratford.