On 2012\08\13 09:58, tim..... wrote:

The main reason for the empty seats is that a large percentage are given
away free to sponsors and national (as in "other nations") Olympic and
sports organisations. Of course, if you are offered a free seat you
don't think too hard about how you might use it, so you say yes even if
you do have no real use for it.

Like I said in my first post. These people should be told "once having
taken it, you use it or you done get offered it again" (for all future
games).

I met one of the "Olympic Family" who had use of the free BMW "taxis"...
his reason for being one of the lucky few was that he used to work for
the IOC until 12 years ago. Nice enough guy, but it's appalling that the
road network of an entire city was completely buggered up just to let
people who used to work for the IOC in the last millennium whizz about.

In particular, all four routes south from the Trafalgar Square area have
been shut to cars and taxis from 6am to midnight every day, meaning
anyone trying to get from the west end to most of south London faces an
impenetrable two-mile east-west scar in London's road network from Hyde
Park Corner to the eastern end of Aldwych. To help visualise this, you
can't cross the blue line in this map in a southward direction (apart
from a few unimportant culs-de-sac) that don't help you get to south
London).

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=...via=1&t=m&z=14

I wonder what Lord Nelson thinks as he looks down from his column at
what is being wreaked upon the British by our own government just to
help foreigners whizz about our capital.