´óÏó´«Ã½

I don't think anyone expected the decision on the future of the Olympic Stadium to be quite so noisy and divisive.

The main point of this post is to give you a chance to express your views here - which you can do at greater leisure now the decision has been postponed - on whether it's West Ham or Spurs taking over the site in Stratford. But first, on the day we heard about the delay, some quick thoughts from me on what the brouhaha is showing us.

I should say as a ´óÏó´«Ã½ staffer I'm neutral on issues of public policy, and I've no footballing allegiance to either club.

But first and most obviously, it's a very tight race. I don't believe we'd be hearing from the high-level participants currently flooding the airwaves - Keith Mills on Friday, Seb Coe on Sunday, Craig Reedie today - if the issue were settled.

Read the rest of this entry

So we can now say the London Olympics are "next year". Last time on this blog I was kicking round thoughts about how we translate that into a sharper sense of anticipation - not necessarily now but by the start of 2012. And this weekend, happily, gives us an example of how we can try to spread the Olympic spirit.

For a while we've been running a project called World Class - a partnership between the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and . One of its big ideas is twinning schools from the UK with counterparts across the world, and last autumn we launched on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Breakfast a competition with a prize of links to the schools of our athletes. So in Burntwood, West Midlands, has found itself twinned with - which is a bit further west in Des Moines, Iowa; and earned a connection to Merlyn Diamond's school in Namibia. Overall more than 1500 UK schools registered their interest.

Read the rest of this entry