From just my own experience in the past couple of days on the tube and cycling around London, I think TfL have massively over-egged the potential for travel chaos and as a result, businesses are suffering. Empty restaurants in Chelsea on a Sunday at lunch time? The city is absolutely dead with none of the normal queues for lunch.
If I was a Black Cab driver, a restauranteur or even a shop owner, I would be crying. Just a prediction, there will be no boost to the UK economy from the Olympics, other than the money spent by the government on it, and we'll have more negative growth.
To those who say that TfL were dammed if they didn't, that is no excuse for what they have done. The economy is at stake and they selfishly covered their own arses at its expense. They basically said "stay away from London" and people have quite rightly taken them at their word. This was wrong. We coped with massive tube disruption after 7/7. Right, rant on behalf of London's service industry over.
Tags for Forum Posts: london2012, olympics, tfl
Yes, I was in town today and it was reasonably busy. Lots of Americans in the West End spending. Maybe we're saved after all but it's pretty hard to recover from a lost week at the height of the tourist season in London, no?
Nope, we're in big trouble. Another six years of this to go, at least.
On the bright side - if this means cutting out the shiploads of drek that would have been made and bought, then it may postpone the final reckoning re climate change for a couple of weeks, if we're looking futurologically.
When the crash happened, I saw it as a great opportunity to re-think the whole world economy and slow down and restructure, moving to green growth. Unfortunately they weren't listening. But any predictions into more than a decade at most that don't take climate change on board, are wasted.
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