MP plans an ear-bashing for Seb Coe over Olympics Marathon route
FIERCE lobbying is planned by MPs to get the London Olympics authority to change its mind and bring the 2012 Games Marathon event back to the East End.
Lord Seb Coe, the organising committee chairman, has asked to meet Bethnal Green & Bow MP Rushanara Ali this Wednesday at Westminster—in the wake of growing fury that the promised route leading to the Olympics stadium is being switched to the West End instead.
The MP is using the meeting to try and persuade Lord Coe to switch it back to its original proposal through Tower Hill and along the A11 Whitechapel Road to the stadium at Stratford.
“There will be a fight in Parliament if Seb Coe’s organising committee doesn’t listen,” she warned. “I will mobilise MPs and take the issue on to Parliamentary level.”
This latest threat follows a ‘People’s Route’ campaign launched by London Citizens umbrella organisation with the East London Advertiser at the beginning of the year.
Rushanara is aiming to involve other MPs from the five ‘host’ boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Waltham Forest and Greenwich to press Lord Coe to bring the Marathon ‘home to East London.’
“I’ll tell Seb Coe that switching the route is not acceptable,” Rushanara told the Advertiser.
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“We have to keep the pressure on and for jobs for local people as well. Tower Hamlets is now the only ‘host’ borough not holding any Olympics event—it’s not good enough.”
Very few workers from the East End have jobs on the massive construction site on their doorstep, she points out.
Tower Hamlets council is planning to go to the High Court for a judicial review to get the Marathon route switched back.
London Citizens, meanwhile, is stepping up its campaign of action timed for the visit to London by the International Olympics Committee in April.
