THE Pope’s sidekick said when he landed in London that the UK looked like a ‘Third World’ country.

Nowhere is this more true than here in London’s East End, where cultural ‘norms’ from underdeveloped countries prevail, often with few concessions to the fact that this is Britain, except for the extensive use of the welfare system, public housing, etc.

Showing the ‘Third World’ reality of East London in the 2012 televised Olympics, including the number of mosques on horizon, is ‘not so good’ for international financial business. It hardly encourages business to locate here.

To avoid this ‘Third World’ image being beamed around the world, the Olympic marathon—the one event that would have shown the streets of the East End—has been moved elsewhere.

The East London Advertiser’s campaign (to get the route switched back) is misdirected.

The issue is not where the marathon is being held, but the state of the place East End people now have to live with all the time and how it is getting worse by the day—though it would be useful if the Olympic Marathon showed the rest of Britain what is going on here.

The other Olympics issue that the Advertiser could pursue usefully is that hardly any British people have been employed in building the Olympic facilities at Stratford. Its has been built by foreign labour throughout.

The ‘living wage’ campaign, including the Olympics construction, is almost entirely on behalf of migrant labour. It is about getting some migrant workers onto something just above the minimum wage. But that is in place of British workers on proper union rates.

No wonder it is keenly supported by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and big business.

May Thomas

Cable Street

Shadwell