London 2012 blog

We had the second annual conference of the All Party 2012 Group today and we shared the occasion with the Industry and Parliament Trust
(Fellow: yours truly). In 3.5 hours we had speakers from the London Development Agency (Tom Russell), the Cultural Olympiad (Sarah Weir), Much Wenlock (Chris Cannon), WheelPower (Robin Courage), Security (Robert Raine and Tarique Ghaffur from the Met Police), Tessa Jowell and Seb Coe; so a pretty amazing line up.

Robin Courage touched many nerves when he said that no Government money had been forthcoming to bring Stoke Mandeville (where the original Games for athletes with a disability began in 1948, leading to the worldwide movement now known as the Paralympic Games) up-to-speed (he helped raise £10 million). Now - almost because his surname is courage - he is leading a team to raise £5 million to provide 2012 sporting wheelchairs for 2012...

Meanwhile the Much Wenlock Olympian Society again spelled out that it was William Penny Brookes not Pierre de Coubertin who was responsible for the modern Olympic movement (as indeed he was).

Others who got the nod included Sarah Weir on her exciting plans for a Cultural Olympiad - the likes of which have never been seen before - and Tarique Ghaffur who showed the scope of the challenges facing the Met Police across the UK as it starts to celebrate 2012 at the closing ceremonies in Beijing for both the Olympic tournament and its counterpart the Paralympics. (One day hopefully they might merge as we saw at the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002.)

To end, Tessa Jowell and Seb Coe gave us an update on how far ahead our plans were for the Games which is sometimes lost amongst the more cynical members of the media only interested in tomorrow's story.

As I am fond of saying in any sports debate in Parliament there are more member countries of the IOC than there are of the UN.