The Standard View: Celebrate the Olympics Games, 10 years on – Evening Standard

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arely has a secret been kept so well. The cast of the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, comprised of 7,500 professional performers and volunteers, practised for months to deliver one of the great cultural moments in our recent history. The Games had truly begun.

For 17 days, from that Super Saturday in the Olympic Stadium to Team GBs dominance of the track, Michael Phelps in the pool to Nicola Adams in the ring, history was being made wherever you looked.

The Games have had a lasting legacy. One only has to walk around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, where facilities are still used by professionals and members of the public. The new housing, transport links and facilities have transformed Stratford and the surrounding areas.

It is true that the sporting legacy has not endured in all aspects. As we reveal in todays paper, the Olympic boroughs have seen childhood obesity rates soar to some of the highest in the country in the decade since the Games.

These figures will raise fears that one important legacy of the Games a healthier and more active population has failed to materialise for children in the part of the city that did so much to host the event.

But the 2012 Olympics were more than just one long, and not inexpensive, party. They inspired people across the country, demonstrated once again the power of sport, and served as a reminder that London, host in 1908 and 1948, could still put on a great show for the world.

Start strike talks now

The first rail strikes of the year garnered wall-to-wall coverage and caused widespread disruption for commuters. Todays industrial action by members of the RMT union over pay, cuts and changes to working conditions are unacceptable and cannot be the way forward.

Londoners, and those who travel into the city, pay high prices and are entitled to a decent service. At the same time, it is understandable that workers are demanding pay deals that acknowledge difficult economic times.

What is therefore vital at this point is an activist government that is prepared to use its convening powers to

bring all parties to the negotiating table and sort out a compromise deal. Instead, whether distracted by a leadership election or otherwise, ministers seem resigned to rolling strikes.

Commuters crushed into carriages or cancelling meetings in the city will understandably say that is not good enough. No solution will be pain-free, but governing requires hard choices and the occasional banging together of heads.

That is what is required now, so that a summer of strikes does not give way to a modern-day winter of discontent.

We dare to dream

A backheel. In the Euro 2022 semi-final. Against the top-ranked team in the competition. To make it 3-0 and virtually guarantee England a place in the Wembley final. Take a bow, Alessia Russo.

The Lionesses are now 90 minutes (dont mention the p word) from sporting immortality. Either France or Germany await in the final. Sarina Wiegmans team should fear neither. We cannot wait for Sunday.

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The Standard View: Celebrate the Olympics Games, 10 years on - Evening Standard