REPORTER: Evan Williams
In many ways, London has never been safer. Security for the London Olympics has been a major concern for both the Games organisers and the British government. Some of their operations are highly visible, while others are highly controversial. The Olympic site is in the middle of a heavily populated part of East London and just across the road, the Defence Ministry is putting anti-aircraft missiles on top of this apartment block.
BRIAN WHEELAN: This is the tower that I live in the shadow of.
It's Brian Wheelan's home.
BRIAN WHEELAN: The roof of that is going to be the location of the missiles, armed police and 10 soldiers at all times - 24/7 - For the duration of the Olympics?
But he says no-one asked the residents if they approved of the missiles.
BRIAN WHEELAN: They are not hosting the swimming event in our swimming pool and they are not holding the Opening Ceremony in our bar, so why would they think that they could, you know, host the military equipment in our apartments?
Brian's not alone. The missile plan has provoked growing protest.
PROTESTERS SING: We can’t have libraries or proper health care, the people suffered from lack of welfare. Join us in protest against the missile threat…
The protest drew together East London residents and veteran anti-war protesters like Lindsey German.
LINDSEY GERMAN, PROTESTER: Because that is something we have to oppose. I have always thought it was a total waste of money. I know many people will enjoy the Olympics, but it's a corporate Olympics. Most people around here don't have tickets for it. It's totally sewn up by the sponsors. You go in there, and you have to drink their drinks, eat their food, all of it is dominated by them and that's not in the spirit of sport and healthy competition, it is in the spirit of making as much money as possible.
DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Because we have built the solid foundations for a successful Games, we're able to focus our efforts on making sure they are a real boost for Britain. That is what I'm gonna be devoting my energy to - making sure that we turn these Games into gold for Britain.
Gold for Britain? Well, maybe. But London's Olympics are also getting known for the overwhelming dominance of its major multinational corporate sponsors. As the Torch made its way across the nation, its path was lined with the marketing of a company not known for its health drinks.
We're in Oxford for the Olympic Torch relay and the entire street has been lined with Coca-Cola signs. These trucks are here giving out free Cokes - it is absolutely everywhere.
MAN: There you go, mate. It's Coca-Cola beat pad so you can make loads of noise for the Torch bearer.
REPORTER: I see - Coca-Cola noise. There you go, that's a Coca-Cola drum thing.
The proud people bearing the Olympic Flame are also carrying the Torch for a select group of very powerful and rich multinational companies. Some of their employees could even carry the Torch. They have spent a great deal of money to have their company, their corporation, their brand associated with the Games and they protect their monopoly zealously.
Big multinational corporations like Coca-Cola are spending millions of dollars to buy monopoly sponsorship rights to the Olympic Games and they don't want any other business advertising on their time. So here, just as in the entire Olympics, it doesn't matter how small the business might be, they are not allowed to advertise any Olympic-related material, or even associate with the Olympics. And that is being enforced with heavy policing.
Local businessman Aziz Ur-Rahman has run his curry restaurant here for 22 years. To have a stall at the Torch party, Aziz was told he would have to pay $1500, cover up his restaurant name and the only soft drink he could sell was Coca-Cola.
AZIZ UR-RAHMAN, BUSINESSMAN: The council were adamant it wasn't their decision, but it was the major sponsors ie, the McDonald’s, the Coca-Cola who were the big brand - they are the ones who made the rules. But I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
To the big corporations, his complaints might seem trivial. But Aziz has spent years building up good community relations and to him there was no point participating if he had to hide his name.
AZIZ UR-RAHMAN: I cannot understand how it will affect their business or how it will affect them. I could understand if McDonald's-or-Coca-Cola had stalls there and were selling Pepsi or Burger King. That would make sense, but we're not - we're selling curries there. With curries, we'll probably sell Coke anyway, or other drinks. So it doesn't make sense to me and it doesn't make sense to a lot of the other local traders.
Meanwhile, the official restaurant of the Olympic site is the world's biggest McDonald's. A choice of a fast food giant as the Olympic food supplier worries health officials, while the practices of other major sponsors have raised alarm.
WOMAN: One of the girls in the office tried to get a few of us together so we could ask for the money we were owed. One of the managers found out about it, she was beaten and sacked.
This is an actor telling a story of a factory worker in Asia. It's a campaign against another Olympic sponsor, Adidas.
WOMAN: I'm terrified of my own manager. I don't earn enough to live.
Adidas has paid millions to be the sole sportswear supplier to the Olympics. This campaign was made by War On Want, its chief executive, John Hilary, says Adidas underpays its workers around the world.
JOHN HILARY, WAR ON WANT: Adidas has put forward £100 million to gain this sponsorship deal, the partnership deal with the Olympics. And yet it's not prepared even to pay a basic living wage to the workers who produce its goods.
To make their point, activists went to the main Adidas store in Central London, where they retagged clothes with the hourly rate Adidas workers get paid in Asia. It wasn't long before store managers got on to the protest.
ADIDAS STORE MANAGER: Leave the building, please. This way. This way, please. And you. Leave the building. Come on, this way. This way, please.
Adidas insists that its workers get paid the minimum wage and that any abuse is an exception. But Olympic organisers are investigating some of the claims.
JOHN HILARY: We have now seen the Olympics really bastardised, so it's become a corporate bonanza in the service of monopoly capitalism. It's all about commercial advantage, so that the big corporate sponsors get this massive multimillion-pound deal so they get to determine exactly what branding and advertising is around, just so it's all good for them. And that focus on private gain rather than public benefit, that's the key problem with the Olympics nowadays.
The control of the sportswear giant has been felt elsewhere too. Neville Gabie was the official artist for the construction of the Olympic Park. He made this short film, featuring a local woman who was a bus driver on the site, and she loved swimming.
SAM: It is a part of me and part of my life, swimming. It will always remain with me.
NEVILLE GABIE, ARTIST: Sam, for me, was really the essence of what the Olympics was intended to be about. It was about, you know, leaving a legacy for the people of the East End of London. She's a Turkish Cypriot woman, lives very close to the park, worked in the park, got her training in an apprenticeship actually, through the Olympics as a bus driver?
REPORTER: As a bus driver.
But the Olympic authorities are now not using the film.
NEVILLE GABIE: The problem was because one of the bus drivers was wearing a Slazenger rucksack when we went into the canteen and Sam, when she came to swim in the pool, was wearing a Speedo swimming costume. No-one suggested that was an issue when we were making or filming the work, but it's an issue since, when we wanted to show it.
REPORTER: And why is it a problem to see those two brands?
NEVILLE GABIE: Because they are not the official brand sponsors for the Olympic Games themselves.
He feels the draconian enforcement undermines the spirit of the Games. So, in response, he started a new project, called 'The Greatest Distance', because he feels the Olympic Games has gone a long way from the original ideal. But he's been warned this project could breach his Olympic contract.
NEVILLE GABIE: Part of the residency, I am subject to confidentiality clause, which carries on until post-Olympics so I did ask for legal advice.
REPORTER: We can leave it there, then.
Such corporate controls extend way beyond the Olympic Park. Several small companies have been told to drop any reference to or association with the Olympics. Chris Moriarty works for a body that promotes marketing excellence.
CHRIS MORIARTY: The legislation that's come in is unprecedented, particularly for the UK. So we're seeing now business practices, commercial practices, being brought into criminal law, which we haven't seen before. Normally this is something - and trademark legislations around a civil matter. But we're also seeing is an association now being brought into these cases, so there's a list of words that are banned in combination, because they may give you an association with the Games that you effectively haven't paid for. So we have list A and list B. So we can't use two words from list A or a combination of one word from A and two from B. Things like London, summer, gold, silver, bronze, rings - all these things are banned, effectively. But it's not just the words as well, there's imagery that can gain you an association which logoc again will take a dim view on.
Some say the corporate controls are a small price to pay for the legacy that's going to be left behind - the rejuvenation of a depressed area. But around the Olympic site there are questions over what legacy the Olympics is actually delivering. For 16 years, Julian Cheyne lived in a low-cost housing cooperative for 420 people, until it was torn down to make way for the Olympics.
JULIAN CHEYNE: We're a small community, so we were a 420-odd people and they have been scattered all over the place. That community was demolished and at the same time, as they say Olympics is about sustaining and supporting communities, they are actually demolishing our community. And although they asked us if we would like to move the community and then they did nothing about it, until the community itself was already being demolished.
Julian took me on a tour of the Olympic site. First up was the Athletes' Village. Some of these apartments are meant to provide affordable housing, but no-one knows how much they will eventually cost, as the site's been sold to Qatari property developers, and the government's definition of what is affordable keeps changing.
JULIAN CHEYNE: The question is whether this is delivering benefits and to go back to the very beginning, game plan, the government's own report said ‘you're not gonna get the benefits.’ So that's the lie and that's why I particularly object to being kicked out of my own home, is because it was not about delivering those benefits – it never was.
REPORTER: What was it about?
JULIAN CHEYNE: It's about the takeover of a piece of land for property development, for expansion of money, property money, into the East End.
Julian says a lot of the building around here is falsely being claimed as Olympic legacy because much of it had already started before the Olympics bid was even won. Many of the Olympic sites have been designed and built by British companies keen to maximise the commercial potential of this major event. Prime Minister David Cameron claims it's a big boost for British business.
PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON: We shouldn't see them as some sort of expensive luxury in tough times, because in my view it's precisely because times are tough that we have got to get everything we can out of these Games to support jobs and to support growth in the economy.
But a staggering 75,000 British firms who designed, built and supplied material for the Olympic site are barred from publicising the fact that they actually worked on the Olympics. Deborah Saunt runs a small architecture firm, they were asked to design the tallest tower of apartments in the Athletes' Village, but when they went to use the building to promote themselves, they received a nasty shock. Even if a company helped build the site, they can only use the Olympics to market themselves if they paid the Olympics organisers for the right to do so.
DEBORAH SAUNT, ARCHITECT: There were these fantastic awards in the World Architecture Festival Awards. Global gathering - next year it's in Singapore. We would like to take this building to Singapore and showcase it, see if we can get it on the short list, see if it wins the building of the year. We phoned up the ODA - absolutely not. You know, you cannot take your building, that you designed, your intellectual copyright, and put it into an international award to see if you can get more coverage.
Deborah believes the tight corporate controls are strangling innovative companies at a time when they need all the help they can get.
DEBORAH SAUNT: It's about saying corporate is best, big is best, international global economy is what it is all about and we can kind of benefit from the sort of beauty, the smaller practices, you know, individuals bring, but we're not really supporting them and I think they are really stymying a great opportunity. What if every games brought forth a whole new generation of designers, and associated trades, and artists who were working on it. It's not happening. It's just kind of big boys' territory and we're not getting in on that.
So, architects recently came together for a defiant meeting. They called it 'Definitely not the Olympics', aiming to break the ban to showcase the work of those who helped design the Olympic site. By doing so they were breaking the law.
PETER MURRAY, CENTRE DIRECTOR: The architects here, I'm really standing here as a potential criminal, having called this thing a title with the word 'Olympics' in it.
Centre director Peter Murray's campaign forced the government to issue a parliamentary report ordering an easing of the restrictions but companies involved in the Olympics will still have to wait until next year to tell anyone what they have done.
PETER MURRAY: The key time to market your service assist now, right before the Olympics and during the Olympics. Afterwards, I’m afraid, everyone's attention is going to be on Rio and the opportunity is passed.
Peter believes the rules are an overzealous application of restrictions imposed by big sponsors to stop non-sponsors getting free publicity so called ‘ambush marketing.’
PETER MURRAY: When the contract was originally set up, the British government wanted to pay the minimum amount of public money into the pot and get the maximum amount of money out of private sponsors, and so almost everything was done to kowtow to the sponsors to provide them protection of their brand and protection from this idea of ambush marketing. And so, in order to do that, this law was passed and I just don't think most of the MPs who passed it even read the thing. It was passed into British law in a way which I think, looking back, is quite scandalous and I think is against the whole tenor of our legal system and I am really shocked it ever happened.
There are also concerns that some of the major sponsors are buying the Olympics to clean up their corporate image. 11 years ago, Dow Chemicals purchased Union Carbide, a chemical company responsible for the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India, when a leak there in 1984 was responsible for killing upwards of 10,000 people. Dow Chemicals has paid millions for a 10-year sponsorship of the Olympics and for that, they get to associate their name with the glory of the Games.
COLIN TOOGOOD, PROTESTER: We estimate up to 100,000 people are drinking water which is so poor you shouldn't be washing your face in it let alone drinking it.
Protesters like Colin Toogood say Dow should use the sponsorship money to instead pay up more compensation and clean up what they say is a still polluted site.
COLIN TOOGOOD: It's not about them helping put an event on, it’s about them feathering their own nest with good PR and we don't think they should be getting good PR. The world's worst industrial disaster, hasn't been cleaned up, that’s not an opportunity for good PR.
Dow has paid some compensation and says the company responsible for the spill had already been sold before it bought Union Carbide. But others say, while that dispute is in the courts, questions remain. Meredith Alexander used to work for the Olympics Sustainability Commission but after investigating the suitability of Dow's sponsorship for the event, she resigned.
MEREDITH ALEXANDER: This is a tragedy that affects every generation, because the pollution on the site still hasn't been cleaned up. And so you see, again and again, children being born whose chance at a decent life has been brutalised by the legacy of the Bhopal tragedy.
On the streets, Dow's public relations games are here. Business is business. But the sponsorship of Dow, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Adidas has raised questions about the type of companies the Olympics should be associating with.
MEREDITH ALEXANDER: The Olympics are supposed to be about what's best and brightest of humanity. They are supposed to be a celebration of what we have in common. They are supposed to be a chance for people to come together and celebrate. But, unfortunately, what's happened with Dow and with other sponsors is that these ideals are being used to sell us everything from hamburgers to chemical companies. And that's exactly why these companies sponsor it.
Organisers say they need the money from the big corporate sponsors to run the Games but the big brands are only paying about a 10th of the £11 billion Olympic bill. The rest is coming from the British taxpayer. And the heavy-handed bullying by Olympics organisers to protect their precious corporate backers have many fearing what this means for the future of the Olympic Games.
Reporter/Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Associate Producer/Second Camera
EVE LUCAS
Editors
STEVE GIBBS
Original Music Composed by VICKI HANSEN
In many ways, London has never been safer. Security for the London Olympics has been a major concern for both the Games organisers and the British government. Some of their operations are highly visible, while others are highly controversial. The Olympic site is in the middle of a heavily populated part of East London and just across the road, the Defence Ministry is putting anti-aircraft missiles on top of this apartment block.
BRIAN WHEELAN: This is the tower that I live in the shadow of.
It's Brian Wheelan's home.
BRIAN WHEELAN: The roof of that is going to be the location of the missiles, armed police and 10 soldiers at all times - 24/7 - For the duration of the Olympics?
But he says no-one asked the residents if they approved of the missiles.
BRIAN WHEELAN: They are not hosting the swimming event in our swimming pool and they are not holding the Opening Ceremony in our bar, so why would they think that they could, you know, host the military equipment in our apartments?
Brian's not alone. The missile plan has provoked growing protest.
PROTESTERS SING: We can’t have libraries or proper health care, the people suffered from lack of welfare. Join us in protest against the missile threat…
The protest drew together East London residents and veteran anti-war protesters like Lindsey German.
LINDSEY GERMAN, PROTESTER: Because that is something we have to oppose. I have always thought it was a total waste of money. I know many people will enjoy the Olympics, but it's a corporate Olympics. Most people around here don't have tickets for it. It's totally sewn up by the sponsors. You go in there, and you have to drink their drinks, eat their food, all of it is dominated by them and that's not in the spirit of sport and healthy competition, it is in the spirit of making as much money as possible.
DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Because we have built the solid foundations for a successful Games, we're able to focus our efforts on making sure they are a real boost for Britain. That is what I'm gonna be devoting my energy to - making sure that we turn these Games into gold for Britain.
Gold for Britain? Well, maybe. But London's Olympics are also getting known for the overwhelming dominance of its major multinational corporate sponsors. As the Torch made its way across the nation, its path was lined with the marketing of a company not known for its health drinks.
We're in Oxford for the Olympic Torch relay and the entire street has been lined with Coca-Cola signs. These trucks are here giving out free Cokes - it is absolutely everywhere.
MAN: There you go, mate. It's Coca-Cola beat pad so you can make loads of noise for the Torch bearer.
REPORTER: I see - Coca-Cola noise. There you go, that's a Coca-Cola drum thing.
The proud people bearing the Olympic Flame are also carrying the Torch for a select group of very powerful and rich multinational companies. Some of their employees could even carry the Torch. They have spent a great deal of money to have their company, their corporation, their brand associated with the Games and they protect their monopoly zealously.
Big multinational corporations like Coca-Cola are spending millions of dollars to buy monopoly sponsorship rights to the Olympic Games and they don't want any other business advertising on their time. So here, just as in the entire Olympics, it doesn't matter how small the business might be, they are not allowed to advertise any Olympic-related material, or even associate with the Olympics. And that is being enforced with heavy policing.
Local businessman Aziz Ur-Rahman has run his curry restaurant here for 22 years. To have a stall at the Torch party, Aziz was told he would have to pay $1500, cover up his restaurant name and the only soft drink he could sell was Coca-Cola.
AZIZ UR-RAHMAN, BUSINESSMAN: The council were adamant it wasn't their decision, but it was the major sponsors ie, the McDonald’s, the Coca-Cola who were the big brand - they are the ones who made the rules. But I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
To the big corporations, his complaints might seem trivial. But Aziz has spent years building up good community relations and to him there was no point participating if he had to hide his name.
AZIZ UR-RAHMAN: I cannot understand how it will affect their business or how it will affect them. I could understand if McDonald's-or-Coca-Cola had stalls there and were selling Pepsi or Burger King. That would make sense, but we're not - we're selling curries there. With curries, we'll probably sell Coke anyway, or other drinks. So it doesn't make sense to me and it doesn't make sense to a lot of the other local traders.
Meanwhile, the official restaurant of the Olympic site is the world's biggest McDonald's. A choice of a fast food giant as the Olympic food supplier worries health officials, while the practices of other major sponsors have raised alarm.
WOMAN: One of the girls in the office tried to get a few of us together so we could ask for the money we were owed. One of the managers found out about it, she was beaten and sacked.
This is an actor telling a story of a factory worker in Asia. It's a campaign against another Olympic sponsor, Adidas.
WOMAN: I'm terrified of my own manager. I don't earn enough to live.
Adidas has paid millions to be the sole sportswear supplier to the Olympics. This campaign was made by War On Want, its chief executive, John Hilary, says Adidas underpays its workers around the world.
JOHN HILARY, WAR ON WANT: Adidas has put forward £100 million to gain this sponsorship deal, the partnership deal with the Olympics. And yet it's not prepared even to pay a basic living wage to the workers who produce its goods.
To make their point, activists went to the main Adidas store in Central London, where they retagged clothes with the hourly rate Adidas workers get paid in Asia. It wasn't long before store managers got on to the protest.
ADIDAS STORE MANAGER: Leave the building, please. This way. This way, please. And you. Leave the building. Come on, this way. This way, please.
Adidas insists that its workers get paid the minimum wage and that any abuse is an exception. But Olympic organisers are investigating some of the claims.
JOHN HILARY: We have now seen the Olympics really bastardised, so it's become a corporate bonanza in the service of monopoly capitalism. It's all about commercial advantage, so that the big corporate sponsors get this massive multimillion-pound deal so they get to determine exactly what branding and advertising is around, just so it's all good for them. And that focus on private gain rather than public benefit, that's the key problem with the Olympics nowadays.
The control of the sportswear giant has been felt elsewhere too. Neville Gabie was the official artist for the construction of the Olympic Park. He made this short film, featuring a local woman who was a bus driver on the site, and she loved swimming.
SAM: It is a part of me and part of my life, swimming. It will always remain with me.
NEVILLE GABIE, ARTIST: Sam, for me, was really the essence of what the Olympics was intended to be about. It was about, you know, leaving a legacy for the people of the East End of London. She's a Turkish Cypriot woman, lives very close to the park, worked in the park, got her training in an apprenticeship actually, through the Olympics as a bus driver?
REPORTER: As a bus driver.
But the Olympic authorities are now not using the film.
NEVILLE GABIE: The problem was because one of the bus drivers was wearing a Slazenger rucksack when we went into the canteen and Sam, when she came to swim in the pool, was wearing a Speedo swimming costume. No-one suggested that was an issue when we were making or filming the work, but it's an issue since, when we wanted to show it.
REPORTER: And why is it a problem to see those two brands?
NEVILLE GABIE: Because they are not the official brand sponsors for the Olympic Games themselves.
He feels the draconian enforcement undermines the spirit of the Games. So, in response, he started a new project, called 'The Greatest Distance', because he feels the Olympic Games has gone a long way from the original ideal. But he's been warned this project could breach his Olympic contract.
NEVILLE GABIE: Part of the residency, I am subject to confidentiality clause, which carries on until post-Olympics so I did ask for legal advice.
REPORTER: We can leave it there, then.
Such corporate controls extend way beyond the Olympic Park. Several small companies have been told to drop any reference to or association with the Olympics. Chris Moriarty works for a body that promotes marketing excellence.
CHRIS MORIARTY: The legislation that's come in is unprecedented, particularly for the UK. So we're seeing now business practices, commercial practices, being brought into criminal law, which we haven't seen before. Normally this is something - and trademark legislations around a civil matter. But we're also seeing is an association now being brought into these cases, so there's a list of words that are banned in combination, because they may give you an association with the Games that you effectively haven't paid for. So we have list A and list B. So we can't use two words from list A or a combination of one word from A and two from B. Things like London, summer, gold, silver, bronze, rings - all these things are banned, effectively. But it's not just the words as well, there's imagery that can gain you an association which logoc again will take a dim view on.
Some say the corporate controls are a small price to pay for the legacy that's going to be left behind - the rejuvenation of a depressed area. But around the Olympic site there are questions over what legacy the Olympics is actually delivering. For 16 years, Julian Cheyne lived in a low-cost housing cooperative for 420 people, until it was torn down to make way for the Olympics.
JULIAN CHEYNE: We're a small community, so we were a 420-odd people and they have been scattered all over the place. That community was demolished and at the same time, as they say Olympics is about sustaining and supporting communities, they are actually demolishing our community. And although they asked us if we would like to move the community and then they did nothing about it, until the community itself was already being demolished.
Julian took me on a tour of the Olympic site. First up was the Athletes' Village. Some of these apartments are meant to provide affordable housing, but no-one knows how much they will eventually cost, as the site's been sold to Qatari property developers, and the government's definition of what is affordable keeps changing.
JULIAN CHEYNE: The question is whether this is delivering benefits and to go back to the very beginning, game plan, the government's own report said ‘you're not gonna get the benefits.’ So that's the lie and that's why I particularly object to being kicked out of my own home, is because it was not about delivering those benefits – it never was.
REPORTER: What was it about?
JULIAN CHEYNE: It's about the takeover of a piece of land for property development, for expansion of money, property money, into the East End.
Julian says a lot of the building around here is falsely being claimed as Olympic legacy because much of it had already started before the Olympics bid was even won. Many of the Olympic sites have been designed and built by British companies keen to maximise the commercial potential of this major event. Prime Minister David Cameron claims it's a big boost for British business.
PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON: We shouldn't see them as some sort of expensive luxury in tough times, because in my view it's precisely because times are tough that we have got to get everything we can out of these Games to support jobs and to support growth in the economy.
But a staggering 75,000 British firms who designed, built and supplied material for the Olympic site are barred from publicising the fact that they actually worked on the Olympics. Deborah Saunt runs a small architecture firm, they were asked to design the tallest tower of apartments in the Athletes' Village, but when they went to use the building to promote themselves, they received a nasty shock. Even if a company helped build the site, they can only use the Olympics to market themselves if they paid the Olympics organisers for the right to do so.
DEBORAH SAUNT, ARCHITECT: There were these fantastic awards in the World Architecture Festival Awards. Global gathering - next year it's in Singapore. We would like to take this building to Singapore and showcase it, see if we can get it on the short list, see if it wins the building of the year. We phoned up the ODA - absolutely not. You know, you cannot take your building, that you designed, your intellectual copyright, and put it into an international award to see if you can get more coverage.
Deborah believes the tight corporate controls are strangling innovative companies at a time when they need all the help they can get.
DEBORAH SAUNT: It's about saying corporate is best, big is best, international global economy is what it is all about and we can kind of benefit from the sort of beauty, the smaller practices, you know, individuals bring, but we're not really supporting them and I think they are really stymying a great opportunity. What if every games brought forth a whole new generation of designers, and associated trades, and artists who were working on it. It's not happening. It's just kind of big boys' territory and we're not getting in on that.
So, architects recently came together for a defiant meeting. They called it 'Definitely not the Olympics', aiming to break the ban to showcase the work of those who helped design the Olympic site. By doing so they were breaking the law.
PETER MURRAY, CENTRE DIRECTOR: The architects here, I'm really standing here as a potential criminal, having called this thing a title with the word 'Olympics' in it.
Centre director Peter Murray's campaign forced the government to issue a parliamentary report ordering an easing of the restrictions but companies involved in the Olympics will still have to wait until next year to tell anyone what they have done.
PETER MURRAY: The key time to market your service assist now, right before the Olympics and during the Olympics. Afterwards, I’m afraid, everyone's attention is going to be on Rio and the opportunity is passed.
Peter believes the rules are an overzealous application of restrictions imposed by big sponsors to stop non-sponsors getting free publicity so called ‘ambush marketing.’
PETER MURRAY: When the contract was originally set up, the British government wanted to pay the minimum amount of public money into the pot and get the maximum amount of money out of private sponsors, and so almost everything was done to kowtow to the sponsors to provide them protection of their brand and protection from this idea of ambush marketing. And so, in order to do that, this law was passed and I just don't think most of the MPs who passed it even read the thing. It was passed into British law in a way which I think, looking back, is quite scandalous and I think is against the whole tenor of our legal system and I am really shocked it ever happened.
There are also concerns that some of the major sponsors are buying the Olympics to clean up their corporate image. 11 years ago, Dow Chemicals purchased Union Carbide, a chemical company responsible for the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India, when a leak there in 1984 was responsible for killing upwards of 10,000 people. Dow Chemicals has paid millions for a 10-year sponsorship of the Olympics and for that, they get to associate their name with the glory of the Games.
COLIN TOOGOOD, PROTESTER: We estimate up to 100,000 people are drinking water which is so poor you shouldn't be washing your face in it let alone drinking it.
Protesters like Colin Toogood say Dow should use the sponsorship money to instead pay up more compensation and clean up what they say is a still polluted site.
COLIN TOOGOOD: It's not about them helping put an event on, it’s about them feathering their own nest with good PR and we don't think they should be getting good PR. The world's worst industrial disaster, hasn't been cleaned up, that’s not an opportunity for good PR.
Dow has paid some compensation and says the company responsible for the spill had already been sold before it bought Union Carbide. But others say, while that dispute is in the courts, questions remain. Meredith Alexander used to work for the Olympics Sustainability Commission but after investigating the suitability of Dow's sponsorship for the event, she resigned.
MEREDITH ALEXANDER: This is a tragedy that affects every generation, because the pollution on the site still hasn't been cleaned up. And so you see, again and again, children being born whose chance at a decent life has been brutalised by the legacy of the Bhopal tragedy.
On the streets, Dow's public relations games are here. Business is business. But the sponsorship of Dow, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Adidas has raised questions about the type of companies the Olympics should be associating with.
MEREDITH ALEXANDER: The Olympics are supposed to be about what's best and brightest of humanity. They are supposed to be a celebration of what we have in common. They are supposed to be a chance for people to come together and celebrate. But, unfortunately, what's happened with Dow and with other sponsors is that these ideals are being used to sell us everything from hamburgers to chemical companies. And that's exactly why these companies sponsor it.
Organisers say they need the money from the big corporate sponsors to run the Games but the big brands are only paying about a 10th of the £11 billion Olympic bill. The rest is coming from the British taxpayer. And the heavy-handed bullying by Olympics organisers to protect their precious corporate backers have many fearing what this means for the future of the Olympic Games.
Reporter/Camera
EVAN WILLIAMS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Associate Producer/Second Camera
EVE LUCAS
Editors
STEVE GIBBS
Original Music Composed by VICKI HANSEN