One of Apple’s major London stores, at Westfield Stratford City, is to be barred to customers tomorrow and Saturday. The mall, which sits next to the Olympic park, will be closed to the general public because of congestion fears. Only Olympic ticket holders and officials will be allowed into Europe’s largest shopping mall, much to the fury of the individual store owners. No comment from Apple so far.
(ViaThe Telegraph)
I was in Beijing before and during the Olympics there, and in the run up quite a few polluting factories were either closed down for the duration, or forced to move elsewhere, whole sections of the entertainment areas in central Beijing were regularly closed in the evenings and nights to avoid any drunkenness and public disorder.
Also many roads were simply closed off and on the main routes from the Olympic village and the airport to the Olympic venues there was always one lane absolutely reserved for Olympic transport, and this was closely policed too!
All 83000 old taxis were replaced with brand new clean taxis, all the old and smelly buses were also scrapped and replaced with brand new ones (no idea how many buses that involved, but it had to be thousands of them).
Generally, in many ways our lives were seriously inconvenienced by those blasted games.
So it seems to me that the shopkeepers in that Mall should be happy they have only been closed for one day in the name of the Holy Olympics, the biggest money earner in the world.