Olympic no-brainer

Surely only one club's stadium bid can be taken seriously?

Two of London's major football clubs are coming head to head in an off-the-pitch battle that has far-reaching reverberations regarding both the 2012 Olympic legacy and the livelihood of two deprived areas of London.

The centre of the tussle is the site of the new Olympic stadium in Stratford, which both clubs are trying to buy following the 2012 Summer Games.

Both bids are drastically different.

On the one hand, there's West Ham, the only East End top tier football club, who are looking to move away from their historic but rather ramshackle home at Upton Park, less than two miles away from the Olympic site in Stratford.

The Hammers plan to convert the 80,000-capacity Olympic stadium to a 60,000 stadium for football, athletics and community sport - a move which has been backed by more than a third of London boroughs, as well as UK Athletics, who are impressed by West Ham's promise to keep the running track intact in their new home.

West Ham's bid would require more public money to pull it off - but the club is promising a total regeneration of the Upton Park area, while the move would clearly prove beneficial to Stratford and its inhabitants too.

On the other hand, there's Tottenham Hotspur, the north London club based in Haringey, more than six miles away from Stratford.

If Spurs win their bid, the club would demolish the £500-million Olympic venue and build a football stadium from scratch. Despite the twin costs of dismantling and rebuilding, this is seen as a more financially viable option than the club's proposed £450-million redevelopment of its current stadium in White Hart Lane.

Put simply, Tottenham plan to knock down a venue constructed with half a billion pounds of public money - at a time when we're all feeling a bit light in the pocket - and starting again from scratch. Oh, and they'd ditch the athletics track.

It sounds an expenditure of completely ludicrous proportions - but this is football, lest you forget; a sport where a 22-year-old with only six months Premier League experience and a temper to rival Naomi Campbell can command a transfer fee of £35 million; or the only Spanish striker who failed to find the net during the World Cup, and who has been off the boil for well over a year now, can force Chelsea into forking out £50m for his services.

Just look at the crazy decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a country with no footballing history which is smaller than the area of London located within the boundaries of the District Line; a country which will need to construct eight new air-conditioned stadiums which will only ever be used for three weeks during the tournament before being left to gather sand in the desert.

In their defence, Tottenham have promised to foot the bill for a revamped athletics facility at Crystal Palace in south London, but it's still hard to look beyond West Ham vice-chairwoman Karren Brady's assertion that razing the Olympic stadium would be an "outrageous waste of money", the equivalent of "building more than 100 new primary schools - then bulldozing them after just four weeks".

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp, a player at West Ham for eight years and a manager for another seven, has bitten back, claiming that a club as little as West Ham would struggle to fill a 60,000 stadium, which will become a "desolate graveyard" on match days.

Such a response shows Redknapp's myopic perspective: he's clearly looking at the issue in purely footballing terms. He rather conveniently brushes over the hammer blow Spurs' successful bid would have not only to Stratford, but also the local economy of Haringey, which would miss out on the redevelopment promised at White Hart Lane.

The decision must be one that delivers lasting benefits for all Londoners - and doesn't merely serve the best interests of one football club. Indeed, there is even talk of Tottenham simply bidding so that they can "repackage" the stadium and sell it off to the highest bidder.

But perhaps it wouldn't be so wrong to look at this on purely footballing terms. Olympic legacy and the misuse of public resources aside, can a football club as historic as Tottenham change its geographic location and survive?

Granted, Tottenham's fierce North London rivals made the switch from Woolwich, south of the Thames, to Highbury in 1913 - but that was merely 27 years after the club was founded and could be seen as a catalyst in the Gunners' prestigious history.

For a more sober and recent example, look at the plight of Wimbledon FC when they relocated to Milton Keynes and rebranded as the MK Dons.

Arsenal made their switch from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium in 2006 but the move didn't even necessitate a change of postcode: both sites are but a few minutes walk away.

Chelsea are currently looking at sites for a new home, and so far all proposals - Battersea Power Station, Earls Court Exhibition Centre and Chelsea Barracks - have been in the locality.

If Spurs were to move their home from N17 to E15 there would not only be uproar about the Olympic legacy, there would be a whole lot of strife from within the club's fan base. After all, could any football club realistically stand a move into another team's heartland?

My big fat gypsy house

Sticking with Haringey for the moment, and The Telegraph has reported how a family of gipsies have attracted complaints from neighbours after being housed in a £1.2 million council home in Muswell Hill. Both parents are unemployed and on benefits, while their family of five boys and seven girls are all aged between one and 16. Neighbours have complained that the family have allowed their rubbish to collect in their front garden while there have been reports of "foul-mouthed arguments late into the night".

Londoners - you're hired

Computer software giant Microsoft has revealed it plans to create 1,000 apprentice opportunities in London over the next three years. Praising London as the "engine room of the UK economy", Microsoft bigwigs say the future earning potential of individuals on their employment programme would be boosted. Commenting on companies in the capital, Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: "They can make the difference by creating these crucial openings and at the same time build a skilled workforce tailored to the needs of the business."

Boris to help London fly

And keeping with out floppy haired Mayor while returning to the earlier Olympic theme, Mr Johnson has announced plans to build a monorail for bikes in the London Olympic park. Dubbed "The Fly", the pedal-powered pods are rumoured to be based on the Schweeb, a similar bike-monorail project already up and running in New Zealand and part-funded by Google. "We're going to keep driving transport infrastructure and keep investing," the London Mayor told reporters before heading off for a game of whiff-whaff.

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