London businesses set to send delegation to Singapore

A group of business people from London, intend to travel to Singapore in order to protest outside Raffles Hotel when the IOC delegates meet to decide which city will get to host the 2012 Olympics. They have certain economic concerns they would like to be addressed.

Maybe someone should inform them that you can't just walk into Singapore and start a protest. There are formalities to be attended to and permission to be achieved before any gathering in Singapore of more than X people can take place.

They are foreigners not Singaporean. I would imagine that permission will be granted so long as everyone in the group can prove that they are not Singaporean and have zero connections, either property or financial investments in Singapore. They must provide evidence that they have no interest, emotional, political or economic in Singapore's future before permission to protest against the IOC meeting, in Singapore, can be granted. Then you can protest.



Bid faces Londoners' protest in Singapore

Paul Kelso
Thursday June 23, 2005

London 2012's final push to win the International Olympic Committee vote in Singapore next month may be embarrassingly overshadowed by protests from local businesses opposed to the games being staged in the capital.
The companies, based on the site of the proposed London Olympic stadium, are considering sending a delegation to Singapore to lobby the IOC membership as they gather for the crucial vote on the venue for the games.

Such a move would cause great discomfort to the 100-strong London delegation travelling to Singapore. Security arrangements at Raffles Hotel, the venue for the vote, mean the protest delegation would be unlikely to get access to IOC members without an appointment, but protestors at the gates might harm London's chances of overhauling the favourites Paris when the vote takes place on July 6.

The businesses, based on Marshgate Lane, are in dispute with London 2012 and the London Development Agency (LDA) over compensation for moving away from their current premises. Negotiations between the two sides have been increasingly bad tempered, with some of the the businesses claiming they are being offered compensation below market rates or inappropriate land swaps.
The IOC evaluation commission mentioned the dispute in its report on London, concluding that the issue would be settled and did not pose a threat to London's ability to stage the games.

Mark Stephens, the lawyer representing some of the businesses, said a final decision on whether to travel to Singapore would be made in the next week. "The businesses will travel if they believe that it will be an effective way of lobbying the IOC... All we are asking for is that the businesses receive economically neutral offers - that is a guarantee that they will not lose money - or appropriate alternative land within the area.

"If Seb Coe, Tessa Jowell or Tony Winterbottom [head of the LDA] could guarantee that today then every one of my clients and the 308 businesses in the area would settle."

Human Rights