The Olympic Games - this insane festival of sport aimed at forcing countries into logistical nightmares and higher levels of debt - is approaching the UK for 2012. All fine if you can sit in front of the TV and watch the highlights oblivious to the destruction that was caused for your viewing pleasure.

Our governments purport environmental change; sign the Kyoto agreement and barrage those that don't; espouse the goodness of "An Inconvenient Truth" and talk up decisions to improve the world's worsening climate. Yet, when it all comes down to it - money is still the winner.

And it will win again to the detriment of some 100 year old garden allotments at Manor Garden.

See, the problem is that Manor Garden lies smack-bang in the middle of an already congested Olympic Village design. Fortunately for the designers and landscape architects it has very little effect. A few bulldozers and other earth moving equipment and the problem...well, it's no longer a problem.

Look on the bright side. After the four weeks of Olympic hysteria the allotments will be returned to their rightful owners and they can continue as if nothing happened. Albeit their 100-year old plum trees will no longer exist. The soil will be severely compacted and the micro-climate that's taken more than a century to create and maintain will no longer be present.

Apart from that there should be no problems.

According to lifeisland.org this is not where the rot will end;

The fundamental flaw in the Olympic masterplan is that it responds to the Lords of the Olympics rather than to the opportunities that the site offers as a legacy for London.. In other words, the failure of landscape planning taking the lead role to respond to the existing legacy and providing for its upgrading to the benefits of East London. The scale of the opportunity has not been realised and there is a distinct danger that it will suffer, like Sydney, with the difficulty of trying to find a legacy and the finance after the damage has been done. Few Olympic Cities have cash left after the event to invest in this. The morning after the night before is generally a depressing moment.

Money wins again. And the moment it runs out the problems will continue to fester.

Fortunately that's not my problem. London's more than 14,000km away from Busselton so it's not in my backyard. Plus, I only plan to watching the opening and closing ceremonies and a few of the basketball matches. You probably need to tell someone who cares...

Well it may be time to care?

Take some time to read what others are saying about this debacle here and here. And then go and sign the petition... [Note: You must be a British citizen to sign it]

But for those who can't sign, use your blogging voice to create a groundswell throughout the blogosphere. This hypocritical environmental destruction needs to end.