BORIS JOHNSON announces today that he wants to make London the “epicentre of fun in the universe” come the 2012 Olympics and he probably doesn’t mean the predicted huge rise in prostitution.
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“We’ve got to assume that huge numbers of people are going to come to the city and we’ve got to allow them to enjoy themselves, so there’s all sorts of things we’re preparing,” is Johnson’s message to the Olympic Board, before which he appears today.
What the London Mayor has in mind is: the pedestrianisation of roads between Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square; big screens and concert stages in four London parks – Hyde Park, Jubilee Gardens, Potter’s Gate and Victoria Park; the Cultural Olympiad arts festival and loads of posters and bunting all over the city.
South Londoners might wonder why no park or common on their side of the river is deemed worthy of a big screen, but might be consoled with thought that the prostitute invasion is likely to be confined to the north of the city.
Police and local authorities in the boroughs near the Olympic construction site say that the number of street walkers has doubled since building began and evidence from previous Games suggests that at the time of the Olympics, numbers double again, so there could be four times as many ladies of the night plying their trade by 2012 as before. They could even make an Olympic sport out of it.
