Exciting news from the HQ of The Guardian at King’s Place. Fresh from announcing a £44 million loss at its national papers, it has decided to have, er, a Lego display.
“A simple, if slightly strange, request: we would like to borrow your Lego mini figures,” says an internal email. “Bog-standard yellow, Darth Vader with a multi-coloured light sabre, whatever — we need them. And the more the merrier. As some of you will know, we are planning to revisit the hugely successful brick-by-brick replays pioneered by the Guardian during the 2010 World Cup.
We have top Lego designer Fabian Moritz coming over from Germany, Lego pieces being shipped from Poland, and even the team of Legoistas who built the Christmas tree in St Pancras station coming to King’s Place to build various stadiums, including a waterproof tank.”
How much is all this costing?
Food’s a non-event at the Olympic Park
Caterer Sodexo needs to raise its game at the Olympic Park — the waffle stand wasn’t serving waffles at 9am “because there isn’t much demand at this time”, according to a hapless member of staff — despite the park already being packed to the gunwales, to use Lord Coe’s favourite phrase.
Meanwhile, the cheese and ham croissants were already sold out. Er, didn’t the caterers have seven years to prepare for this? The food on offer is not inspiring: lots of fried fish, chips, burgers, pizza, muffins, croissants and fizzy drinks — courtesy of approved sponsors such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Cadbury.
The Olympic bumf refers to this fare as “filling meals” and “tasty treats”.
Hardly the kind of food associated with sporting excellence...
* Fact: At $200 million, Mitt “Dear Leader” Romney would be one of the richest presidents ever to occupy the White House. In fact, he is wealthier than the last eight presidents combined.
* Signs of the City jobs bloodbath in HSBC’s interim numbers: The number of people working at the bank is down by 27,000 over the last half year. But it still employs 271,500...
