LOCOG creates uneven playing field

Now that we’re into December, I thought it would be a good time to send Santa a list of things that would make excellent presents to put under the tree. I got into ‘email mode’ and fired off my list.

Santa’s little helpers were straight back; apparently things have altered in the last few months, due to a changeover in their service provider. They want to know if my tree has FSC Chain of Custody. This is a problem; mine is a ‘PEFC tree’ and now the elves are on my case!

It looks as if there’ll be no tree and worse still, no presents by the time I have sorted it all out. This all seems very odd, so I decided to investigate a bit more.

Apparently when they were building their Grotto, Santa made it clear to the team called ‘Our Dream Area’ (ODA) that he wanted to ensure it was squeaky clean, so he arranged for a group of suppliers to be approved and to only use FSC and PEFC timber.

However, unknown to Santa, the team running ‘Operation Christmas’ (Lapland Over Christmas Our Goal’, or LOCOG) decided to change the rules and they specified FSC

only for anything they needed. This seemed to all hang on the whim of a few people on the team, who put their personal ideals in front of cost, quality and availability issues. Perhaps they also wanted to give PEFC a bit of a kicking!

It looks as if naughty head elf Sebastian and his team (known as SEBCO) have been a bit sneaky and now everyone is scurrying around trying to sort out presents and trees that conform to the new standard.

I’m a bit puzzled; if it was good enough for Santa, why do we need all these new restrictions?

What a shame – all we wanted was a bright, cheery show, where everyone was happy; now we’ve ended up with a whole load of politics and upset people. Surely humans back in the real world wouldn’t concoct such a silly, needless load of political bureaucracy, would they?

Any likeness between this festive story and developments in timber procurement for the 2012 Olympics after the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) takes over from the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) is purely coincidental. But then again, it does seem remarkably similar!

On that topic, yet again the timber industry seems to have been hijacked by people who have put self-interest ahead of common sense. Where’s the environmental audit on the steel for the Olympics’ Orbit Tower, or the concrete for the main stadium? What’s the ‘legacy’ for the Games site’s copper cabling?

Oh well, seasons greetings to you all – I hope you have a hassle free time and enjoy your break away from the world of timber. Let’s hope that 2012 will be a bit more cheery than some of the forecasts.

Keith Fryer is a co-director of T Brewer.