Delivery of a sustainable legacy during a Code Brown Hysteria

To all staff.

Central Government, along with the executive agency for promoting active lifestyles among the young and feckless, SportYeah?, has outlined its determination, in the difficult weeks ahead, to press on with the delivery of both the Olympic Games and the Olympic Legacy, irrespective of the consensus of Code Brown hysteria that surrounds the coming global apocalypse.

For six weeks, the eyes of the world will be on London and Britain but also, unfortunately, on a planet-sized rock, which is engulfed in flames, in the sky. So, we will shortly be unveiling a series of inspiring television advertisements which will attempt to draw a line under the whole armageddon business. The advertisements will feature a marathon runner bearing a torch and some pre-packed bacon, negotiating a series of obstacles placed in his path; he leaps over a burning riot barricade, narrowly escapes the crumbling facade of a famous bank as well as Big Ben toppling into the Thames and a Bingo Hall exploding, survives a hail of javelins and finally comes home to the family kitchen victorious and able to light the eye-level grill of his cooker with the Olympic torch. The advertisement ends with the strapline ‘2012 - Saving Our Bacon’.

There has been some criticism of the advert and the Advertising Standards Authority has insisted, in the interests of truthfulness, that the entire family, kitchen and eye-level grill be immediately vaporised and that a caption is displayed – something along the lines of ‘Eat Bacon Sandwiches Responsibly’ - but we have also been praised for setting the Apocalypse against the context of the Games. Unfortunately, with the recently opened fissure of boiling rock near Goole that was named in this morning’s press as Kingston Upon Hell, it has become clear that we have to do far more in order to own the news agenda.

I’m confident that we can help meet that objective and, in doing so, be part of something that achieves a transformational shift towards embedded sustainability for these games. In fact, more than ever, we have evidence for our assertion that the Olympic Legacy will survive as long as the communities we have built that Legacy for. We have advanced our plans and we cannot retreat, going forward.
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