Snaps from Stratford on Friday as one of the seven bridges was lifted into place on the Olympic Site. You can also check out this short and vaguely interesting video fly-through from the ODA showing overall progress on the Olympic site. The cupcake is taking shape! All images by Andy Wilkes......

Chaos in the city: Brown and bank chiefs hold crisis talks, while sandwich board men get "End Is Nigh" placards out of mothballs 2012 Games to be "cosier", says the Mayor: cosier presumably being a euphemism for "cheaper" In other Olympic news: row rumbles on over anti-doping agency funding, while the main stadium won't be converted to a football ground post-2012. Can anybody spell 'white elephant'? Oyster hack unveiled. Rough sleepers in Westminster at......

Kids in rehearsal with Royston Maldoom by Camilla Panufnik Dance Umbrella is well underway and fittingly the skies caved in over the weekend but the diverse programme is making splashes of its own. Amid the professional programme lies the obligatory nod to the Olympic Games. Overture 2012 is one for the kids and the Arts Council (increasing accessibility, participation: tick) but funded from a plethora of sources and donors. 120 young Londoners, some experiencing contemporary......

This is what we have learned this weekend whilst you have been out stocking up on thermals: There will be more jobs in sport as 2012 approaches. No shit. The Dagenham Destroyer wants to get kids boxing instead of stabbing. A man has been shot dead outside a club in Bermondsey. Links to porn sites have been posted on to a website set up in the memory of Damilola Taylor. The TA has celebrated......

Hackney held a big 2012 party this weekend: One Carnival celebrated the borough’s role at the centre of the Olympic universe in 4 years’ time. After many hours of will-he-won’t-he, Busta Rhymes did. Perform at his gig that is. He’d been detained by British immigration officials. There has been a surge in the number of abandoned doggies on the streets of London, especially the more dangerous varieties. Sex in Islington Green is a seven-days-a-week......

This weekend sees the beginning of the Cultural Olympiad, the £40m marketing drive by the government to persuade us all that the Olympics are good and hey-you-don’t-even-need-to-be-sporty-to-benefit. Cynicism aside, the idea is really sound. At worst it means that we all get a bit of extra art/theatre/music, but if all goes according to plan it will serve to lift the whole Olympic thing into a nation-affirming revelation. Today’s launch saw former Olympic medallists, including Dame......

You were warned the Olympian scammers were starting early. Seems it's not only ticket tykes and touts that are getting ahead of the Games, though. One East London fraudster appears to have lured 550 Slovakian workers to London on the promise of jobs on the Olympic site and accommodation aboard 3 cruise ships at George V Dock, Stratford. Nigel Lewis protests his innocence, in the face of BBC London's report, claiming personal heartache that......

Murdoch’s decided to keep Fortress Wapping and move all his interests in together under one roof. Good old London Zoo has managed to shoot some rare footage of the okapi, a sweet, timid little deer thing that lives in deepest Africa. Well this is a hoot: Anglo-Ukrainian relations weren’t exactly helped today when two Ukrainian footballers offered some London travel tips – Tottenham 'is prone to crime because of dark-skinned people' and 'avoid Croydon......

As our "summer of cycling" draws to a close with our Paralympians raking in the hardware (that's gold in 4 cycling events so far) in Beijing's VeloPark, Chris Hoy's relentless round of public appearances rolls on back home with him helping to unveil the designs for our 2012 Velodrome as they are finally put forward for planning permission. And here's a nifty animation to fly you through the plans. The BMXers are particularly cute,......

Here’s what we’ve learned this weekend whilst you’ve been out shaking your fist at the sky: They’re joking, right? They couldn’t possibly demolish the Cupcake after 2012 to make way for a football stadium. Could they? The RMT is squaring up for a fight over plans to offer 24 hour transport during 2012. Kiddies are being paid to report anti-social behaviour on London’s streets. Half of London’s school kids are woefully ignorant about mental health......

Could EMI be moving to Croydon? No, we don’t think so either. The Cultural Olympiad is afoot: the launch on the 26th – 28th September looks set to be a weekend of pretty special events. And construction on the cupcake is proceeding apace. Fingers crossed an’ all. Specially as 9 out of 10 Brits currently verge towards pessimism on the games front. What housing slump? The super-prime end of the market is thriving, thank......

Forget London on the Cheap for a minute. If you're a true London geek with a proper taste for public transport then you need to check the piggy bank and make sure your eBay account is active. London Transport Museum if having a big ole auction with some awesome lots, if you can bid big enough. A tour of the disused Aldwych tube station - of much film fame but no longer open to......

Buy and sell any tickets. Any tickets to spare? Buy and sell any tickets. If you hear these phrases being muttered on the tube and at bus stops over the next few months, don't be alarmed – it's just the nation's ticket touts and scammers warming up early for the 2012 Olympics. American lawyer Jim Moriarty (cool name, huh?) has warned that the biggest ticket frauds of Beijing 2012 are already being targeted at early......

Mayor urged to endorse cross-river tram plan. St Pancras to Peckham? Sorted Stop-and-search policy criticised by ex-head of the Met's homicide prevention unit Top cop in charge of 2012 Olympics security claims he's being racially discriminated against Ramsay rumbled: there's a new top restaurant in town. We're sure Gordon took the news calmly South London squatters told to sling their hook Lethal weapons: one-man gun factory jailed for life Bus strike to begin tomorrow.......

Returning from the Beijing Olympics a gold medal bearing hero, boxer James DeGale must now face another kind of battle - that within himself over whether to stick it out with Team GB for London 2012 and defend his title in his hometown or to capitulate to the admittedly attractive and lucrative professional career that could instantly make him a millionaire and an even bigger celebrity. Amir Khan barely lasted a year after his......

Despite prior indifference, that gold-laden swag bag from Beijing has got Londoners enthused about 2012. Commuting into London is time-consuming. In other news, Pope is Catholic, and dog bites man Mayor Boris to meet with government in bid to tackle air pollution. There be fines in the offing if we don't clean up East London choir caterwauls to final of TV show Council workers cowed by crime are ferried from office to Tube station......

Taking to the stage at the Handover Party in Beijing, his successful flag-unfurling and debut on the international stage complete, Mayor Boris Johnson finally returned to a theme he has occasionally expounded since his election in May: expanding the capital's lexicon. Having re-introduced us to the joys of "piffle" and "cripes" in his three months at the City Hall tiller, the Mayor used the opportunity of addressing London's bid team to discourse on the......

Like a London bus, you wait for a great Londonist photo gallery and then three come at once. Well, in Beijing, there definitely was a bus. There was also a Beckham. There was a Boris. There was an apparently ununfurlable and tricky-to-wave flag. There was a football. There were two little girls. There was a funky film. There was some dancing. There was a Leona Lewis and some guy from Led Zeppelin. And suddenly, there......

Pictures below from a sneaky preview visit to the site for tomorrow's 'Visa London 2012 Party' on the Mall, which is happening right in front of Queenie's Front Room. Feverish activity seems to be going on to get the stage, the set and back-of-site operations built in time. If you got your mitts on one of the 40,000 tickets through the public ballot for this, then enjoy the celebrations to mark the handover from Beijing......

Philatelists, take note: to commemorate the impending handover of the Olympic flag from Beijing to London, a series of four special edition stamps has been issued. 'Cause there's nothing that says "Olympic handover" quite like, er, stamps. Anyway, the set of four, on sale in both China and Britain, feature the London Eye and the Tower rubbing up nicely against the Queen's profile, while the Bird's Nest stadium and the Corner Tower of the Forbidden......

Barging through the throngs of camera-wielding tourists in Leicester square of a Saturday afternoon, it might not seem that London is in dire need of more visitors. But Visit London is aiming to do just that, by launching a £4m advertising campaign this weekend to attract more sightseers to the capital. The worldwide campaign launches as China hands over the Olympic cycle to Britain on Sunday, and will highlight London’s virtues as a holiday......

Team GB's dominance in the Olympic cycling events was consolidated yesterday with Victoria Pendleton's women's sprint victory and Chris Hoy's third gold medal of the Games (fourth of his career) closely followed by team mate Jason Kenny with the silver in the men's sprint. Come the victory parade in October, there will be an impressive retinue of medal holders from the cycling contingent and we're holding out for more to join their ranks following......

Must Britain take any more? We are so unfamiliar with the feeling of national sporting success that the past surprising fortnight has tested the nation's cardiac capacity beyond reasonable limits. Now, we have more excitement in store on Sunday, at the handover ceremony in Beijing. Not only will Leona Lewis and Jimmy Page perform a duet, but David Beckham will enter the stadium on a London bus, before staging a kickaround with children representing......

Quick quiz - which Olympic sport, flouting the notion of gender equality, is the only one without a women's programme? Boxing is the answer. Despite the male pugilists getting to pound eachother into the ground, women's boxing (not to be confused with foxy boxing) remains on the outside looking in. That may change come 2012. The Amateur International Boxing Association is planning on making a proposal to introduce female fighters at the London games,......

To London House (well, not literally: us what blog from our garrets by a candle’s flicker don’t actually have a budget, let alone one which stretches to Beijing), where a programme of upbeat seminars and lectures on lovable London is underway. The installation has been set up with a view to promoting our wondrous city for matters non-Olympian. Business investment, tourism, study-trips, that sort of thing. You will recall that we reported on Boris’ Olympic......

Since time immemorial people have cried out - 'what we really need is a 23,000 seat multi purpose arena somewhere near Woolwich'. Of course this dream was finally attained last year with the reopening of the Millennium Dome O2 - back in the day, however, the plan was to install this pivotal piece of infrastructure in the heart of Canning Town and use its honeypot-like draw to redevelop the derelict Royal Docks. Where now......

If you, like the people above in Trafalgar Square, kicked back in front Olympic TV yesterday you will have enjoyed Saturday's festival of British medal winning which included "Team London" adding significantly to Emma Pooley's silver. Top of the bill was the men's four who stayed true to the tradition of Redgrave and Pinsent in delivering gold. The image of Chiswick's Andy Triggs-Hodge trying to celebrate through utter exhaustion will endure to London 2012......

If you don't already welcome Diamond Geezer into your RSS reader, stick him there now. One of the foremost chroniclers of our fair city, the Geezer should be permanently on the required-reading list of anyone who loves London. This month, he's surpassing even his own high standards with a series of posts about the road from Aldgate to Stratford. At the London Olympics, the marathon's last stage will pass along this ancient thoroughfare, to......

We may not have a freaky medal machine like Michael Phelps up our sleeves, but there is one activity the English will never be bettered at: moaning. While China explodes in a really quite over-the-top performance of national pride, a new survey shows that Brits aren't that bothered about the 2012 Olympics taking place right here in the capital. While a sizable section of the population has been whinging about it from the outset,......

Where will you be at that 'olympic handover moment' on the afternoon of 24 August when London becomes the next Summer host city? At Notting Hill Carnival? At the huge Buckingham Palace party with 40,000 others and, er, Will Young? Or watching (and possibly drinking) at one of London's open-air big screens or inside a pub? Wherever you are, you are likely to see video clips of people having a bit of a laugh.......