Why Hold Firework Night On Ravaged Site of Olympic Police Base on Wanstead Flats?

The photographs above were taken this afternoon and show that, a month on from the end of the Paralympics, the site of the Olympics police operations base on Wanstead Flats is still a mess.

Some effort has been made to reseed the ground (see the previous pictures taken a few days after the Metropolitan Police left and you'll see what I mean). But it will still take months to recover. So why has Newham council been granted permission to hold its Fireworks Display on the Flats on 4 November, rather than in, say, Central Park?

One of the council's websites warns, "Display held on soft ground.", which may win the 2012 award for understatement of the year. It also reminds us - just in case there's anyone left in the borough who has missed having this message rammed down their throat - that "the event is brought to you for free by the Mayor of Newham" (out of his own pocket? Well, no, not quite), adding that it takes place "by kind permission of The City of London, Conservators of Epping Forest".

I suppose the "Conservators" got together and thought: what this site really needs is thousands of people walking all over it. Not for the first time, I'm left wonder what on earth the City of London Corporation thinks it is doing with an open space that belongs to us?