Podcast #15: Olympic side-effects

This week we've been looking at the Olympics. Not at the Games themselves, but at a couple of side-effects to this huge event. The eyes of the world will be looking on the UK this summer, after all. What are we going to do about it?

Well, one Conservative peer has come up with a rather ingenious way of using the Games to promote world peace. Lord Bates recently returned from a 3,000-mile walk from Olympia in Greece. He's been prompting the 'Olympic truce', an ancient idea in which soldiers would lay down their weapons and exchange the struggle for military superiority with the more constructive struggle for sporting supremacy.

Lord Bates' bid to secure a brief hiatus to conflict around the world is rather abstract, but – you never know – might yield results. British people's lives are more likely to be affected by another aspect of the Olympics: the terrible hotel availability headache which is beginning to develop around the Games. I talked to Tory MP Therese Coffey about this problem, which looks set to be attracting more and more attention as the Olympics approaches.