Olympic Stadium West Ham United supplied an artist's impression
of their view of how the inside of the Olympic Stadium would
look like during a home match to accompany their first bid to
become the anchor tenants. Photograph: West Ham United/PA
"Jarndyce v Jarndyce drones on," wrote Charles Dickens in Bleak
House of the infamous, seemingly endless court case. "This
scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so
complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties
to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two
Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without
coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises."  The
mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and his London Legacy
Development Corporation board, must recognise the urgency of
concluding or abandoning negotiations with West Ham's vice-
chairman, Karren Brady, if the saga over the future of the
Olympic Stadium is not to become a similar byword for
interminable stasis.  West Ham, having been jilted at the altar
on