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As some of you may be aware, the country is a bit strapped for cash so moves to cut costs at Britain's biggest building site - perhaps as much as £24m with this tweak - should not come as a surprise, and the IOC has been refreshingly accommodating about what a stickler for the rules might consider a broken promise.

The , however, is less impressed about the knock-on effects of this belt-tightening exercise as it means the boxing competition - originally promised a cosy corner of the ExCel - must make room.

A new home is being offered in northwest at .

Now nobody is suggesting there is anything wrong with the playing surface at . As a boxing venue the Arena will do fine. But there are concerns about Wembley's place in an athlete-friendly "compact Games".

At this stage the proposed move is just that: it's proposed. Any change must be approved by the IOC and the international federation concerned, in this case the AIBA.

The IOC, conscious that some consider its sporting events a bit pricey, is minded to OK the Wembley way and move on to more meaty matters, like security. But the AIBA is in no mood to be bullied and has said it will only accept Wembley if journey times of less than 40 minutes from village to arena can be assured.

As things stand, there will be a VIP lane from the Olympic Park to (where the bigwigs will be staying) with a promised journey time of 22 minutes. I think you could just about get to Wembley from there in 18 minutes...in a helicopter.

Now assuming Locog does not intend to put boxers on the , I do not see how this journey can be achieved without putting an Olympic lane on the . For readers unfamiliar with London's A406 just think of the most stop-start orbital road near you but imagine it with more cars, industrial estates and retail parks.

With no money to build a "satellite village" at Wembley, the better resourced teams will attempt to minimise the pain by finding accommodation near Wembley. But this will upset the poorer nations and cause more security headaches for the organisers.

So what will happen?

Here's my prediction. Some kind of fudge on the travel issue will be made (Locog will assure us it is possible to drive from Stratford to Wembley in 39 minutes...at 4am), the richer countries will book a floor or two at the Wembley Plaza and the IOC will throw boxing a bone.

And what will that bone be?

Well, earlier in this piece I referred to the boxing "fraternity". The AIBA, and , want to change that, though.

I will blog on the details of their campaign another time - a decision is due on 13 August - but remember where you read this first: there will be women boxers competing at London 2012, and they'll be doing it at Wembley Arena.

Funding farrago

While work continues at the Olympic Park - and you can stage your own "coordination commission" visit by taking a train from Stratford to - there is also much to do at HQ.

Remember the ruckus before Christmas about the £50m hole in the budget for Britain's Olympic and ? Well, it's still rumbling, although the row has now moved on from who missed out to how the bosses will fill it.

As previously mentioned, there appear to be a few holes in the nation's finances as well so Olympic sport is going to have to raise cash from the private sector, or at least demonstrate an ability to do so.

This was always part of the plan but as things stand the total raised is zero. I won't bore you with a potted history of the "Medal Hopes" scheme, let's just say it didn't work.

The new idea is "Team 2012" and it has a big advantage over its predecessor: the key players - the British Olympic Association, the British Paralympic Association, Locog and - are united behind it.

Unfortunately, depending on who you talk to, that is all it has going for it.

The is to tap into the "activation" budgets of existing London backers. This is money sponsors spend to make you and me aware that they are associated with event/team x.

So instead of, let's say, British Airways spending another £40m on things like billboards, golf umbrellas and summer concerts, it will spend some of the money it was going to spend anyway on sport.

In return, BA would get access to Team GB's athletes and coaches, access meaning personal appearances at things like grass-roots projects, company get-togethers and grand openings.

So far so good, particularly when you consider that all funded athletes (and there are 1,400 of them) are contracted to put in a few days a year promoting the National Lottery but the majority of these days go unclaimed.

But what happens if you're one of those Olympians that the lottery would always ask for? The kind that might also have existing sponsorship deals for cereals or running shoes?

Might you find yourself being asked to attend event after event? Might your existing sponsors get a bit miffed when they see your face in the papers promoting a rival?

The answer is "yes" and "hell, yes" according to the agents of Team GB's most famous members and that is why they went for beer and sandwiches at UK Sport's London offices on Friday.

It was the second such gathering in 10 days and if that suggests a sense of urgency it is because there is: Olympic sport works in four-year cycles and the "London cycle" started at the beginning of this month.

A deadline of next Thursday has been set for signing up to Team 2012 - and continued funding is contingent on signing the deed - and responsibility for getting the signatures in has been placed on the sports.

The agents' concerns can be summed up thus: you should have consulted us earlier, the contract is poorly drafted and far too binding, and the scheme won't work anyway.

The eight sports that missed out on full funding in December are also upset but their complaints can be boiled down to frustration that there are no guarantees any money raised will go to them.

So what's going to happen? Well, having given you my boxing prediction, here's my contractual impasse tip.

The Team 2012 partners will listen to the gripes, utter a few , promise to consult more widely next time, repeat their commitment to making decisions on a "performance basis" and then persuade everybody to put their toys back in the pram and sign the document.

Now is not the time for athletes who came to prominence on the back of public funding to start behaving in a non-altruistic fashion. Now is also not the time to write a plan off before it has even been given the chance to fail.

What is absolutely certain is that a private revenue stream for Olympic sport has to be found - does anybody really think the current high levels of public funding will be so forthcoming after London 2012?

And most importantly, it should be possible to address each of the agents' concerns by preventing the overexposure of the and , honouring the exclusivity of existing deals (so BT might not be able to use a Sky-sponsored cyclist but Lloyds TSB might) and acknowledging that nothing must be done to compromise an athlete's ability to prepare for 2012.

Hopefully this will put an end to the squabbles about funding...well, at least until 2011 when the eight sports who took their reduced rations up front will run out of cash.

Any sign of those green shoots yet?