In the early morning rush-hour yesterday not one other soul stepped off the train at  Greenwich North: this architectural wonder of a new tube station was empty. Under a wide, windswept sky the dome's great peninsula on the Thames lies deserted. Richard Rogers's iridescent jellyfish hovers there as dazzling as ever with its jutting yellow masts, a famous London landmark now. Forget its hollow contents - at night with the lights playing on the roof, it was as romantic and magical a sight as any in the capital. From the air foreigners arriving lean over and point to it in delighted recognition.

But there are now only two weeks left before the government sells it off at a knock down price to the first company willing to take it off its hands fast. The dome is synonymous with disaster. Misfortune, miscalculation, mediocrity and mistake marked its miserable life so far. What government wouldn't want to be rid of it before an election? Even now, further revelation of the Mandelson/Hinduja connection rips another hole in the dome's reputation: the raising of £1m for the abysmal faith zone returns to haunt the place. The National Audit Office looms, scrutinising everything that was done and not done as lottery millions poured in month after month last year.

Robert Bourne's Legacy bid itself is tainted by a fat donation given by him to Labour party funds and a big birthday party thrown for Peter Mandelson. The place is a haunted political graveyard. No wonder they are eager to privatise it quick. But that would be the last and worst mistake of all.

After Nomura pulled out of its plan to keep the dome as a public theme park, Robert Bourne and his Legacy consortium seemed to be all that was left. So they got “preferred bidder” status, allowing them to continue negotiating without competition. Their bid is for a “hi-tech business park”, which means filling the dome with modern offices. Their spokesman speaks of “major IT companies, professional services, lawyers, accountants and academic institutions” who have expressed an interest in moving in. Some of them will have technology on display for members of the public interested in viewing their products. Otherwise it will be closed, a private space for ever.

Once sold off, there will never again be a chance to keep this beautiful building on the one of the most dramatic London sites as a public leisure, exhibition and entertainment centre. It has - at great cost - the best transport links, including the river. The leisure industry, say the economists, is the future. London has no other space like it, desperately short of good concert venues compared with every other European capital. The dismal dinge of Wembley Arena, Earls Court or Olympia can't begin to compete with either the glamour or ease of access of the dome. Pop and mega-classical concertgoers, along with sports fans, have always had to suffer miserable journeys and horrible conditions. Here, already paid for by us, is a place with every comfort and facility. Don't let them sell it off.

PY Gerbeau, until last week the dome's ebullient chief executive, thinks it can be saved. He had to stay silent until his contract ended, but by then Legacy had its peculiar “preferred bidder” status: his case may never be put. He has a major financial institution backing him, he has done the sums - and he knows the costings well. The government is full of praise for the way he stemmed the haemorrhage of money from the dome in the final months.

But will they listen - or will they hasten to be rid of it to Legacy? PY plans to run it as a visitor attraction in the day with the present contents enhanced: in the evenings it will be a concert and sports venue. He will build a hotel and conference centre and use the land around the dome as a village of themed restaurants and attractions - no housing or offices. He claims he will get 3m visitors a year and make a profit after two years. He will even offer the government more money than Legacy's timid £50m up front and £100m later. But he needs the attractions inside - especially the dazzling body zone sculpture (one of the few things of beauty). However, along with other key zones, the body will be demolished in two weeks. Will the government stay its hand and consider the PY bid?

The government is now legally bound not to even speak with other bidders. It says it must consider whether Legacy is the best value. But how is that judged without considering alternatives, and above all the public interest? The public has punted up the cash and must have an interest in keeping this great national asset for their own pleasure: £150m is peanuts compared with the near £1bn already spent, when the dome could be secured as a public amenity for ever.

The key to all this is property value. Hotly though they deny it, there is a canny suspicion that the Legacy bid will end up as a property deal. The invaluable land around the dome will be developed, the “hi-tech” park within may never quite materialise, never quite find all these tenants it promises. Unused, the dome would dilapidate until someone someday makes a fortune out of the land it stands on. Like the non-development of  Battersea power station up-river, glittering promises from developers are not always all they seem. But even if Legacy does all it says, it still shuts down a public place.

Gerbeau's scheme also buys the site, but at least he keeps it as a public space (sale conditions should insist on that in perpetuity). Better still, PY would be quite happy to rent the dome for a fixed number of years which keeps open the option of returning it to public ownership at some future date - if ever an Olympic or World Cup bid required it. The land around is so valuable some could be sold off to create a trust fund for the dome's future. There are much more imaginative ways of saving the dome than selling it off in a hurry to Legacy. By now that will also be the worst political option, the one most likely to dog the government at the election: added to the breath of sleaze will be a grotesque mishandling of a priceless public asset.

Politicians always lag behind the public mood, out of fashion, fighting old battles instead of facing future challenges. This government's 90s mindset still wrestles with clause 4 versus privatisation - dead ducks both. Money is poured into Railtrack in exchange for nothing at all, as if afraid that buying back shares in it is socialism incarnate. They are still trying to sell off the tube and air traffic control against passionate public opposition. Now they want to sell off one of the finest heritage sites in London, just as the Tories very nearly sold off half the National Gallery - saved only by Sainsburys. Mrs Thatcher left behind no monuments but despite its accursed first year, Tony Blair might live to be proud of this one yet.

Many years ago, before London became a vast urban sprawl so heated by cars, buildings, people and pollution that it developed its own micro-climate, it would snow in the capital almost every winter. Unlike this year's brief flurry, the snow would settle on the ground and the Thames would freeze over for days, weeks on end, becoming an icy leisure centre for the city's inhabitants to skate, dance and party on.

Inspired, in part, by these ice fairs of the past, the British artist Anya Gallaccio will next week be creating a sculpture on the banks of the Thames, using three blocks of Arctic ice shipped in from the River Tome in Lapland, north Sweden - home to Absolut vodka, which is continuing its long association with the arts by sponsoring the event.

One of the young students from Goldsmiths' College featured in the now-famous Freeze exhibition organised by Damien Hirst in 1988, Gallaccio uses materials such as salt, chalk, candlewax, chocolate and flowers to make strange, ephemeral and thought-provoking works which change over time: growing, decaying or melting away.

Gallaccio has fitted a flower-patterned carpet around the trees of a bluebell wood in Oxford and erected a massive one-ton structure made of salt bricks on Bournemouth beach, which crumbled back into the sea when the tide came in. In this case, the ice will be made first into drinks glasses, then into a sculpture, which will gradually melt and trickle down into the Thames. How long it lasts will depend largely on the weather.

• Anya Gallaccio will start work on her ice sculpture outside the Design Museum at Shad Thames, London SE1 at 7pm on 24 January. Go along to see an artist at work - or to drink the free vodka cocktails being served in ice glasses by the sponsors

A new scheme which rewards environmentally-friendly fishing practices gains the support of the Prince of Wales.

Thirsty visitors to the Millennium Dome might consider bypassing the expensive bars and heading straight for the toilets. For here the water being flushed through more than 850 toilets and urinals is good enough to drink.

Thames Water has spent £3 million trying to impress the public with its water recycling technology. The downside for Londoners is that they will be paying for this 'state of the art' purification technology in higher water bills.

Mistakes have meant spiralling costs for the impressive but complex system of collecting rainwater from the Dome roof and from a borehole drilled on the site. The system is estimated to have cost the company six times more than it would have done to use a conventional mains supply.

But, because these costs are being funded from Thames Water's research and development budget, they won't come out of the privatised utility's profits but will be passed on to Londoners through water bills.

One of the worst mistakes was made by the New Millennium Exhibition Company itself. Instead of drilling a borehole to collect water in an area where it was of a decent quality it chose a 110-metre borehole where the groundwater was polluted and contained lots of salt.

This meant Thames Water had to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a sophisticated purification process. Experts feared that unless the water was purified this way the toilet systems would have corroded and bacteria would have wrecked the system.

A spokesman for the Thames company admitted the hi-tech recycling system was not economical but had it not been tested at the Dome it would have been tried out somewhere else.

Toilet users have the choice of two flushes: standard or economy. The Thames spokesman said it would help the company gauge the public's willingess to use water-efficient systems.

Thames Water has predicted more than 24 million trips will be made to the Dome toilets this year and 500 cubic metres of water will be used each day to flush them.

The Thames Water spokesman said that, although the quality of water from the borehole was poor, the reason for using a new hole rather than connecting to the mains was to help alleviate the problem of London's rising groundwater.

Thames Water has drilled a borehole at Buckingham Palace and is looking for more sites in the capital.

The NMEC is also being criticised for its 'green' electricity supply at the Dome. NMEC chose electricity supplied by the Renewable Energy Company which has no accreditation from a government renewable energy scheme. This is because some of the power it uses come from conventional fossil fuel supplies instead of true 'green' renewable sources.

Parts of Britain are put back on flood alert, as farmers say the severe winter weather has already cost them millions of pounds.

The company that maintains Big Ben is up for sale. Here, one of their clockmakers explains what's involved in keeping the famous timepiece ticking over.