Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Olympian
The Times reports here on the latest budget estimates for the Tony Blair 2012 showcase, otherwise known as the Olympic Games. At the time, like many other people, I was rather hoping this event would go to Paris, it promises to bring us nothing but trouble and let's face it, the various millennium fiascos organised by this government including of course the dome don't exactly bode well.
The huge 4 billion pound budget has already jumped by 40% and they haven't even started doing anything much. This increase is despite spending £400 million on a " ... consortium to manage the project and ensure that the Games came in on budget and on time ...". So we're getting superb value there.
The minister in charge (surprisingly and disappointingly not John Prescott) Ms Jowell has started with the excuses: "...£900 million increase had been due to the increased costs of commodities such as steel, which had doubled in price ...". Well Ms Jowell that's irrelevant, you should only be able to rely on price increases which affect the values of the inflation index as used by the government. By referring to price increases outside the inflation index used, you're suggesting the index used as a cornerstone of economic policy is wrong, so under collective responsibility you should resign.
We also have the handy terrorists to blame: " ... Ms Jowell made clear that the security budget of £190 million which was drawn up before the July bombings in 2005 were “totally inadequate”...". Well that's just pathetic, everyone knows (and has known since Munich) that Olympic Games are terrorist opportunities, the prudent organiser will guard against that as much as possible, and if you've done that properly then that is it. There is only so much you can do, it is finite and it costs X; the fact that there might be another terrorist attack elsewhere in the meantime doesn't mean you can do anymore, unless that is you haven't done the job properly in the first place. So which is it Ms Jowell? Incompetence to start with? Or using terrorists as an excuse?
So far thankfully, they're talking about London council taxpayers paying or the money coming from National Lottery "Good Causes". Neither of which I currently contribute to, but if I was a London taxpayer I wouldn't be too happy. As regards the "good causes", most of the lottery money seems to go to politically correct causes anyway, but that aside, people don't play the lottery to benefit the Olympic bunch.
The modern Olympic Games has turned into some kind of perverse curse (at least for smaller countries); if it's held in a large country with plenty of resources such as America, or China or Australia then yes they can compete with each other for a spectacle to stun the world, but we can't. We don't have the public money because we waste it on other things, we don't have the private money because of all the tax, we don't have a cheap workforce or any other natural advantages. For us to stage the Olympic Games we would have to do a much less spectacular event, and that isn't the sort of thing the Olympic Committee want, so instead we should just accept that. Personally I think we've bitten off far more than we want to chew, there's no national will for this, and we'll be lucky if it costs less than 20 billion and if it's ready on time. Although I'm confident it will be a fitting tribute to Tony Blair.
The huge 4 billion pound budget has already jumped by 40% and they haven't even started doing anything much. This increase is despite spending £400 million on a " ... consortium to manage the project and ensure that the Games came in on budget and on time ...". So we're getting superb value there.
The minister in charge (surprisingly and disappointingly not John Prescott) Ms Jowell has started with the excuses: "...£900 million increase had been due to the increased costs of commodities such as steel, which had doubled in price ...". Well Ms Jowell that's irrelevant, you should only be able to rely on price increases which affect the values of the inflation index as used by the government. By referring to price increases outside the inflation index used, you're suggesting the index used as a cornerstone of economic policy is wrong, so under collective responsibility you should resign.
We also have the handy terrorists to blame: " ... Ms Jowell made clear that the security budget of £190 million which was drawn up before the July bombings in 2005 were “totally inadequate”...". Well that's just pathetic, everyone knows (and has known since Munich) that Olympic Games are terrorist opportunities, the prudent organiser will guard against that as much as possible, and if you've done that properly then that is it. There is only so much you can do, it is finite and it costs X; the fact that there might be another terrorist attack elsewhere in the meantime doesn't mean you can do anymore, unless that is you haven't done the job properly in the first place. So which is it Ms Jowell? Incompetence to start with? Or using terrorists as an excuse?
So far thankfully, they're talking about London council taxpayers paying or the money coming from National Lottery "Good Causes". Neither of which I currently contribute to, but if I was a London taxpayer I wouldn't be too happy. As regards the "good causes", most of the lottery money seems to go to politically correct causes anyway, but that aside, people don't play the lottery to benefit the Olympic bunch.
The modern Olympic Games has turned into some kind of perverse curse (at least for smaller countries); if it's held in a large country with plenty of resources such as America, or China or Australia then yes they can compete with each other for a spectacle to stun the world, but we can't. We don't have the public money because we waste it on other things, we don't have the private money because of all the tax, we don't have a cheap workforce or any other natural advantages. For us to stage the Olympic Games we would have to do a much less spectacular event, and that isn't the sort of thing the Olympic Committee want, so instead we should just accept that. Personally I think we've bitten off far more than we want to chew, there's no national will for this, and we'll be lucky if it costs less than 20 billion and if it's ready on time. Although I'm confident it will be a fitting tribute to Tony Blair.
Tags: olympic games, public money, taxes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Labels: Olympic Games 2012
