4276 days ago
It would be churlish of me not to admit that the Olympics brought joy to many. The faces of the athletes and the volunteers smiling and cheering and of many in the crowd were uplifting. For all my cynicism about money and drug cheats (the latter already vindicated in the ladies shot-put), a cynicism which is undimmed, I admit the Olympics made many folks happy, at least temporarily. However, we now come to the financial impact. It is clear now that for London as for every other Olympic City this was a financial disaster. £9-15 billion pissed away and the real economy tanks for the duration. Not good. We now, as taxpayers, pick up the tab.
To soften that blow you are already – as predicted here – seeing our political elite (led by David Cameron) blathering on about legacy benefits ( which are of course all impossible to measure) as if to pretend that the overall financial impact was not as bad as nasty mean spirited people like me suggest. Over the coming weeks and months I expect to be writing regularly as one “legacy benefit” after another is wheeled out and then is easily shown to be illusory. But we have two early runners and riders in the “bogus legacy benefits stakes.”
The first is the idea promoted by Dave Cameron and Seb Coe that the Olympics will encourage kids to take up sport, be fitter, etc, etc. Well er… that is not really true is it?
