It's 100 days to the London Olympics so the television and newspapers have been telling us all day and i'm sure that it is going to be a spectacular show of all the Worlds best runners, throwers and jumpers but i'm with the 64% who think it isn't value for money.
The original cost of hosting the glorified school sports day was £2.37bn but seven years on it is touching £24bn.
We were told that that having the games on our shores will bring untold benefits to London and the rest of the country but if there are such things as benefits from this, then they certainly are untold.
The Olympic Village, built with taxpayers money at a cost of £1 billion, has been sold to a Middle Eastern developer and a retail developer for £875 million which the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt hailed as a 'fantastic deal' as the Government never expected to recoup the village's building costs. They never, they lost £125 million on the deal but then the Governments calculators obviously work differently to everyone else's.
A giant sandcastle costing £5000 was built on Weymouth beach to mark 100 days to the start of the Games and was demolished just hours after it was finished but that cost if piffling compared to the £81 million the opening ceremony is set to cost.
I'm not against the Olympics, i will watch it wherever in the World it is held, i just can't see how my Government can justify spending £24 billion of our money on a 3 week event when only a few weeks ago they were telling us that we are so broke that they are having to put up the VAT on pasties and claw back money from the elderly.
Our priorities are dangerously skewed if our leaders are more concerned with providing a World beating fireworks display during the opening ceremony then keeping open libraries.
I'm glad Johnny Rotten told the Olympic Committee where to go when they asked him to perform at the opening ceremony which should just be David Beckham pushing out a tea trolley and pulling up a flag with the word 'Open' on it because, to be honest, tea and David Beckham is about all we are known for these days.
That and spending obscene amounts of money we haven't got and being told it's a good thing.
3 comments:
I take it you missed out on tickets then? ;)
I was put off by not being able to choose what tickets you could apply for. I was worried i may apply for the 1500m and get syncronised swimming or dressage.
That wasn't how it worked in my experience... (although I understand the fear)... The way it worked when I applied was that you went for a big bunch, including the really desirable ones like the athletics at the main stadium and the cycling at the velodrome, but also other less desirable ones in case you missed out on the biggies (which is actually what happened, but I'm going to the boxing so I'm happy enough).
The system was a bit of a pig's ear, I reckon, but I guess it's hard to keep everyone happy when everything was so oversubscribed (which in itself is a good thing i.e. that it's going to be a very well-attended Olympics)...
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