We are all Olympic losers
Any finance director faced with London’s Olympics project would stop it before it started.
Unfortunately this mammoth scheme is so far out of control that, despite all the financial advice anyone could ask for (or pay for), no-one is prepared to state the obvious.
The current £10bn cost is four times the estimate made when Britain won the right to host the games just two years ago.
It has raided the Lottery fund for more than £2bn, is raiding London council taxes, has already admitted the whole contingency budget will be spent and has cut the target for big sponsors from 10 to seven – of which it so far has just three. And there are still seven years to go (assuming it is finished on time).
In the commercial world a director would be trading illegally if he continued. In the Olympics world ministers merely look for new ways to milk the taxpayer and increase the contingency fund.
Olympic economics may work for Third World countries in need of infrastructure and wishing to impress developed nations but the UK should be above that. Spending the original £2.4bn for games lasting less than two months was madness. Did we learn nothing from the Millennium Dome – which cost just £750m and lasted a year?
Committing £10bn should be capital expenditure with valuable (and income-producing) tangible assets to show but the huge sum is being treated as current expenditure with no real legacy. When the London facilities are dismantled they won’t even be used for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games two years later.
London, nevermind the rest of the UK, already has facilities that could be used for the Olympics, not least Wembley and Arsenal’s new Emirates stadium. Why build more?
Business would not produce an Olympics like this. Business is shunning the sponsorship. But business will end up paying in taxes. We should have let Paris host the games: £10bn is enough to give all 60m Britons £160 each to take the Eurostar to France and stay there.
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