I could hardly believe my ears today when it was stated on the news that the UK Olympics are to cost NINE POINT TWO THOUSAND MILLION POUNDS, FOUR TIMES THE ORIGINAL ESTIMATE OF £2.4 BILLION. And we all know that by 2012, the actual total will be much, much more.

 

Where on earth can all this money be going? Whilst many big wigs and politicians are probably getting massive back handers out of the Games, in my opinion this level of blatant overspending is utterly obscene.

 

Think about it.......a million pounds is an aweful lot of money.....a thousand times that is almost unimaginable.......but nine point two times even that huge amount is absolutely scandalous. And all so that a bunch of overpaid, drug-infested so called atheletes can run, jump, swim etc. against each other for a paltry medal.

 

What is the world coming to when we can waste so much money (and resources) on such frivolous activities whilst human beings all over the world are dying in their millions for the sake of simple amenities such as clean water and basic medicines.

 

I am not normally so political but hearing this news today has made me very, very angry......and it's just one day before Red Nose Day when Comic Relief are working so hard to raise money for disadvantaged children.

 

It's about time we spoke out against such extravagancies and demanded a detailed breakdown of the costs, AND PROFITS, associated with the Olympic Games. No-one seems to be accountable for anything these days, when will it ever end?

I'll do it with my builder mates for only 5 billion. Saving the tax payers loads.

 

Don't thank me all at once.

i think its absolutely disgusting :mad: what an absolute waste. nobody has taken responsibility or accountability for it. whenever something goes wrong, they just employ another consultant for £x00,000 per week and when something else goes wrong, they blame it all on him, fire him and get another one. no wonder we're drowning in taxes. shambles from start to finish :nono:

hear fookin hear. I'll get it done for free. Move the shambles somewhere else and channel that money where it's needed like opening more hospitals and paying the nurses a decent wage. It was on the telly the other night that a girl had been saved because a charity had raised enough for a dyalisis machine. Charities raising money for essential hospital equipment!!! :confused: . Yet they are spending ( and your right about backhanders!) millions of our money on this.

 

I'm going to stop now before I smash something up :rant: .

 

Nearly end of rant - I'll be back. ;)

you can relax most of that is money for regeneration of tht greenwich penninsular...housing, schools, transport links etc...got nothing to do with sport....but the press are whipping / spinning it up as if its 100% sport

you can relax most of that is money for regeneration of tht greenwich penninsular...housing, schools, transport links etc...got nothing to do with sport....but the press are whipping / spinning it up as if its 100% sport

 

Do you have a breakdown of what's being spent on what?

 

Edit - and if that's true, why are they raiding the Lottery for another £700million?

Yep, bet you didn't know you could afford that much did you ? Well guess what - you will be paying !

Do you have a breakdown of what's being spent on what?

 

Edit - and if that's true, why are they raiding the Lottery for another £700million?

 

i think the original fig is still sub >£3bn for the games...the rest is taken up by redevelopment....they covered it in a fair amount of detail on radio 4 these last few mornings...they are no great fan of the labour govt but even they thought the figures being reported were being manipulated a lot and included things that wern't sport.... didnt hear the lottery being mentioned...they do have sport as part of their remit so wouldnt be overly surprised to see it featuring somewhere on the balance sheet

i think the original fig is still sub >£3bn for the games

 

How is it sub more than £3bn :confused:

you can relax most of that is money for regeneration of tht greenwich penninsular...housing, schools, transport links etc...got nothing to do with sport....but the press are whipping / spinning it up as if its 100% sport

Thats not so bad then, Does anyone know how much it is estimated that we will make from the Games???

:confused:

Thats not so bad then, Does anyone know how much it is estimated that we will make from the Games???

:confused:

 

ticket revenues (£300m) is the only figures I can find on what we will get back, its a little short on its own of covering the cost :x:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/solpda/ukfs_sport/hi/newsid_4025000/4025027.stm?(none)

Thats not so bad then, Does anyone know how much it is estimated that we will make from the Games???

:confused:

 

Who is 'we'? You mean big business as they will take the majority of the profits? We the taxpayer (the poor) pay £10billion+ and big business (the rich) takes the profits!! :headvswal

The bit that annoys me is we are paying for it and we get charged VAT on it

Yes we actually get nothing from it except hours of boring boring athletics on the TV.

How is it sub more than £3bn :confused:

 

oops...keystrike error :mac1:

Yep, bet you didn't know you could afford that much did you ? Well guess what - you will be paying !

Maybe but not as much as those like me who lives in London! No wonder why the council tax bill shot up quite a bit this year! :headvswal

but on a good note we beat the french

you can relax most of that is money for regeneration of tht greenwich penninsular...housing, schools, transport links etc...got nothing to do with sport....but the press are whipping / spinning it up as if its 100% sport

 

This is true, not only is grenwhich but Stratford in East london too, i go through Stratford everyday and work has already started on the proposed site, all the overhead power cables are being put under ground, there is a massive construction site right next to the station, the docklands light railway is having a new terminal built as we speak, we are losing one of our Train staibling yards (Thornton Fields) at Stratford and the Rail Freight Depot has or is going too, of which compensation has to be paid to the Rail companies and Network Rail, plus all the derolict factories in the area are to be pulled down and apartments to be built in their place.

 

I personally couldnt of given a toss if we had the olypics or not, my council tax wouldnt of gone up to pay for it, we dont win fook all anyway the only winners are going to be the government, they will earn Billions out of it and the people that buy the appartments to sell or rent out while they are on.

I'm chuffed to bits about getting the olympics in 2012.

Sport is being pushed in schools, there is funding for coaches to run programes.

Coaches are getting teh same training across the coard which is up to the minute and not 10 years old at best.

Clubs are getting funding to develop facilities

Areas directly effected by the Games are getting re-developed which can only be a good thing for the iumigrants that live there (sory have to put some sarchasm in tehre)

The chances of us winning will be massivly increased.

 

I dont care who you are, everyone takes notice to some level or aother of how or sportsmen and women do at international level, so therefore sport is important to us.

 

This is a cracking thing for us as a country

I'm chuffed to bits about getting the olympics in 2012.

Sport is being pushed in schools, there is funding for coaches to run programes.

Coaches are getting teh same training across the coard which is up to the minute and not 10 years old at best.

Clubs are getting funding to develop facilities

Areas directly effected by the Games are getting re-developed which can only be a good thing for the iumigrants that live there (sory have to put some sarchasm in tehre)

The chances of us winning will be massivly increased.

 

I dont care who you are, everyone takes notice to some level or aother of how or sportsmen and women do at international level, so therefore sport is important to us.

 

This is a cracking thing for us as a country

Agree!!

Despite the tone of my original post, I am not against the Olympics per say, or even sport in general, BUT I am totally against the extravagent amount of money that is being spent, apparently for us to host the 2012 Olympics.

 

I simply believe that much of the money will be siphoned off by unscrupulous individuals and businesses who are already highly skilled in ripping off the taxpayers of this country.

 

I am all in favour of the physical training and education of the young as it promotes character building as well as being healthy and also helps the youngsters learn to be both competitive and teamsters.

 

If much of the £9.2Billion is to be spent on redevelopment, transport systems and the like, then let's know what their costs are together with evidence that they are justified as standalone projects and not needed just to support the Olympics. What I would like to see is how much it will be costing us to hold the 2012 Olympics here, without this figure being clouded by peripheral costs which we should be paying for anyway.

An alternative viewpoint:

 

Real cost of 2012?

 

* Evan Davis | Notes on Real Life |

* 15 Mar 07, 09:05 PM

 

Just after London was awarded the 2012 Games, there was a nice letter to the Today programme asking if we could allot a couple of hours a week to negative whingeing about the Olympics, so that we could at least enjoy the honour of having the games the rest of the time.

 

I find myself agreeing with that sentiment, as I listen to the downbeat media commentary around.

 

The truth about the budget of the London Games is that it's nothing like as bad as it looks.

 

It is simply not correct to say the cost of the games has gone up "yet again".

 

It is not correct to say the costs of the games are "out of control".

 

It is not correct to say the cost of the games has quadrupled or tripled.

 

It is even incorrect to say the cost of £9.3bn is the cost of the Olympics at all.

 

So what is correct?

 

(I apologise if the next few paragraphs have more figures than you really want, but I think it is important to make clear where the costs were, and where they are.)

 

The costs everyone talks about are those for building the facilities and re-developing the games site. This is said to have quadrupled from 2.4 billion to 9.3 billion.

 

However, the 2.4 billion figure is wrong, as is the 9.3 billion figure.

 

Always added to that original 2.4 billion was an extra billion pounds of spending on local regeneration. So the 2.4 should be counted as 3.4.

 

And that original budget of 3.4 billion has now risen to 7.5 billion, not 9.3.

 

The 9.3 includes stuff - like security, VAT and some extra bits - that were always accounted for separately from the 3.4 billion.

 

So in other words, the original 3.4 billion has in fact risen by 120%. Or, a good journalistic way of saying a cost has risen by 120% would be to say it has "more than doubled".

 

That might sound like costs are "out of control", but when you take into account that 2.7 billion of that 7.5 billion is a contingency for unforeseen costs, you realise that we can't say costs are out of control yet. We don't know whether they'll go out of control, we are simply making sure we can cope if they do.

 

It is true that the full cost of the construction and security and some other aspects of the games is £9.3 bn, but that includes £840m of VAT payments which goes back to the government, and hence should be disregarded.

 

However, the real problem with the casual use of phrases like "the cost of the Olympics" is that it overlooks an important fact: these big numbers are not the cost of the Olympics at all, but cost of constructing of a town in a desolate East London site of 2.5 square kilometres; a town which will be temporarily used by the 2012 games.

 

To disregard the value of the site at the end of the two weeks sports festival is to disregard the whole point of having the games in London at all. If I buy a £100,000 house to host a party, I'd be a bit silly to say the party cost me £100,000. Because I've got a house at the end of it.

 

The site will not be owned by the taxpayer. Developers will sell portions of the housing and the other facilities (the developers are spending several billion of their own on top of the 7.5 billion) but there should be some value to the taxpayer at the end of the process.

 

As it happens, the budget for running the games itself - the two week sports festival - is £2bn. That has not changed and is not included in the 9.3 billion. No-one really talks about this two billion as it will be financed by private sponsorship.

 

I am sorry if all this accounting is a little tedious. I'm sure we will have plenty to complain about as the games progress to 2012. it would be surprising if we didn't, given that it's such a large project.

 

(And there are already aspects to moan about - the new security budget of £600m in the 9.3 billion for example has risen from the original bid, and yet security was hardly an unforeseen need back in 2005.)

 

But let's not exaggerate how bad it is.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/evandavis/