Original Item:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/olympics_2012/7081346.stm

Now, I have to confess, I’ve never been the most ardent supporter of the whole London 2012 Olympics idea, not because I don’t think England should host the Olympics, but because, unlike those wise political schemers, I believe there are other cities in England besides London.
Apparently, I’m wrong.

There was never any realistic chance that anywhere other than London would receive the option to host the Olympics, because people seem so damn adamant to reinforce the outsider’s opinion that anywhere except London is backwards and inaccessible to the wider world.
It doesn’t matter that Manchester already has the vast majority of the Olympic-standard infrastructure in place. It doesn’t matter that even Birmingham is more central in terms of its location in the country (allowing the home population greater opportunities to get there and see the events easily). No, it doesn’t matter, because London is the be-all-and-end-all. Apparently.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against London as such, but the whole decision-making process seems to lack real logic, by which I mean the kind of logic that would say ‘If we’re going to build everything from scratch anyway, why not build it somewhere central and factor in adequate transport to that central location’, or the kind of logic that would say ‘You know, our Public Services kind of suck, why not spend less on improving facilities that are already at a decent level and let the rest of the money go back into Public Service, rather than the sort of logic that says ‘Nobody knows where anything is except London, so they won’t come’. Right…

Anyway, that’s not the reason I started this little rant.
The article I linked to goes on about the costs of the ‘new stadium’ design that the London 2012 Planners have recently unveiled. Happy days. It also goes on to say that the original stadium projections were for it to cost £280 Million, not an insignificant sum.
However, it also says that the actual current projections are for it to cost £496 Million. Let me repeat that figure slowly and clearly in case you didn’t catch it first time:

FOUR HUNDRED and NINETY-SIX MILLION ENGLISH POUNDS

That’s 496 followed by six 0′s.
Or, for those US browsers: nearly 1 BILLION of your American Dollars.

That’s a lot of cash. And they haven’t even started building yet.

I don’t like to be pessimistic, but usually in the UK, when a government-related projected actually starts to build things, they get considerably more expensive.

According to the article, David Higgins, chief executive of the ODA (Olympic Delivery Authority) claims that most of this perceived increase is due “inflation and VAT”.

I’m no financial whizz-kid, but my estimations at what I know about such thinks (working on 5% Inflation followed by 17.5% VAT, since work starts next year) would land this at £345 Million, some £150 Million short of the latest projection. Sorry, Mr. Higgins, but that simply doesn’t equate to them being the main culprit of a £215 Million culprit. [I'm more than happy to be corrected on my inflation figures, but I'm pretty sure the VAT is correct...]

Now, the thing that irritates most about all of this, besides the obscene amount of money being spent on something which, as the article goes onto explain, is largely made up of temporary seating, is that it is designed by HOK Sport, which, according to the article:

… has been responsible for such projects as Wembley Stadium, the Millennium Stadium, the O2 Arena, the Emirates Stadium and Ascot Racecourse

Now, I’m not doubting that all those stadiums were nicely finished etc etc, but what irritates me is, if they knew they were going to run for the Olympic bid, why the hell didn’t they just make the new Wembley the national stadium, and design it to be capable of doing this job!? Does that no make more sense financially, and sustainably.

As it is now, they are already looking for a tenant club, be it Rugby, Football or whoever, to take over the stadium once they’ve finished and removed the 55 000 temporary seats. Surprisingly, as of yet, they’ve had no takers… Why instead did they not think of creating one super-impressive national stadium, where all the national teams could easily play, and where many Olympic events could easily be hosted. More than that, why did they not think that a stadium that is supposedly going to be the pride of London 2012 and the nation might not be nice to keep in active service long after the summer event? Is the tenant club going to pay the full cost for the stadium and repay the nation? Somehow, I doubt it.

I’m genuinely curious what people think though? Am I overreacting at this? Have I missed some glaring point that makes the whole project worthwhile and sensible? Or are we just, once more, going to look like a laughing stock?