Back to the Ghastly Olympics

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article7086895.ece

Honestly, boys and girls, if you look aback at all the arguments we had a few years ago, and at my tearing of hair and wringing of hands THEN only imagine how I feel now!

what a bunch of moaning minnies that commented on that article!

Sheesh - The Olympics in London will only be a good thing, for locals in the host boroughs, for Londoners generally and for some of the rest of the populace in the country.

People fought hard to get the Olympics, so now we should get behind it and support it to the full - if we act negatively towards it we'll only end up with a bad experience - If we embrace it, we can all enjoy it.

"People fought hard to get the Olympics"

Well Lawson makes a pretty good case that they were fighting for the right to spend billions of other people's money with stupendous lies about the cost. Why would they tell such lies? Presumably to enhance their own prestige without cost to themselves. Lawson explodes the public health rationale, the facilities rationale, the tourism rationale and the property appreciation rationale. So what's left? Political and bureaucratic self-importance.

This is it. It's a perfectly scandalous story of pulling the wool over the eyes of the public who are going to be paying for this charade for years and years and years. I was never in favour of us taking it on in the first place - we dont have a particularly good record for mounting this sort of thing - but that the costs have run away to SUCH a degree is shocking.

JonR wrote:

Sheesh - The Olympics in London will only be a good thing, for locals in the host boroughs, for Londoners generally and for some of the rest of the populace in the country.

'The sale of compulsorily purchased land to developers is supposed to recoup the cost of the Games. This, of course, required the destruction of the industrial sector around Marshgate Lane. The LDA presented this part of the Lea Valley as an extensive rubbish tip. David Higgins, Chief Executive of the ODA, called it “a scar”. However, this industry provided 1,200 jobs for local people which have now been moved out of the area. These jobs will be replaced by “clean” high tech jobs, which, for the most part, will not match the skills of local people. Existing businesses in the Olympic Park were selling land to housing developers before the Olympics came. Now the LDA will reap the profit from these sales and most of the land will have to be sold for expensive private development with a lower proportion of “affordable” housing.'

From Planning Displacement: The Real Legacy of Major Sporting Events: Section2 - Olympian Masterplanning in London
http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/931

The local people of Clay's Lane don't think having their estate demolished to make way for the planed Olympics was good for them. Here's one ex-Clays Lane tenant: '...I still have mixed feelings one of pain and nostalgia when i go pass the Olympic site, there is no where left in London as far as I know like clayslane. It had a diverse group of people who lived happily in the community and I still give a hug and a smile to any of the old faces I come accross on the odd occasion, and we reminisce on old times, I do keep in touch with a few and miss those i've lost touch with. It was an area where the community had a heart beat... yes where it beat as one, it would have been a great place for people to come and do case studies on how to start their own cooperative, but alas its no more'.
Lucie (missing Clayslane)'

From:
http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/174

jackie rokotnitz wrote:

This is it. It's a perfectly scandalous story of pulling the wool over the eyes of the public who are going to be paying for this charade for years and years and years. I was never in favour of us taking it on in the first place - we dont have a particularly good record for mounting this sort of thing - but that the costs have run away to SUCH a degree is shocking.

When it was announced that London had been awarded the Olympics I remember emailing a friend in Paris with a kind of we won-you lost theme as a joke.
In her reply was the French phrase "Les Anglais le regretterai, vous pourrez voir!" (The English will regret it, you will see.)
Many a true word spoken in jest.

No jest, matey, I was in my car when I heard the announcement and practically crashed it..all the Se1 cheerleaders sneered at me for being a killjoy, but my Cassandra spirit seems to have been pretty spot on.

You've gotta love the priveleged right-wingers like Lawson getting their pants in an almighty twist over how the "waste of money" Olympics will bankrupt the country one minute, and then arguing what a great use of money it is to renew Trident the next minute.

I've got no torch to carry for the Olympics, but I think it comes quite far down the list of things that all our money is being spent on, but which I disagree with.