Britannia Radio

This is music to my ears and - I suspect - to that of millions of
others. A poll yesterday said that the British public's attitude to
the Olympics in general had moved from a hugely negative -31%
(positive less negative views) to - wait for it - a strongly negative
25%. Those of us who live in London and have already been paying a
special Olympic Tax (embedded in our Council Tax without anyone's
permission! ) and are likely to go on doing so for decades to come.
Meanwhile sports facilities - except for the chosen few - have had
their budgets raided and arts lovers have suffered cuts too.

We are going to be saddled afterwards with unwanted buildings having
suffered 4 years of chaos while facilities are built.

The Olympic monster must be cut down to size.
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THE GUARDIAN 27.8.08THE . Comment is free
For 2012, the big winners are chauvinism and profligacy
After Beijing, the London Olympics should be a city festival of
sport, not a nationalist pageant. But that's not the IOC way

. Simon Jenkins

The success of the British Olympic team in Beijing has been like that
of British troops in battle. It brooks no response but wild applause.
So let us give it full-heartedly. The naturalness, the charm, the
guileless energy of the young British performers defied all
criticism. There is a delight in seeing something well done - and
Britain in Beijing was well done.

So where next? The lessons for the London Olympics in 2012 are
awesome, and mostly terrifying. The worst lesson is that those
seeking money from this government should wrap their demands in the
flag, not in reason but in chauvinist shriek, abetted by that
grotesque cheerleader, the BBC.

The closing ceremony's strange, eight-minute promotion for London,
made tolerable by a quirky speech from Boris Johnson, contrived to
cost £2.5m. You could stage an entire West End show for that, but I
doubt if a single invoice was queried.

The essence of the nationalisation of sport is that it is war by
other means, and therefore beyond financial discipline. Public
services must groan with envy at the echoing cry, that Britain "must
now meet the benchmark of Beijing". When the Olympics minister, Tessa
Jowell, rightly punctuated last week's hysteria by warning that,
however many gold medals were won, the London 2012 budget could not
rise above the present, astronomical £9bn, she was rubbished by the
Olympics lobby for raining on their parade. The BBC's sports editor
even had the cheek to announce that this was not for her to decide
"but a matter for the International Olympic Committee", as if that
corrupt and unaccountable body now enjoyed droit de seigneur over the
British Treasury.

This was followed by a flood of stories about Britain having to "up
its game", reward success, spend more on winners and guard its
trainers, who were about to be poached abroad. That master of
financial blackmail, Jacques Rogge of the IOC, warned Britain not to
cut back on the Olympic village (wholly unnecessary as London is full
of hotels) as it would be "cutting back on the athletes". This is the
man who wants an exclusive limousine lane up the Mile End road for
members of his staff and "Olympic family", so as to avoid public
transport to Stratford. It is not available to athletes.

The IOC's gamble in taking its demands to a totalitarian state,
China, has richly paid off. The politics of public expenditure
trumped the politics of freedom. The message of Athens 2004 - that
IOC sports are boring, so spend money on the ceremony - was well
heeded. Individualism may be paramount in competition but
regimentation, display and a modicum of deception is preferable on
television, the IOC's principal venue.

After China the IOC is rightly worried that democratic taxpayers may
balk at its required costs, so a process is under way to soften up
the British taxpayer for another Field of the Cloth of Gold. It is
helped by the fact that Jowell and her colleagues on the Olympic
Delivery Authority have shown themselves a soft touch to every lobby
going, from architects to the police.

Before Britain won the Olympics in 2005 there was much talk of
"rewriting the script", of producing a games that would not be
extravagant or hysterical or bombastic but would work within the
weave of the city. Existing facilities would be brought into use,
rather than erecting purpose-built stadiums to gather grass
thereafter. We were told the whole nation would be involved. Little
children would hold hands and sing the glory of Tony Blair.

The IOC moved to stop such nonsense. London was told that, to win, it
had to bid the package, starting at £2.5bn and rising. The new
Wembley stadium, specifically designed to be adapted for athletics,
was ignored because the IOC expected its own icon. The spread of
games across the south-east was (mostly) dropped because the IOC
wanted an exclusive and defensible encampment, a new town all of its
own.

Something over half a billion pounds appears to have vanished on
consultants, many of them laughably hired as "cost controllers" to be
paid millions in bonuses as costs soared. Architects underplayed
their bids, since they knew that budgets would be torn up once
nationalist hysteria was aroused. More is said to have been spent on
professional fees than has been earmarked for Olympics training itself.

It is already clear that the IOC's building specifications for the
Olympic village are incompatible with the market for speculative
housing in the East End. The IOC is insisting that equestrian events
must be in London, which means digging up historic Greenwich Park,
lest its officials have to travel to events out of town.

The triumvirate of Tessa Jowell, Lord Coe and the mayor of London has
allowed the Olympics to go berserk. With "security" racing past £800m
(for two weeks!), an observer told me that London's police, health
and safety regime, snouts deep in the fee trough, make China's
internal security police seem like a bunch of wimps.

It may be unfair to compare a velodrome or diving pool with a school
or a hospital. Sometimes it is right for a city to splash out on a
spectacular event. But the costs of 2012 have passed all common
sense. Those now struggling to save prison education or drug
rehabilitation or even local sports projects from cuts are entitled
to know that the money denied them is not being squandered. Those
public services denied priority should not be insulted by the games'
gross financial indiscipline. Yet any project that can prefix itself
with Olympics - be it art, architecture, transport or consultancy -
walks away with the moon.

The best thing London can offer the world after Beijing is something
truly different. It should show that an international sports festival
does not have to be cloyingly chauvinist or stupefyingly expensive.
That means scaling back on everything not central to sport, by
telling the IOC that these games belong to London and to London alone.

There should be a simple and dignified opening, dedicated to sport,
not the United Nations. There should be no tedious medals ceremonies,
no flags and anthems, no Zil lanes, no fat-cat expenses and no waffle
about one-dream, one-peace, one-world. The London games should be a
festival not of nationalism but of sport in one city.
I fear there is no lobby for that