The London 2012 Candidate File Olympic Games Bid documents (.pdf), as submitted with so much publicity, to the International Olympic Committee have been published.
What is astounding is the actual lack of detailed costings and economic impact assessment, that have been made public, or the assumptions on which the headline figures have been based.
No doubt the reassurances that the Treasury and London taxpayers will soak up any cost overruns is what the IOC want to hear, as well as that the Treasury will give the IOC a 100% tax break on their profits from the project.
In terms of white elephants, the plan seems to be design an 80,000 seater stadium (whilst Wembley Stadium stands idle during the Games), which will then have some tiers of seating removed (but presumably not the roof ?). These rows of seats will then be dumped on some other lucky Local Authority to create a 25,000 seat athletics and rugby stadium. Presumably there will still be the need to fund and construct the core of the building and roof from scratch, even if there are pre-fabricated rows of seats can be re-used from the Olympic stadium.
Who the unlucky Local Authority is, which is willing to take on this white elephant export, is secret.
Where is the business plan for this cast off stadium ? If the running costs need to be subsidised to make it viable, then that is a waste of public money.
The total budget for the Games itself is alleged to be $2.8 billion, but this only includes $37 million for operational security.
The Athens Games cost over $1 billion for security, with 45,000 police, soldiers and private security guards.
Who seriously believes that Al Quaeda etc. will be totally defeated by 2012 ? Surely we are going to have to be spending at least as much on security as the Greeks did, even though they are much less of a target, having stayed out of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
The Bid claims that only 16,500 police and 6,500 private security guards would be needed, even though the same document shows that 22,500 were needed for the Manchester Commonwealth Games.
It is already bad enough that policemen from the suburbs of London are regularly withdrawn for anti-terrorist duties in central London, leading to an increase in crime and disorder. Policing the Olympic Games will do this not just to London, but to the surrouinding counties as well.
This simply does not add up, we could easily be spending $2 billion on security alone, with massive disruption to normal traffic and life in London.
The projected £100 million profit spun by the medi is a pure guess and would be a tiny return on a risky investment of nearly $3 billion.
Surely any profit should go back to the Council Tax payers of London to reduce the minimum of £240 each that they will have to pay over 12 years to subsidise the Games ?
