UK - Do you want the London Olympics?

Question

Tody it's reported that the cost of building the Olympic village has gone up by 40% because of the increased cost of steel. The extra £800k will be met by the London taxpayer. I bet they're thrilled! The whole cost of staging the Olympics is now estimated at £3.4 billion. Unlikely to stay at that figure over the next six years. Can we - do we want to - afford this?

Sorry - just heard news report again, that should be an extra £800 MILLION to be paid by London tax-payers.

Answer 1

No , It,s going to be our country,s most Expensive Fiasco , already totally out of control, Billions and Billions of £,s Pissed away by a bunch of Lunatics , leaving the British Taxpayer to pay for this Gigantic Mess , the fools that have created this will be out of office by the time the real truth Emerges , leaving the next bunch of Tossers every excuse they need to Crucify us with more and more Penal Taxation ???

Answer 2

I live in east London. If you have ever lived there, or still do you’ll understand that is crap - too many poor people. The Olympics...castings....ha

As soon as I understood what they were building, in all the different area all over London said that it would be triple what ever their original costs £2bn was stupid. but that’s how government projects work. They give the public a small figure, start the works and tell the people, ‘what, you want us to stop now?’ – they know that they need to show low costs to get…
1. funding from the gov and privet investment.
2. support (from the community and privet investment)

Money and political power is all that matter when it come to thing like this.

Look at the channel tunnel - was it triple the original budget? About that.
Look at the Dome - was it triple the original budget? About that.
The Olympics will cost around £6 to £7bn – not the £2bn first stated.

But I’m happy for it. It will make the place a lot better to live in. all the poor people that have been living in squalor for the past 10 years will all own houses (3 bed) worth 500k min. It’s a regeneration long overdue. The centre of Newham has some of the poorest people in London – In Docklands, (about 1 mile south) the average wages are over £100k a year - AVERAGE!!!!

Bring it on, I’d pay for it.

Answer 3

Yes, the Olympics will definitely be a boost for the whole UK.

They will lead to people taking up sport (either before or after the Games - for those who doubt this, my local Rugby club had over 200 kids wanting to play after England won the last Rugby World Cup, so multiply that across all the sports in the Olympics).

Costs will rise (security costs always rise), but if you consider the Athens Games of 2004 were massively over-budget, the relatively small increase announced by Tessa Jowell today is less than Athens, Sydney or Atlanta at this stage.

This Government did not build the Dome; that was the Conservatives - all this Government did (wrongly) was agree to proceed with it. It was actually delivered, as a building, on time and, as near as you can ever be with projects of this kind, on budget.

Why not look at some of the success stories? The Milennium Stadium, Cardiff, Arsenal's new Emirates Stadium, almost complete rebuilds at Hampden Park, Twickenham and Murrayfield - all delivered on budget and on schedule.

Wembley was only a fiasco because the management at the beginning was weak under Ken Bates. Today's cost increases announced by Tessa Jowell mostly related to larger than expected management costs precisely to avoid another Wembley.

Bring the games on!

Answer 4

Its strange that other countries pull off these big events and quite possibly they may run over budget by a small amount but not the telephone number figures we seem to under estimate the costs. Looked what has happened with Wembley Stadium with the contractors blackmailing the government and still not getting it finished on time. The 2012 London Olympics could well be happening in 2020 if we run true to form, I have no idea how much that is going to cost the London taxpayers.

Answer 5

I think the answer is yes providing they do a rather better job of leaving things better when they finish than the Government did with the Millenium Dome! It's not as over budget as Government contracts often are and it should encourage more kids to take up sport. That would have to be good for the nations health. I suspect it won't be just London paying for the games but I think on balance they are a good thing.

Answer 6

Considering that Blair and Co could not even make The Dome work I believe the Olympics will be a financial disaster. Unless a new PM alters Blair's stance on killing Muslims then I fear the Games will also be a terrorism nightmare but Blair and his henchmen will all be safe with their armed guards at our expense

Answer 7

Yes and No because its costing us alot of money council tax is getting high and other things as well...it would be nice to see a big change in EastEnd and also in Stratford

Answer 8

Serves you numb Londoners right, just as long as the rest of us do not have to pay for your supplies of drugs but somehow I think that most of the money to pay for this event will be extracted from people in the rest of England instead of London as all the crooks in government and in the city will make sure that they get their drugs supplies paid for by us.

Answer 9

No, I just don't see it working considering money could be better spent in this country cleaning up bureaucracy and public transport. Government's answer...tax 'em to death!

Answer 10

No. the cost will spiral out of control and we will be left with another wembley fiasco, it could quite possibly be the first olympics to be cancelled if we dont watch out.