Do you remember how everyone whooped, hollered and screamed in Trafalgar Square when it was announced that the 2012 Olympic Games was to be held in London? Now Londoners are raging, cursing and swearing because we now realise that the proposed cost of the Olympics was a ridiculous guess and we will pay much of the billions of pounds shortfall through raised council taxes (not the first and last time the government has lied to us) So in effect, the public will save the Olympics just like we saved the banks but don’t expect to be offered free tickets to see the 100m final or some tiny Chinese gymnast performing a quadruple somersault with pike and twist in the women’s floor final. That privilege will be given to corporate sponsors, politicians who will claim for luncheon vouchers and travelcard tickets and anyone remotely connected with the mayor of the time, his second cousins and anyone who knows his Aunt Mabel.
Following the closing ceremony of the next London Olympiad no-one wants to take up ownership of the downsized stadium. Chelsea aren’t interested, nor West Ham, Arsenal, Tottenham or Leyton Orient. It will become the biggest white elephant since a very large prehistoric mammoth died of dinosaur flu in Siberia. How can the proposed 25,000 capacity stadium pay for itself? Maybe we could invite those tough Shaolin monks to take it apart brick by brick with their bare hands and feet in front of the London public? Perhaps we can devise a hybrid of the violent British Bulldog game where members of ther public can chase bankers, politicians and mayor lookalikes with javelins, rakes, hammers and relay batons? Or we can use it as a giant time capsule. Chuck former Big Brother contestants in it, all MPs, anybody who ever wrote for the Evening Standard and their entire extended families, anyone who has ever appeared on Newsnight Review and all the BBC political correspondents (how many is there? Does anyone know?) Failing that can we get a Del-Boy character to flog the thing?
Does anyone know somebody who got a job working on the Olympic site? I know quite a few people who live around the Stratford area and not one of them knows a single person who won employment there. In fact I know a number of people who actually lost work. The whole thing is a joke and an exercise where politicians want to look good at the opening ceremony without any care or proper thought to what happens afterwards.
I for one would like to watch Usain Bolt attempting a follow up gold in the 100 and 200m but if I’m lucky enough to be in the Olympic stadium for the 100m final, I would feel that I paid twice to get there.
