Olympics, where they subsidized by rest of the UK ?
To the tune of a little under £8 billion quid in central government and lottery funds alone- most of the project was paid from general taxation. And o’course London and the south got all of the income and all of the legacy, at least the good legacy, the whole UK got the cuts in sports funding and the loss of tourist revenues.
(don’t get me wrong, I won’t knock the olympics themselves, they were awesome- but all the way through it was “London’s olympics” but the whole UK got the bill. This surprised nobody ever)
Crossrail- at the risk of making it a scottish thing instead of welsh, London/The South got £16bn, Scotland got £.5bn, far less than proportional even before you take into account who got all of the benefits. I can’t find an equivalent for Wales but history suggests they got the same shaft, harder. Apparently HS2 is to be Barnett exempt on the grounds that it “benefits the whole UK” even though the government’s own analysis says that every region other than England will lose out- and it’d be a subsidy to the south east even if it wasn’t.
The truth is imo, when looking at regional incomes and benefits, the accounting is all to bollocks, money flows in a lot of ways and the cost/benefit calculations would be horrible even without that. Honestly I reckon anyone claiming they know exactly who benefits and by how much probably knows fine well they’re making it up. (unless you’re the north of england, where you can say for sure everyone else is taking turns to bum you)
The welsh argument seems simpler though, it’s mostly about comparisons rather than absolutes.