So just what benefit is the olympics going to be for UK PLC

£10 BILLION and counting…

Think what that could have been used for….

The costs increases in the present economic climate are now absolutely obscene.

Only a ego-crazed politician, mersmerised by their own ludicrous vanity project could stand there and announce that a swimming pool is now going to cost a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers money. Its a swimming pool FFS! A quarter of a ****ing billion quid?!!! Why?!!

Papa – there has been and will continue to be large cuts in funding for grassroots sport as to pay for the olympics.

reduced participation will be the result as well as a loss of facilities such as eastway

Sorrry to put a downer on things Molly. Let’s all just think happy thoughts and everything will be ok. 🙂

In fact there’s evidence that exposure to elite sport puts some people off as its so far remo.ved from what they are capable of.

And there might be Olympics sports projects in schools, but the government has massively slashed the funding that supports sport in schools long term.

I reckon it would be a good idea for all countries to give something for upkeep of Athens (with the olympic link) and put the rest of the money towards upkeep of our own athletes to help get more medals, improving biking links 😀 and other sports to get the lardies off their bums.

But that wouldn’t produce big announcements and mutual back-slapping for politicians, would it? And, of course, selling public-created works to their mates at knock-down prices. 🙁

aracer – you can ride at Herne Hill on an ordinary bike (I think – pretty sure anyway) – the Herne Hill track is made of concrete, the Olympic one will be made of wood.

I really like sport and I remember being proud of our athletes during the last Olympics. It’s the deception and false promises surrounding it that bother me. And, I really don’t think the organisers have thought the traffic thing through at all.

We are already being urged to consider working from home/changing working hours/taking annual during the Olympic period. F88K OFF! Not only have Londoners paid for it twice, now getting to work is going to be horrendous too.

there has been and will continue to be large cuts in funding for grassroots sport as to pay for the olympics.

Not to mention reduced funding for elite level non-olympic sport.

you can ride at Herne Hill on an ordinary bike (I think – pretty sure anyway) – the Herne Hill track is made of concrete, the Olympic one will be made of wood.

Well Herne Hill is a bit different to a modern velodrome – I don’t think you’ll find you can take an ordinary bike on to Manchester or Newport.

Bear normally I’d agree with you but at the moment we are in the middle of a right old economic cock up of epic proportions, yes I know the bid may have been put in prior to that but no one seems to be showing any restraint with the purse strings now.

We all love cycling, right? Remember how, for a few weeks, cycling was cool and positive PR all over the place in 2008, well we’ll get something similar however well the Brit squad do

Hmmm I dunno, my cynical side says if we don’t get any golds there’ll be a backlash from the public.

Accessibility at Manchesters velodrome is fantastic. About a tenner for an hours taster session, with an instructor, including hire of your track bike.

Mind you, Manchester built all its commonwealth games facilities on time, under budget, and left a fantastic legacy. Did the government look to this as a model? Did they ****!

Accessibility at Manchesters velodrome is fantastic

yes and the roof no longer leaks and water only pushes up through the floor when it rains and the downstairs toilets always work 😉

nothing to do with being built by AMEC during Mr Stringers tenure at all 😉

Manchester built all its commonwealth games facilities on time, under budget, and left a fantastic legacy

Which facilities are late being built? Last I heard the building of the facilities was ahead of schedule and is on budget or under. (Of course it depends on which budget you are looking at, as with all large projects). It will leave a fantastic legacy, the only real ‘white elephant’ will be the Olympic Stadium itself.

Of course you could always say that any spending of this on such a project could always have been spent on something else, that will always be the case.

Perhaps we can only look at the value and return in hindsight. If we look at previous large scale projects we get a mixture of results. The Dome has turned into profit as the O2 – how many of us could have predicted that while is was being built.

#Grum

In fact there’s evidence that exposure to elite sport puts some people off as its so far remo.ved from what they are capable of.

I reckon that’s true – even my feeble little 24 miles a day to and from work has my workmates saying “Oooooh, I could never do that!” and “I don’t know how you do it!”.

They are hardly likely to look at the Olympic road race and think “That’s a bit of me, that is”.

The taxpayer was stung by the Millenium Dumb…

sadmadalan – Member

It will leave a fantastic legacy,

Really? what?

sadmadalan – Olympic venues on or under budget? How so? The original cost of the swimming pool was supposed to be £60 million. Which, for a hole full of water, already sounded a bit steep.

The present cost stands at £242 million. The costs have gone up threefold on pretty much everything. How is this ‘on budget’?

Seems to me that the original costings were plucked out of thin air. Because all the firms knew they could massively increase costs, and the idiot politicians would just carry on writing cheques. After all…. Its not like its ‘real’ money, is it?

Wow, there’s some misery on here.

I think the Olympics is and will be amazing, but then I love sport and Im not a miserable tosser expecting the world to give me something.
Leeds will host the Chinese I believe and there will be a lot of excitement about the athletes being in town and a general buzz about the country about our athletes competing.

Maybe there will be some records and achievements by British athletes and we might just enjoy watching it all.

I’m not bothered about a legacy, the only way to get things to happen in your community is to make them happen yourself, there is **** loads of money available for projects in the community if you do a bit of digging, councils are flush with all types of budgets to support sport etc.

Maybe some people on here shut just put up and shut up and maybe try doing something in the real world for their sport rather than expecting everything to be given to them, like a new playground being built in another forestry bit of land.

And there’s the other big fallacy, that somehow the olympics is going to get the obese out and puffing away. Well it may for a couple of days, after which they will say a collective “sod this” and go back to the beer and burgers.

absolutely
we have what is – arguably – the best tennis tournament in the world with wall to wall TV coverage and yet all it manages to inspire is the courts in the park are busy for a couple of weeks every June

The original cost of the swimming pool was supposed to be £60 million. Which, for a hole full of water, already sounded a bit steep.The present cost stands at £242 million. The costs have gone up threefold on pretty much everything. How is this ‘on budget’?

I assumed that was a given, contracters can’t get public jobs on budget ever IM(limited)E, I will be pleasantly surprised if all the building is done on time, coz I never expected that to happen either.

The original cost of the swimming pool was supposed to be £60 million. Which, for a hole full of water, already sounded a bit steep.The present cost stands at £242 million. The costs have gone up threefold on pretty much everything. How is this ‘on budget’?

Simple – they just revise the budget 🙂

It’s then still ‘on-budget’, despite being more expensive than originally thought.

But as we all know, what with the recession and what-not, everything’s got more expensive.

The Dome has turned into profit as the O2 – how many of us could have predicted that while is was being built.

…which is a good argument for the state keeping out of the entertainment and entertainment venue industry!

The Dome has turned into profit as the O2 – how many of us could have predicted that while is was being built.

After they bought it for next to bugger all once the taxpayer had spent a fortune on it.

there is **** loads of money available for projects in the community if you do a bit of digging, councils are flush with all types of budgets to support sport etc.

Hmmm…. There’s a lot of Olympics related money floating around now (diverted from elsewhere) but once that’s gone….

Ignoring the petty cold war bickering the Olympic legacy seems pretty good to me:

Seoul: democracy

Barcelona: From dreary industrial town to popular tourist destination

Atlanta: Coke paid for a lot of infrastructure and housing.

Sydney: dunno

Athens: unlucky timing and a poor choice based on history rather than economic good sense.

London: my friends visit “Londres” rather than “Angleterre” so if Britain wants to encourage tourism then London was the right choice. The lack of enthusiasm on this thread doesn’t bode well. I Lived in Barcelona in 89/90 and people were extremely enthusiastic about the project and determined to make the games a success.

If we could just find a way of channelling all the moaning and misery and turn it into something positive and useful …

I remember the enthusiasm around the Euro 96 football tournament. The Commonwealth Games in Manchester was well supported. The UK consistently shows huge support for numerous sports & sporting events.

Too many people seem to be writing the Games off as a failure before they’ve even started.

I suspect if the UK was hosting the football World Cup there’d be a different mentality…

I dont think people are writing the games off, I think its just a miserable bunch on here.

If we could just find a way of channelling all the moaning and misery and turn it into something positive and useful …

Agreed. It seems some people enjoy whipping up a form of social hysteria on here and probably further afield. What we really need is everyone concentrating as much energy they put into dividing people and put it into uniting people.

Enjoy the circus, you have no stake in the outcome! 😉

£10 BILLION and counting…

Think what that could have been used for….

This ^

I repeat, it’s obscene. The U.K. is in crisis and quite frankly it’s scandalous that the Olympics are going ahead in this extravagant manner.

angry C_G
(waiting since beginning October for operation)

Papa – there has been and will continue to be large cuts in funding for grassroots sport as to pay for the olympics.

reduced participation will be the result as well as a loss of facilities such as eastway

Absolutely untrue.
When Eastway closed as part of the Olympic development, the South East rep from British Cycling turned up at our local club with some serious cash to fund racing and participation at grass roots level. With the money we bought some bikes and trained some coaches to BC Level 2 and we now have a thriving and growing junior club. As a result of bringing the kids along we also have parents coming out on club rides which run at the same time. These are people who in some cases have never ridden a bike before. For what was a small club, since Olympic money turned up we have grown to over 250 members.

I know we are not the only club to have benefited from this as well. e.g Victory, Darenth, San Fairy Ann

Also Olympic money from BC has helped fund this:

http://www.cyclopark.com/%5D

Even so, cycling in the South East has had a fraction of the money spent on it than has been spent in just the Scottish boarders. The whole of bedgebury for example was built with £1.5 million including visitor centre where Glentress has just had what was it £6 million for the Peel centre and £800k for a track linking the car park to Peebles.

So when those away from the South East complain about the investment in facilities for the Olympics, please remember that sporting facilities in the SE generally were pretty rubbish and way below what can be found in other areas of the country, especially Manchester and Edinburgh.

Also finding it ironic that those who are complaining about spending cuts – yes TJ I’m talking to you – begrudge the jobs created by building and running the facilities which has made a huge difference in a very deprived area. Not all of London and the South East is wealthy you know…

Agreed. It seems some people enjoy whipping up a form of social hysteria on here and probably further afield. What we really need is everyone concentrating as much energy they put into dividing people and put it into uniting people.

If people just meekly accept everything with ‘yay everything is great and nothing can ever be criticised’ – then things will never improve.

Here’s some other views to yours on cycling boriselbrus

The general feeling of the meeting was one of anger at the Olympic Park Legacy Company scheme and a real sense of betrayal by the OPLC.

Many people left the meeting sad and angry.

http://ukcyclesport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3669:olympic-velo-park-betrayal-in-the-air&catid=82:latest-news&Itemid=82

‘yay everything is great and nothing can ever be criticised’

You demonstrate my point.

Howso?

BTW I do plenty that’s positive and useful in my work – and I see a lot of it being cut while massive sums are lashed on short-term projects related to the Olympics with highly questionable benefits.

‘Hey everything’s fine, chill out man’ isn’t really a very helpful attitude.

You stick with what you like then grum. 🙂

I never fail to be amazed at all the negativity surrounding the olympics in general and 2012 in particular

For my liking there are far too many media types whipping up a frenzy of negativity and I can’t help thinking it because they are missing out on an all expenses paid working trip to some far off part of the world like the normally get every 4 yours

Roll on 2 dates in June & July…

19 June … The torch comes to where I live, I have a day booked off work am really excited about it

27 July … Opening Ceramony and the start of 2 weeks off work to coincide with everything

I saw the World Cup in 66, Le Tour in London and now complete the hat trick in 2012 of seeing the Worlds Greatest Sports events right here in my own country

FANTASTIC !!

Borelsubus – try telling that to all the sporting bodies who have lost funding as a result of the diversion of funds into the olympics. Hundreds of millions of pounds.

a small amount has been returned in initiatives like you say but the deficit is huge with for example 160 million gone from school sports funding

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/front_page/9111865.stm

Where has all the ‘spent’ money gone? Presumably it was spent somewhere.. I’m guessing in the UK economy?

TJ a lot of that money lost is being replaced with lottery funding, but what strikes me is the plethora of bodies managing sport in the UK, looking at that report one body alone had halved its overhead by £8 million, it seems that yet again management and the rest of it is where the money is going.

No sancho – lottery funding to sport is cut as well to pay for this junket

I have no issue with infrastructure projects to create jobs and to improve the infrastructure of the country – however there is going to be no significant positive legacy in terms of facilities, no benefit at all beyond the south east who already get far more than their share of government spending and the cuts in sports funding nationwide will have a huge negative effect.

“lottery funding to sport is cut as well to pay for this junket2
not according to the article you were linking to TJ.

But so what if there is no legacy for the rest of the UK, it’s the Olympics and it’s in the UK. and that is fantastic.

Do Londoners moan that they dont get Euro development money to build a mountain bike playground in Dalby?

I dont think people are writing the games off, I think its just a miserable bunch on here

We are hardly miserable just realistic in these money challenged times, everything is over budget, and going to be used for a few weeks then be sold to the lowest bidder, cam and boris,s freinds probably.

Wait until its over and the bills come in and we all have to pay them.

realistic?

hardly I would say pessimistic on overdrive reading the comments on here.
And none of the overspend is really going to have any impact on any of us.
Besides it’s a drop in the ocean to compared to the 1 Trillion we have as a national debt.
Or the extra billions we are going to give the IMF in a couple of months