The Culture, Media and Sports Committee has just reported back on a proposed London Olympic bid. The amount of deliberation that’s being made over what is likely to be a relatively small outlay at least initially, seems to be immense.
Anyhow their response seems to be that we shouldn’t go ahead “at any cost”. Well I really doubt that Gordon Brown would have quite gone down that route.
The costs of the Olympics can very nearly be covered by sponsorship and other revenues. Then there are grants from the EU payable for renovating a deprived area – and we are talking about one of the most deprived areas in the UK.
The cabinet meeting is next week, but if the fourth largest economy in the world can’t put on the Olympics then it’s a pretty desperate state of affairs. Madrid and Paris will bid, as well as Moscow and New York. The US has had way too many Olympics recently, and Moscow’s last hosting was in living memory. Spain had Barcelona, so I rekon if we were against Paris, we’d have a fifty-fifty chance. Otherwise, I don’t know when we’d next host a major sporting event.
As for the issue of what to do with an 80,000 seater stadium. I’m sure that a combination of a football stadium for Spurs or a replacement for the decrepit Crystal Palace stadium could do it justice. Very careful planning and it could host many events with removable surfaces and the like. Maybe a roof?