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Still Want The Olympics?

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23387174-details/Olympics+bill+soars+to+%C2%A310bn/article.do

It seems to me that even if this report is exaggerated to some degree somebody, somewhere told some major porkies about the real cost on the original proposal.
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Comments

  • Nice to see the Standard, still lumping the wider regeneration costs into the Olympic budget
  • "Nice to see the Standard, still lumping the wider regeneration costs into the Olympic budget"


    Yep:

    The main reasons for the rise are:

    • More than £2billion needs to be found to cover the regeneration costs for east London around the Olympic Park. This was not included in the original budget.

    • At least £1billion - more than five times that originally thought - will be needed to cover security costs following the London bombings on 7 July 2005.

    • An extra £750 million for infrastructure costs - originally expected to be met from the private sector - must be included in the public funding budget because it is not possible to secure it in time to start building the Olympic Park in the summer.

    • At least £2.7billion is being demanded as contingency funds to cover any costs overruns.

    Olympics minister Tessa Jowell admitted in November that an extra £900 million was needed to cover construction costs inflation and the increasing price of delivering the project, including a £400 million fee for CLM, the consortium hired to keep costs in check.

    Even if most of the regeneration, security, VAT and contingency costs are covered by the Exchequer, there is still a shortfall of £1.6billion, which has to be found from either the National Lottery or London council tax-payers under the funding deal agreed between Ms Jowell and Ken Livingstone.
  • edited February 2007
    [cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite]Nice to see the Standard, still lumping the wider regeneration costs into the Olympic budget

    Apparently there are £2 billion running costs not included in the £10billion which, it could be argued, effectively cancels out the £2 billion regeneration costs that they have included.

    ....."The £10billion does not include the £2billion required to run the Games, which is the responsibility of the London organising committee. ...."



    Even if you knock it down to £8 billion that's still a hell of a lot more than £2.5 billion, the original projection.
  • £10 billion downside.unlimite upside potential for london beyond our lifetime.
  • Tax-payers in London subsidise the rest of the UK, I have no problem with that being redressed a little and in a run-down working class area to boot.
  • i don't understand why our bloody olympic costs are so god damn high. Australias wasn't.

    Admittedly we got to do a lot from scratch.

    Big up to Red Ken though he insists we London council tax payers won't have to pay more than we already are.
  • I am not swayed by this "regeneration" tag. If it is that important, spend 10 billion quid straight on sorting out the area.

    The money will mostly go into rich people's hands. The area may well rise up in attractiveness and guess who will then be the only ones able to afford to live there? Yup, rich people.

    The Olympic games admittedly hold no interest for me, but from my limited knowledge of how the facilities have been used post-event in other countries it seems like a Millennium Dome-esque "investment" in terms of outlay against benefit. If we want great facilities for future athletes, surely spreading a set of decent standard facilities across the country is a better bet?

    I am simplifying my argument because I have had enough of trying to be level headed about this, I just see pound after pound being chucked at something that 90% of people in my circles seem to have massive disregard for.
  • i'm all for contributing a small part of my taxes to it, even though i will see no direct benefit from it whatsoever. But will the overspend impact on what your london taxpayers will have to contribute ? If the answer is a resounding yes, then i wish we had never got it.

    At the weekend i walked around the old Olympic village of stadiums in Barcelona. It stood near deserted. There were some joggers using the warm-up track, and a kids hockey match going on but that was it. Other things were subject to graffitti and overgrown, and the upkeep of the area must far outweigh any return on the circa. 3 mile region.

    The key thing if we do this is to build buildings and a structure that will last leave a legacy, benefiting young sport participation long-term, far more important than things looking nice on the telly and Barry Davies muttering on about how wonderful everything is.
  • I think the Olympics is being used as the vehicle to get $10bn spent on the area - the government wouldn't spend so much money on the area upfront.

    Whatever, the potential benefits of the games far outweigh any short-term moaning about costs.
  • I can see a lot of potential positives from hosting the olympics although, as with anything, there must come a time when the costs exceed the benefits.

    My concern though is with what must have been either blatant deceit or alternatively crass incompetence in forecasting the costings for this project.

    Nearly all projects go over budget to some degree but surely not 3 or 4 times over?
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  • Quite honestley couldn't give a flying **** about the Olympics. To me just a load of cheats and ultra minority sports.
  • [cite]Posted By: InspectorSands[/cite]
    Whatever, the potential benefits of the games far outweigh any short-term moaning about costs.

    But Inspector, as Len says, there must come a time when the costs will outweigh any benefits. If it is projected to over run so greatly already at this stage of the project, what will happen if over time things continue to spiral further ?
  • edited February 2007
    The regeneration costs have now been added, the security costs are much more of course and crucially a large contingency fund has been allocated. Of course it is important to maintain a balance between costs and benefits and I'm sure that up until the games whoever is in government will be working hard to strike a good balance.
  • [cite]Posted By: Salad Spinner[/cite]I'm sure that up until the games whoever is in government will be working hard

    You have a hell of a lot more faith in our government(s) than I do mate! (churlish I know).
  • edited February 2007
    Whatever their foibles, most politicians these days want to do well for the country, within their own parameters of course - which hopefully we are aware of and use as a basis for deciding who to elect.
  • "At the weekend i walked around the old Olympic village of stadiums in Barcelona. It stood near deserted. There were some joggers using the warm-up track, and a kids hockey match going on but that was it. Other things were subject to graffitti and overgrown, and the upkeep of the area must far outweigh any return on the circa. 3 mile region."


    Barcelona also used the Olympics to re-generate part of the City, did you visit the Olmpic Port area downtown? That area was formerly docks and run-down and is now a thriving tourist area that is still pulling in the punters well over a decade later. In the long-term the Olympics have been beneficial to Barcelona as a City.

    Obviously the less the London Olympics costs the better, but when I see these "cost over-run" articles I suspect that the newspapers in question are using it to push their agenda. The Sub-standard has never been pro-Ken or supportative of Labour and while costs will rise (eg security etc) I think they are exaggerating to make a point.
  • Costs are high, but don't expect to read anything objective in a D*ily M*il group paper.

    About anything.

    Ever.
  • [cite]Posted By: Salad Spinner[/cite]Costs are high, but don't expect to read anything objective in a D*ily M*il group paper.

    About anything.

    Ever.

    I have also heard the £10billion figure on the radio news.
  • How can the figure have been so wildly far off??

    Answer - They wouldn't have sold it to the populace if they had told us the real cost, so they made up so bullshit figure that the new the average Jo Bloggs would accept and are only now telling of these increased costs that weren't foreseen!!

    Who ran the costing committee in the first place? Odds on it was something to do with Ken!! Or wasn't he about cos he was off on a jolly somewhere at the tax payers expense?
  • [cite]Posted By: CharltonDan[/cite]How can the figure have been so wildly far off?
    The regeneration costs have now been added, the security costs are much more of course and crucially a large contingency fund has been allocated.
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  • [cite]Posted By: AFKA Bartram[/cite]
    But Inspector, as Len says, there must come a time when the costs will outweigh any benefits. If it is projected to over run so greatly already at this stage of the project, what will happen if over time things continue to spiral further ?

    I frankly don't believe it's going to get *that* out of control. Press speculation and doom-mongering probably will get out of control, though, because the Standard/Mail like to put things down. But did anyone REALLY expect the Olympics to come cheap?

    For what it's worth, I reckon it is going to be about £10bn - the BBC had £9bn at the weekend - but I'd imagine that includes absolutely EVERYTHING associated with the games, while previous figures have included just the construction/ staging costs (most of which I think comes from sponsorship anyway).
  • They didn't release the budgets for Sydney till 6 months before, Beijing still haven't, yet there's an expectation now to release the London one.

    Security was always going to be lumped up post 7/7, and there are a lot of costs which will come back, I.e. the £750m infrustructure costs will come back in time, and probably more. The land values will also shoot up in the area.

    It wouldn't suprise me if the Standard lumped the transport costs in on top in the next couple of months to further wind it up
  • I am struggling to think of a major project this country has managed to run to schedule, within budget and been of long term benefit to a fair proportion of people within the last 50 years.
  • more importantly, I can't believe people still read newspapers!!!!

    yes I am looking forward to the Olymic's................an injection of national pride is long overdue!!!!!
  • [cite]Posted By: Sco[/cite]I am struggling to think of a major project this country has managed to run to schedule, within budget and been of long term benefit to a fair proportion of people within the last 50 years.

    Terminal 5 is looking good, Emirates weren't bad, Channel Tunnel Rail link is on time for November
  • My extension!
  • [cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite]Terminal 5 is looking good, Emirates weren't bad, Channel Tunnel Rail link is on time for Novembe

    Two are still waiting for completion (and the last has already had its completion date "revised" to Nov I think) so we'll see. The Emerates does not fulfil the latter of my "moon on a stick" requirements!
  • [cite]Posted By: Sco[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: Rothko[/cite]Terminal 5 is looking good, Emirates weren't bad, Channel Tunnel Rail link is on time for Novembe

    Two are still waiting for completion (and the last has already had its completion date "revised" to Nov I think) so we'll see. The Emerates does not fulfil the latter of my "moon on a stick" requirements!

    Was always late 2007, so they've made it, test trains started yesterday I believe.

    As for Moons on stick, they were clean out of them, how about a Star on a string?
  • haha, terminal 5...i've met the baa retail team.....numpties.

    been on site too, they've tested the automatic check in conveyer belts, and the baggage couresels already. loads of suitcases discarded laying around already, and its not even opening till 30th march 2008!!! (at 4am)

    tis an impressive building tho
  • All this Olympics stuff is just spin and counter spin. For example, take this supposed "£1billion extra VAT costs".

    OK, so VAT is going to be charged on building costs etc. Let's assume that nobody can recover that VAT, e.g. whoever is employing all of the contractors is not entitled to do so - maybe because they are a not for profit organisation or something like that. So, where does this VAT go? To the government of course!

    So on the one side you've got an "increase" in costs, and on the other the government gets an extra £1billion in VAT receipts - WHICH CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT. It's the way the VAT system works ffs!!!

    That's why I treat all of these figures being bandied about with a big pinch of salt - you can prove virtually any case you want with statistics - just ask Les Read with his Prozone fetish!

    Of course, if you still want to believe that there is an extra £1billion VAT cost then that's up to you - enjoy reading the rest of your Daily Mail!
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