Be Excellent To Each Other

"Cost worries over Hadid's 'seductive' pool centre were waved aside by Olympic jury"
< http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/1 ... cgames2012 >

I mean, is anyone actually surprised by articles like this?
I wanted Paris to get the Games because I had a general assumption that it would be a welfare scheme for the undeserving rich.

(Still, if anyone involved in the games needs an outside consultant...)

For comparison purposes, the City of Manchester Stadium cost £110 million. The MEN Arena cost £60 million. According to Wikipedia, the Emirates Stadium cost £430 million, although that includes associated infrastructure.

This swimming pool is at £303 million and counting.

We just can't get anything right, can we?

Also: does anyone actually want the Olympics to be hosted here?

And all for two weeks.

Fuck me, I could have a decade long party on that kind of money (I have simple tastes)

No. I didn't want it when I lived in London and I want it even less now I've left.

I deeply resented the additional council tax which they were levying to, in effect, build a new executive commuter belt in Stratford.

Cunts.

Grrrgh.

Can't remember the details but there's a disabled outreach program in Somerset that brings library materials to those stuck at home - the funding plug has been pulled on it now. And it's thanks to the Olympics. I imagine there's hundreds of similar worthy things being ditched for the sake of a bunch of idiots building Millenium Dome sized follies.

For fuck's sake, since when did a country have to spend billions on custom designed 'olympic' buildings huh? How did we get into this state of thinking? Oh yes, special interest groups.

GRAGH.

It's the kind of ego-project that insecure politicians seek. It makes them look important and does not cost them a penny, regardless of the cost to the society. The kind of thing nutty dicators in foreignland do all the time.

Still, at least they're not suggesting a giant tent for a New Year's Eve party or anything

I was lucky enough to be in Manchester for the Commonwealth Games and attend a number of events. What made that event so successful was that Manchester, the city and its people really wanted the Games to be a success. Part of it was that we had had so much negativity (including from the London-based press) about how it would be a disaster, noone cares, low standard of competition etc etc. So everyone went "sod you" and just decided to have a massive, massive party. I remember walking out of the table tennis next to the Singapore competitors with their bronze medals and people were coming up to them, looking at the medals, shaking their hands, making them feel welcome. I remember the COMS just erupting when tiny little Niue scored in the Rugby Sevens and the players on the pitch just looking around, stunned, at the support.

I don't see any of this with the Olympics. It feels like the politicians have imposed it on an unwilling, uncaring populace. To make a successful Games, you have to feel like a special event is happening all over the city, not just in the venues. Manchester realised that a couple of hundred million pairs of eyes were on the place and put its best foot forward. I still look back on that 10 days as one of the most fun, proud things I've ever been involved in.

Incidentally, if the politics is kept out of it, I do think the Beijing Games will be a success for China. They want it so, so desperately to be a success. I know it is hard to ignore the human rights aspect, but if you look past that, in terms of facilities, organisation and sheer will to make it work, there is a determination there that is quite frightening.

Same here. I've not met a single Londoner who ever said they wanted the stupid 'games' there. They could at least have gone for Manchester instead - they did the Commonwealth games only a few years earlier, for one thing. Stupid politicians.

Bollocks to the lot of you.

The olympic games are ace. Some people are not.

I think a lot of people love the games, and a lot of people do not. A lot of good will come of the games, and a lot of people will be rich.

Malc

They're spunking shedloads of our cash on facilities that will be used first to humiliate our "athletes", and which will then become gyms for the welathy fuckers who've moved into all the Olympic village homes the government kindly built for them with our money.

No, they'll become wastelands. I don't think there's a single olympic village from the last 30 years that isn't just a dark empty complex. They're not even used as sports grounds.

The Greek one suffered for being in teh middle of nowhere. The Aussie one has done well though, I believe.

These are going to be smack in the middle of an up and coming area, mate - they'll shift like hotcakes.

Houses in the area may sell, but the stadia will be unused.

Except by the poshoes who move in and want a swimming pool and tennis club. Which, hey presto, will be right on their doorstep. They'll become private health clubs.

(Lots of - may we have 'THESE' dimrill?)

One would have thought that Labour in 1997 (what bliss it was that dawn to be alive) would have splashed millions on redevelopment for the sake of it, rather than for because we've been lumbered with this thing.

My view is that I like watching the Olympics as I get to watch cool sports that are never shown on TV. I would rather the events be financed privately,however, as I have better things for public money to be spent on.

They're spending our money on Doctor Who "alien planet" sets!

I like the Olympics, and am happy that they'll be held over here in London. I don't mind paying a few extra quid for it, and will definitely be looking to get tickets to pretty much anythying, as I think it'll be fun if it isn't overpriced beyond all recognition of sanity (which it probably will be).

C'mon guys... beach volleyball on Horse Guards Parade? That's all kinds of awesome.



I think that closer to the time, or even during the Beijing ones this year, public opinion will sway back towards it. When the decision was announced way back when, almost everyone I met in London was in favour of it. It's only our natural cynicism and the inevitably spiralling costs that seem to have made everyone against it.

£200-odd if you were a Londoner, wasn't it?

Wait - you live in Greenwich! House price ++!

Wait - I'm not rich and as such can't possibly afford a house/flat in Greenwich!

I just think it'd be fun.

And where's the extra 200 quid coming from, out of interest? I don't query the figure, it's just that my council tax apparently went down this year, and went down the previous year too (though that was because I moved boroughs to a cheaper one).

It's not just people in London that don't want it. I get people in my shop asking which scratchcards are the ones that donate money to the Olympics, and then avoid those ones because they don't want to give any money to them.

This has been made more excellent by the release of the Olympic Champions scratchcard. Gotta collect 'em all!

Apparently banners are being banned at Beijing 08 - presumably given all the international TV coverage, they don't want the crowds holding up signs with 'Free Tibet' and the like.

As big as London is, Beijing's in China - it's not a borough near Soho.

Gotta scratch 'em all, surely?

And with respect to the whole, it won't be used, it will just end up as a wealthy man's park. This is untrue. Everyone who is being rehoused will be there, whether they then sell their house is up to them. A significant portion of all houising built will be "affordable housing" (I can find out the figures if you want) and this will be council flats, part ownership, housing agencies, etc. Obviously the house prices will increase, because a lot of the area is shit ATM, it will be a lot nicer when they have finished, so prices will go up.
A lot of the money spent is being spent to ensure the things listed above don't occur.

On the other hand, I completely agree with the apparently wasteful spending on "silly" things like a solid gold diving board, or whatever the fuck was in that pool to make it cost so much. It was the same with Wembley, sadly it is design by comittee, and back handers all round for a lot of these things, but it is not all negative.

They reckoned a fiver a month per person a year or two ago, didn't they? And that was assuming the rate didn't go up.

I can think of at least sixty better ways to spend all that. Buying everyone in the country a delicious cake, for example. No, seriously. Bollocks to watching ugly people sprint about thinking they're a match for a bunch of hoplites - imagine how great it would be if on one day, absolutely everyone in the country had a delicious cake, or whatever equally delicious snack they chose? It'd do far more good than all the fucking infuriating BACK THE BID, DRONES shit ever will.

I think it will be great - for the two week event. And then not so great. After all, a whole load of negative feeling doesn't stop hordes of people turning up - just look at the level of criticism Wimbledon gets, for being a huge cash cow that appears to manage little development of British tennis, for being an elite, smug sport...but still sold out every day, extra tickets just for 'Henman hill' being sold and so on.

For me it has added meaning, as my dad's worked at every olympics since, what, Montreal in 1970, he'll be 67 in 2012 and might just be able to get one last gig - ending on home olympics, and maybe some tickets for me if I'm lucky.

Oh I'm sure it'll be a nice event in the end, but that doesn't stop people not wanting it to happen in the first place.

Here's the issue I have. The Olympics are sort of cool. Sport is awesome (not particularly to me, but it means a lot to a lot people). I get it. I'm against the over-riding negativity towards it and I do think it is worthwhile (albeit being implemented badly).

But when it comes to those old-fashioned recreational pillars of society, I'm more an arts guy that a sports guy.

And did you know that the Edinburgh Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world? That's not even including the Book, Film and International festivals that overlap it. Biggest in the world. The Edinburgh Fringe is to Arts as the Olympics is to sport.

Want to know how much public money is spent on that? £34,000 per year. To put that into perspective, the government have spent as much in the last 18 years on the Fringe as they did on the Olympic logo. Even if you take the lowest initial cost estimates for the Olympics, it's 60,000 times what's spend on the Fringe. And said Scottish festival is twice as long too.
And the Fringe really does need public money. The cost to the punter is ridiculous: accommodation costs ridiculous amounts, the average price of shows is creeping up to around £12 when it should be closer to £6, and even then most of the performers are losing money with only the landlords getting rich. Slowly we're pricing the average person out of the market.

Now I'm biased. Yes, I prefer Arts to Sport. I go to gigs and theatres and watch comedy rather that football matches and cricket. I'm not claiming one is more valid than the other. But sometimes I think we need to wake the fuck up and realise that it's better to capitalise on what you have than start from scratch with what you don't. We have the largest Arts festival in the world. It's already there. And it's annual so all your investment would get re-used every year. And it's dying.

I'm not say "there's better things to spend your money on", I'm saying that if you feel that we, as a country, should be hosting a world-class event that everyone pays attention to then maybe we should just work out the kinks in the one we already have.

Yeah, but the Fringe is full of cunts* though.

I looked at taking a show up there. I worked out that to do it properly would involve us losing the best part of 5 grand.




*Jugglers. Same thing.

Maybe they should think about having it somewhere else then and spread a bit of that wealth around.

Impassioned post about the Edinburgh Fringe, eh? You're the Deano that posts on CaB, aren't you?

Rumbled.

And yeah, losing thousands of pounds is pretty much expected for performers at the Fringe. That's "the norm" as they say. Has anyone yet suggested charging the athletes a grand each to enter the Olympics? It'd certainly sort out the money issues...