Issue 154

Waterfront Debate: Against The Olympics

12th March 2007

On July 6 2005 London experienced mass hysteria when the winner of the 2012 Olympic bid was announced. The UK had won it in a two way fight with the French - 54 votes to 50. Initially everyone was optimistic and saw the Olympics as an opportunity the UK would literally be insane to miss.

But now, with five years until the opening ceremony - the initial optimism is slowly being revealed to have been excessive and unrealistic.

The overall cost for London to host the 2012 Olympics was estimated at £3.4 billion back in July 2005. Nearly two years later, and the Government has been proven to have grossly underestimated. After an unexpected VAT bill from the EU, increased security plans after the London underground bombings merely a day after the bid was announced, and plans for a costly contingency plan, the overall cost of the 2012 Olympic Games has reached a staggering £9 billion, according to recent figures. Considering the Olympics will last for just two weeks in the summer of 2012, this figure is more than extravagant.

The question is, who will be footing this huge bill? None other than tax payers and Londoners, who have recently seen a steep rise in their council tax. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has always maintained that the games would be costing Londoners just 38p a week - the cost of a walnut whip.

But according to a recent survey conducted by the BBC almost 79% of Londoners think they'll be paying a lot more than that; unwilling, it seems, to share a weekly whole pack of walnut whips with Ken Livingstone, rather than just the one. One can hardly blame them.

This ridiculous sum of money is being spent to completely refurbish 250 hectares of brownfield land in London with a state of the art Olympic Stadium and surrounding athletic and sporting facilities. The government also aims to create 9,000 new homes in this once derelict area of South London. However, in order to create these 9,000 new homes old housing and businesses unlucky enough to live in that area have been forced to move out by the end of this year.

Tracy Giles, a gypsy who has lived in Stratford with her family for more than 40 years, recently lost a court case with the Olympic organisers and now her community faces eviction.

"To think something like the Olympics can come along and force people out of their homes - something that's going to take place for two weeks!" And it's not just Londoners that are suffering with the cost of the 2012 Olympics.

Thousands of community projects in Scotland aimed at helping the homeless and other worthy causes are facing collapse due to the rising cost of the games.

Transport in London also looks to suffer. The plans are far too optimistic and according to MPs, and are dependant on 600,000 Londoners fleeing the capital during the games. Londoners should be ready for delays aplenty and London transport in lockdown mode.

But it's all worth it, right? The Olympics will bring tourism, economic and social benefits for the whole country. Sadly, no.

Perhaps for those two weeks in July, but then what? What happens to an Olympic village, once the Olympics are over? What happened to the Millennium Dome once the hype of the millennium was over?

Admittedly, it's a little different - the village has a lot more potential to be kept open and reused in the future. But I can hardly see it making up the amount of money it cost to create - money that might have been better spent on our ailing health service, badly funded schools and the pensions crisis. Whereas the Olympics have an apparently inexhaustible governmental cheque book (while the NHS is forced to budget) when there are old people who can't afford to keep their homes warm in the winter. Who's going to foot the gas bill for keeping that Olympic torch lit for two weeks? This is just another example of Tony Blair itching to get his name into the history books to secure his legacy.

Nia Probert