I read the other day that "security costs" for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, "first estimated at $165 million, are now headed towards $1 billion". This is just the latest instance of a long list of initial budgets bearing witness to the art of accountancy and bearing NO RELATION WHATSOVER to the final cost. To take just one other example:
July 2005: London, with a £2.4bn budget, pips hot favourite Paris to the 2012 Games
November 2006: The Secretary of State for Sport, Tessa Jowell, admits that the cost has risen to £3.3 bn
March 2007: Jowell announces a revised budget of £9.3 bn
October 2008 Steve Norris, London Development Agency board member and confidant of Boris Johnson, predicts the final bill will come to £19bn
January 2009 Government raids its contingency fund to bail out the International Broadcasting Centre and athletes' village, both hit by the collapse of private-sector funding
July 2009 It emerges that ODA chief executive David Higgins got a £200,000 bonus on top of his £384,000 basic salary
And this is just one reason why I for one never wanted us to host the Olympics, national pride be blowed!
ReplyDeleteBut of course it's not just Olympic budgets which resemble the best in fairy tales. I wish I could remember the exact figures, but I think you will find the Scottish Parliament building doubled, trebled, quadrupled, upled and upled away ...........
I wouldn't mind so much if we weren't paying for it all!!
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