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Saturday, February 24, 2007

Oops, There Goes Another Five Billion

Eons ago - back in November 2006 - I wrote:

Perhaps London wasn't such a great idea for the 2012 Olympic Games. Tessa has told MPs today that the cost of the Olympic Park alone has gone up from nearly £2.4bn to £3.3bn... a rise of £900m, or about 40%. If you take the % rise in infrastructure cost and extrapolate that % increase to June 2012, you get the figure of £10.2bn. I can assure everyone in Hackney that this is a malicious slur on our government and no such ridiculous inflation will occur while Labour remains in power.

According to a scurrilous story being put about by Mihir Bose at the BBC this morning, Tessa is now discussing a price of £9bn, with construction costs rising to £3.3bn, £2bn contingency, regeneration costs of £1.8bn, a £1bn VAT bill and security costs of at least £900m.

Olympic costs are well under controlNobody should be fooled by this nonsense. The BBC, once a Trotskyite organisation from roof to basement, has now been infiltrated by Tories determined to attack us at every opportunity. Sports Editor Mihir Bose is a classic example, coming to the BBC after 12 years writing for The Torygraph. Enough said! We obviously can't expect any unbiased reporting from her.

If the figures being put about by Bose were true, then a full projection of costs to 2012 would put the final bill at £62,334,508,760 - twice the national defence budget, three times the housing and environment budget and very nearly as much as we spend on education, education, education.

I can only repeat what I said before - that this is a malicious slur on our government and no such ridiculous inflation will occur while Labour remains in power.

4 comments:

Clear Hardly said...

Luke – the obvious saving to be made is the escalating costs of decontaminating the land on the Olympic site. It’ll be far cheaper to issue white overalls and gas masks to competitors and punters alike. And then the LDA, as a green and pleasant landlord, can sell the kit on (at part-worn prices of course)to the tenants when they move into their new homes in the athletes village after the 6 week Olympic event.

Anonymous said...

Look on the bright side, please! Me thinks the Paralympic events will be well subscribed.

Luke Akehurst said...

That was in very bad taste. I'm sure that Sally and Guy between them will do a splendid job making sure that we are ready to host a great Paralympics.

Anonymous said...

Sally and Guy? They would be for the Special Olympics, surely?