To cheer you up

Does the thought of happy people bring joy to your heart?

Then here's something you'll like.

The big fat builders of London are laughing till their bellies wobble.

They smell money!

As the Ad says "Costing up to £6.5bn the Games will provide work for virtually every sector of the construction industry and its associated services."

Note that £6.5 bn.

They know that Tessa Jowell's only teasing when she says she'll just be throwing around a measly £3.3bn.

No, £6.5bn is what they've got their eyes on - for starters, anyway, before all the extras that are bound to occur when specifications get changed...

Taxpayers should remember that this figure is just for building. There's also going to be a vast security expenditure, and the actual cost of running things. And there will have to be a massive IT project, and you know what they cost...

Still, it will all give a fortnight's pleasure to some egotistical athletes.

So it has to be worth it.

Doesn't it?

Not such a bad idea

An architect is moaning that budget cuts could turn the Olympics into a "plasterboard and tarmac" affair. his view is that big-name architects chould be paid a lot of money to design flashy buildings that would be as memorable as the Millennium Dome or Diana's Fountain.

But plasterboard and tarmac sounds good to me. Why not earmark just a million quid (which is actually a lot of money) and get some local building firms to design some reasonable running tracks, etc? Don't bother about fitting audiences into stadiums - we can all watch it on telly anyway if we want to.

Our local secondary school hosts a very adequate sports day on tracks that cost far less than a million.

"What of Britain's prestige?" you ask."Wont the rest of the world giggle if we reveal ourselves to be cheapskates?"

No.

What could be more prestigious than to say in a holier-than-thou voice that it's all been done with the least waste of the planet's valuable resources?

Let's scatter a few recycled ashes to make a track, hire a tent for the boxing and gym displays and use a local pool for the swimming.

And above all save money by cutting out the architects.

Contamination costs

This article on the decontamination of the Olympic site makes two interesting points:

• It is way behind schedule
• It will cost far more than anticipated
  

Well knock me down with a feather! I'd never have anticipated that!

Andrew Rawnsley makes the most important point

"We could carpet the country with spanking new hospitals or double the aid budget with the sort of money that is going to be blown on just 17 days of Olympics - and still have change to buy back all those school playing fields that have been flogged off."

Gargantuan

"The disaster that was the dome is now being replicated on an even more gargantuan scale on the other side of the Thames."
Andrew Rawnsley describes the current situation (rather moderately, actually) in The Observer.