London’s Olympic Village Is Falling Down
THE credit crunch has knocked a huge hole into the financial bucket the London 2012 Olympic organisers were relying on to keep the games afloat.
There is NO extra cash available for the Olympic Village and a shamefaced Paymaster General and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell may have front up a begging bowl committee crawl to the UK Treasury department to try and tap a £500m grant.
Just who the hell does she think she is …a banker?
Mind you she does have one useful contact, Tessa’s estranged (allegedly) husband David Mills has been known to raise a few bob. A former barrister and wheeler-dealer is our Davids Mills (no relation to {no Lady} Heather Mills); Italian Prime Ministers do not think very highly of him so there’s a plus.
The crisis leak comes not from London but once again Australia, The Age has just published this: “London Olympics organiser may have to tap a government contingency fund for 500 million pounds because they’ve been unable to raise from private sources since the collapse of credit markets.
“The Olympic Delivery Authority and Australian developer Lend Lease haven’t secured bank financing for the £1 billion Olympic Village, a 3,000-apartment complex where athletes will stay during the games, and a £400 million-pound broadcast centre to be built by a group led by Carillion.”
It is extra money probably never publicly declared as being needed for construction… worse..the amount isn’t final. A spokesman for Tessa Jowell,said: “The UK government, the delivery authority and developers are still negotiating with banks over possible funding for the village and broadcast centre.”
The 2012 Olympic Park is Europe’s largest public construction project, with a budget of £9.3 bn, The government is already forking out £95m.for the village so far.
It may very well be this London Olympics (which it has to be said is NOT universally supported by rural MPs) could bankrupt Britain and leave a bill larger than the compounded interest of the 1939-45 National Debt.
Perhaps Germany will give us a sub?
- AGW
Posted: 25th, October 2008 | In: Money, Twitterings Comments (22) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
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October 27th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
It would take a protest from the People if the Government go ahead. Tessa Jowell
seems to think money should be made available to carry on with the development
on the grounds it would keep people in work……..think how many small Businesses
could keep their employees in work manufacturing instead.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
why can’t we just cancel it…?
October 26th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I gather Chelsea turned their toes up for the first time in 4 years.
Not that you are gloating or anything like that…
October 26th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
The advice is duly noted. I’m truly grateful you brought up the subject of Blue. Being a Liverpool fan it gives me great pleasure to here the word Blue. One Nil One Nil One Nil One Nil………sorry got a bit carried away there…….
October 26th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I wish I could do tekkie things; we could match that picture of Sarkozy laughing his head off at Brown to the soundtrack and have the perfect aural caption.
However, do avoid spending too much time reading the political pages; I worry that you may end up as a Norwegian Blue if your blood pressure goes too high…
October 26th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
If you can find one of those with the bird laughing and rolling around on the floor on it’s back with it’s legs in the air then yes spot on.
October 26th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I thought it was you after you’d heard the latest explanations from the politicians…
October 26th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
October 26th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Lone Pigeon in disguise…
October 26th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Athens asked Sydney to help out.
The Australian response was a classic:
See: You What?
October 26th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Yes; it would be accurate to describe it as a catastrophe.
But there is an unwillingness in the media to accept that the entire house of cards has fallen; people are having trouble grasping that it was all an illusion, the biggest Ponzi fraud of all time.
So I anticipate a lot of fuss over the Olympics; perhaps we could start a petition on the Number 10 website for a sensible solution like giving it back to Beijing…
October 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
chenier
To be honest, there wasn”t much enthusiasm among the populace for hosting the Games in Britain , it”s been a loss leader for most Countries and only London showed
any enthusiasm. It”s not just the cost of Building and developing the Railway, who can afford to cross the World to attend.?
Why don”t we suggest the Games are suspended, they were during the War and you could class what”s happening now as a catastrophe.
October 26th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I agree whole heartedly, Val.
The Chinese prime minister is due to attend the Group of Twenty meeting on the 15th November; Gordon could corner him then and beg him to do his bit for Britain…
October 26th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
The theory is that it will take at least two years (providing there are n o more skeletons
in the financial cupboard) for the Economy to pick up, why doesn”t common
sense prevail and GB ask China to host the games again? Don”t let pride get in the
way, which is more important, helping people financially to hang on to heir homes and
jobs…or financing the Games?
October 26th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Blair started with the decision about the Dome and finished with the decision about the Olympics.
And the nation stood back and did not try to stop him.
One can only hope that all those socialist and Nu Labur supporters who voted for him for all those years get hit financially, and begin to realise what that disastrous government did, and has done and is doing to the country.,
October 26th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Sounds like an excellent plan, which means that there’s no chance of anyone adopting it…
October 25th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Added to that they can run walk and cycle to get here, so there!!
October 25th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
chenier Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
They did?
We can’t fit half a million people into the site, thank the Lord; my big worry is that they will simply order all the Barbican residents to move out for the duration and billet the athletes in our homes.
There are only 2000 apartments here, but blow-up mattresses aren’t that expensive…
****************************
It maybe time to make a stand on the environmental impact and prove to the world that less is more. The games are about the human spirit not massively expensive showpieces.
A giant tent village, a few hundred recycleable candles, the teams could bring sandwiches and bottled water with them ! Think along the lines of a major international scout jamboree!
What does it take to run a race anyway ? a football pitch size piece of short turf !!
October 25th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
They did?
We can’t fit half a million people into the site, thank the Lord; my big worry is that they will simply order all the Barbican residents to move out for the duration and billet the athletes in our homes.
There are only 2000 apartments here, but blow-up mattresses aren’t that expensive…
October 25th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
And china make my point in a certain way. Their opening ceremony was mainly manual labour. I’m not sure how much they spent on the opening ceremony but even I know that it doesn’t cost that amount of money to get half a million people to hold a card up and turn it every so often to create what has been one of the most amazing visual human efforts spectacles aver produced in the last god knows how long
October 25th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Because the belief in the power of laisser faire markets was much closer to religious fervour than reasoned thought; these people are Maggie Thatchers spiritual stepchildren, not rational human beings.
Tessa Jowell isn’t going to make much difference, which is just as well; Gordon Brown is capable of chopping her off at the ankles, and will if she doesn’t come up with something. The bigger question is whether we should simply regard the £95 million as a write off and tell the Olympics to go elsewhere.
China is flexing its financial muscle; it would probably agree to hold the 2012 Olympics there as well…
October 25th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Poor ol Britain. The timing wasn’t right. However it’s this thing again ingrained in us all. It’s like the need to actually buy a house rather than rent. There’s this thing in us Brits which make us act irrationally. I tend to look at it as a romantic thing but that really doesn’t get you anywhere but where is anywhere anyway? Why does the heart rule the brain with us lot? Is it pride or is it insecurity? After all we are a tiny island, albeit a great one. Just because it’s the Olympics does that really mean we have to be bigger and better than anyone else? No. The problem with wanting to be bigger and better than anyone else is that it takes it all away from all the sportsmen and women that have trained all their lives to be at the peak for the once in a lifetime event. It’s the taking part that counts. If the Olmpics took part on the local village green but the competition between the athletes was good and fair it wouldn’t matter and nor should it now. Why bankrupt the country to save a politicians face because that is exactly what is happening. They’re all the same. They will lie, cheat and basically do anything to try and look good at any cost. It’s insane and in reality the more you try to look good at something we all know that everyone else knows you tend to end up looking completely the opposite and this is where it brings me back to the heart and brains. If these people are so well educated and clever enough to be in charge of running a country how the hell don’ t they realise the error of their ways??