London’s Olympic dream in tatters
Hold up!
See that little date above?
This post was published years ago.
My opinions have changed over time: I think it's quite fun to keep old posts online so that you can see how that has happened. The downside is that there are posts on this site that express views that I now find offensive, or use language in ways I'd never dream of using it today.
I don't believe in airbrushing history, but I do believe that it's important to acknowledge the obvious: some of what I've written in the past has been crap. Some of it was offensive. Some of it was offensively bad. And there's may be some brass among the muck (you can make up your own mind on that).
Some of what I've presented as my own views has been me—wittingly or unwittingly—posturing without having considered all the facts. In a few years, I'll probably think the same about what I'm writing today, and I'm fine with that. Things change. People grow. Society moves forward.
The internet moves on too, which means there might be broken links or embedded content that fails to load. If you're unlucky, that might mean that this post makes no sense at all.
So please consider yourself duly warned: this post is an historical artefact. It's not an exposition of my current views nor a piece of 'content' than necessarily 'works'.
You may now read on... and in most cases, the post you're about to read is considerably shorter than this warning box, so brace for disappointment.
The Observer is particularly upbeat this morning:
London has in effect abandoned hope of winning the 2012 Olympic Games, because it is so far behind Paris, key members of the bidding team have told The Observer.
Did anyone ever think that we had a chance of seeing the Olympic Games in London? It was never terribly likely, and I’m not sure that the bid had a great deal of public support anyway, particularly from those who live further north than Coventry, since it just seemed like (yet again) vast amounts of money would be spent on an event in London, while the rest of the country would be pretty much left out.
I realise that the idea was to ship some of the stadia around the country after the event, and that the bid was supposed to reflect benefits for the whole country, but people are never going to see that in a London-centric event. The whole country got behind the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in a way that could never happen with a London-based sporting event.
Of course, if all of this speculation is wrong and Mike Lee (London 2012’s director of communications) is right, then I could end up looking very silly:
Not only is this an open race with everything to play for, but there are also five months to go before the vote. The mood is upbeat and confident. We have received extremely positive feedback on our proposals, and on the details of our candidate file, which we submitted in November.
I’m fairly sure that we won’t win. But I am willing to be proved wrong.
This post was filed under: News and Comment.
