What Price Olympic Gold?

The nations are riding high on the success of our Beijing cycling team. We've swum against the tide and clinched medals at the Water Cube. The media has captured the public's admiration and adulation. But success comes at a price. Should so much of the public's cash have been channelled into Olympic success and how much more will we have to cough up for London 2012?

In cycling and elsewhere, the cash comes, not from sponsorship, but from Lottery funding. That's our National Lottery cash. It's been directed into the Olympics by the government, to deliberately target the medals table, where we have a chance of striking gold.

Millions of pounds have been spent on equipment, training and facilities. But would there be a better use for the cash? And who authorised this dramatic switch of lottery funding away from grass-roots sports, community and arts projects, to target the big Olympic events in the run up to Beijing? 

Where is the like-for-like business funding, which should be a feature of big sport? 

After Beijing, all eyes will be on London 2012 and we'll have to avoid a let down there. 

So the use of lottery cash will expand even further - and then, the bog standard community playgrounds, swimming pools and sporting facilities will have to play second fiddle to the big prize. And that's already happening.

Some reckon that spending the public's cash on the Olympics is a winner.

But after all the triumph and success of Beijing dies down and London looms - it will be at the cost of the small sporting projects up and down the country. Those, and the arts and very worthy community based social projects will suffer. Maybe that's the price we are prepared to pay for Olympic gold. 

Former conservative prime minister, Sir John Major, told the BBC today he believes "all political parties should back guaranteed long-term National Lottery funding for grass-roots sports, from where the Olympic stars of the future would come."

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Why Beijing Can Stuff Its Olympics

Peering through the pea-souper for today's opening ceremony at the Bird's Nest stadium, it's hard to see the sport for the politics and the poverty, as the Olympics gets underway in Beijing.

The games of shame, is the biggest act of political propaganda since Hitler highjacked the Olympics in 1936.

Bush is there for today's opening ceremony. Brown is due there and an army of freeloaders, outnumbering Team GB by two-to-one. All sucking up to the Chinese authorities. 

Unlike Bush, Brown sees China as an economic magic bullet. 

Brown needs the huge flood of cheap Chinese imports to artificially keep down the cost of living and create the false feel-good factor which has been the hallmark of his economy, And he needs China's cash to invest in our banks and industry. 

The result is cheap and throw-away products, workers forced to churn them out in appalling conditions, real poverty, massive industrial pollution and the decimation of the UK manufacturing industry.

China is happy to oblige and demolish people's homes while the country disappears in a thick blanket of industrial pollution.

Big profits and global corporate sponsorship are at the heart of the Olympics - all orchestrated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post is in no doubt what this Olympics is really all about: 

"It's about 12 major corporations and their panting ambitions to tap into China's 1.3 billion consumers. The International Olympic Committee is nothing more than a puppet for its corporate partners, without whom there would be no Games. These major sponsors pay the IOC's bills for staging the Olympics to the tune of $7 billion per cycle"

The robotic display at the opening ceremony ignores the thousands driven out of their homes to make way for the Olympic spectacle and a state police keeping the population under the oppressive rule of the regime.

The appalling human rights record and oppression in Tibet, is highlighted only by a few brave protesters.

The Beijing Olympics costs China an estimated £33 billion to stage. A small price for the authorities to pay for propaganda, to mark the emergence of China as a world player. 

In four years time, it's set to happen all over again, in London. But the UK cannot afford such extravagance and enormous security costs. London 2012, is set to become a crippling, financial disaster. Lessons should be learnt from Beijing - but probably will be ignored. 

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Switch The Games To Athens And Save Us A Fortune

Poor Athens. They spent billions on their Olympics, nearly bankrupting the country and are left with a huge financial mess and a swathe of derelict and decaying buildings. And for a what? A few weeks of fame back in 2004. It's an ominous sign of the financial disaster ahead. Give Athens and this country a break, switch London 2012 to Athens and save us a fortune. 

Athens spent more than £9 billion staging their Olympics, slightly less than the current official estimate (and rising) for the 2012 London Games. And what's there to show for it now? An ominous forewarning of what's to come after London 2012.

The London Olympics will be one of the biggest financial disasters in the world. Its shameful legacy and financial repercussions will be there long after the the last team has flown home with their medals.

This may create national pride and regenerate the area. But at what cost? If we want homes, sports facilities and transport links, why not just build them? Well, no. That would place them on New Labour's public spending balance sheet. And there's an awful lot of money to be made out of the London Olympics.

The true London Olympic cost has been full of deceit and spin since the beginning. The original bid put the cost at around £4 billion. This was later admitted to be just a number plucked out of thin air to secure the bid. Nothing like the true cost which no one can yet put a figure on. Officially it's around £9 billion but unofficially around £14 billion. And there's still four years to go. 

It's already proving to be huge drain on regional sports grants, a lottery tax con and soon the workforce will be heading back to Poland. And we haven't yet started building!

So why not just scrap the whole thing. Tell the International Olympic Committee (IOC) we don't want to play the game anymore and offer to put a few billion pounds into Athens to stage the Games there again and put all those wasted buildings and facilities back to good use.

It's remarkable that you could give a few billion pounds to Athens and that's still peanuts compared to the cost of the London Olympic fiasco. 

We can still build the sports facilities. transport links and the houses and regenerate the East End. After all, we are told the groundwork is already being done.

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