£9b wasted on The Olympics....

[cinemagoer]

Yet our damn useless govt pulled the money for the new BFI.
I know that the money was pulled a few years ago.

To waste so much money at Stratford etc is totally obscene.

[Arfur Teacake]

Well you had better take it up with Tony Blair he pushed it through, and Tessa Jowell, she has been running the show since 2005, at the time she said it would be 3 billion.

But I think we can only complain about it when its over and seen what the overal effect has been.

[Mark O]

If we didn't 'waste' it on the Olympics we'd only be handing it over to Brussels instead, along with all the other billions we give to the EU on a silver platter.

[Moor Larkin]

The *officlal* pages seem to suggest a total of approaching only £6,000,000,000, with about £1b of that coming directly from the GLA; as Londoners will get the bulk of the post Games benefits, that seems quite reasonable of the local authority.
http://www.london2012.com/about-us/funding/

Interestingly though, the central government contribution is unquantified, so presumably that's where the other £3,000,000,000 is coming from. But on the face of it, that is all "government" are contributing. I suppose this is how statistics can be so confusing......

I've no idea who gained financially in the end, but the Millenium Dome seemed to be an utter fiasco at the time, but appears to have found a use nowadays. As to the BFI, I would have thought there are more than enough wealthy movie people to fund it, rather than relying on the tax-payer, most of whom would rather watch Coronation Street than Hitchcock.

[cinemagoer]

Not being a fan of silent films....At least Corrie has sound.

[alan french]

Hi,
As stated on another thread, I am not an Olympic person.

I agree that information enabling a more realistic answer to this thread will be more likely known after the games. But I have my doubts about this event from the start.

I also have an emotion inside me that says that something bad will happen. I hope that I am wrong.

Alan French.

[Steve Crook]

Well you had better take it up with Tony Blair he pushed it through, and Tessa Jowell, she has been running the show since 2005, at the time she said it would be 3 billion.

Yawn, why must you turn everything into an attack on Labour? It's really boring

And I told you before, although Labour were in power when it started, the Tories didn't cancel it - and it's been Tory boy Seb Coe in charge since the planning stage. So you shouldn't be too quick to blame it on Labour

But I think we can only complain about it when its over and seen what the overal effect has been.

Or you can read the reports that have been issued

Steve

[David Challinor]

Ahhhh Tessa Jowell, the woman who helped kill off analogue and now when I watch any tv there's always a period when the digital pixels are more visible than the action : ( , not to mention the environmental problem the mountain of old tellies being thrown away must have caused....the little robot mascot didn't have much to say about that ... phone interviewed Jowell about health long ago before June 1 1997 - she had no policies , only parroted 'we'll decide when in power'...

shame about the Olympics being seen only in terms of its costs - trouble is, in the current 'why do we need a tv licence' atmosphere, however well the BBC cover it, it'll be taken up by many as too
much coverage, not good enough coverage , too costly, too cheap etc etc.
With Cameron in charge the BBC cannot win...and would be sorely missed if changed by the 'privatise-everything-that-moves' Conservative-led govt

[Moor Larkin]

however well the BBC cover it, it'll be taken up by many as too
much coverage, not good enough coverage , too costly, too cheap etc etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18953267

[Arfur Teacake]

Yawn, why must you turn everything into an attack on Labour? It's really boring

And I told you before, although Labour were in power when it started, the Tories didn't cancel it - and it's been Tory boy Seb Coe in charge since the planning stage. So you shouldn't be too quick to blame it on Labour


Or you can read the reports that have been issued

Steve

How on earth could they have cancelled it? they would have been sued to breakfast time.

The author of the thread implied that the Olympics had been started by this government that is why I replied -AND- you quoted the last part my post which I implied we should judge the Olympics as a waste or not when it has finished,not now...So hardly an attack on the Labour Gov

Whether Seb Coe is a Tory or not, I am appauled as the next man the way Multi national corporations have been allowed to dictate their wants, when the biggest shareholder ie, us should be big enough and proud enough to call the shots.

[CaptainWaggett]

Yawn, why must you turn everything into an attack on Labour? It's really boring

And I told you before, although Labour were in power when it started, the Tories didn't cancel it - and it's been Tory boy Seb Coe in charge since the planning stage. So you shouldn't be too quick to blame it on Labour


Or you can read the reports that have been issued

Steve

What Arfur is, I believe saying, is that it would have been better if Labour had been as rubbish at Olympic bids as the Tories were Not sure what it has to do with British films though

[Steve Crook]

How on earth could they have cancelled it? they would have been sued to breakfast time.

The Olympics have been cancelled before. That's usually how the British get it, when nobody else wants it or can afford it

Steve

[Steve Crook]

What Arfur is, I believe saying, is that it would have been better if Labour had been as rubbish at Olympic bids as the Tories were Not sure what it has to do with British films though

If only that was the case. Really it's that he can never make 5 posts without 4 of them having a dig at Labour. He still thinks that party politics is important, bless his innocence

Steve

[Moor Larkin]

What Arfur is, I believe saying, is that it would have been better if Labour had been as rubbish at Olympic bids as the Tories were

It would certainly have made moor sense for the BBC if the events had been taking place nearer Salford.....

As to the Tory obsession with oop north - Guilty conscience I suppose....
wikileeks
Plans to build a new stadium in Manchester were formulated before 1989 as part of the city's bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics. Manchester City Council submitted a bid that included a design for an 80,000-capacity stadium on a greenfield site in west Manchester. The bid failed and Atlanta hosted the Games. Four years later the city council bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics, but this time focusing on a brownfield site 1.6 kilometres (0.99 mi) east of the city centre on derelict land that was the site of Bradford Colliery, known colloquially as Eastlands.

[Mark O]

shame about the Olympics being seen only in terms of its costs

That's how I feel David, it can be afforded and it is being afforded, 'deficit?.........what deficit?' to slightly misquote a former Primeminister's saying.


It's no good anyone saying the money could have been spent on this, that, and the other, it wouldn't have been..

I'm sure even non-sport fans will being fascinated by the upcoming opening ceremony on friday evening, I'll be glued to the TV screen, I'm a little unsure about the participation of livestock, but I've read they'll be removed before any loud noises commence so I guess that's alright then,

[CaptainWaggett]

And to get this back to British films, the proposed move of the BFI from the South Bank to Kings Cross was a really terrible idea anyway and I'm glad it didn't come to anything.

[cinemagoer]

Have no fear the new BFI is going to happen.

[CaptainWaggett]

Have no fear the new BFI is going to happen.

Things have changed since your first post? I still don't get the connection with the Olympics though

[Rick C]

The excellent Jonathan Friedland and his riveting Past and Present radio series The Long View throws parallels between this years' gymnastic indulgence in London and one of the previous London hostings in this weeks radio broadcast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ew_23_07_2012/

Mr. Friedland is careful to avoid the accusation of corporate greed and self-importance which arguably has increased on each four-year re-appearance. I do hope i can make things easier for him.

Thinking laterally, you know, the Olympic Festival, which is all it is really nowadays, doesn't promote the idealism of fitness for its healthy properties but the idea of fitness as an ideal which turns out surprisingly only can be attained by people in or requiring power. Does the original film "Rollerball" ring a bell, anyone?

when this transformation came about is difficult to pinpoint accurately. Mr. Friedlands broadcast tries to take into account the happenstance as an early occurrence but in OUR living memory I think the Munich showed how much the occasion could be subjugated quite instantly. The Kon Ochikawa recording of Mexico was, I think, the last of the old days to us anyway.

The idea of a Travelling Circus every four years is IMHO a nice idea but not a logical formula. The Games should have remained in Greece and with people travelling there would have found a good homeland. I mean, do we have a Travelling Lourdes or a Travelling Mecca, even?

(Hope I've got enough headlines to make the GoogleSearch Top 100

[Moor Larkin]

According to the radio just now, a guy has just mentioned that the relatively tiny UK intervention in Libya last year cost around £3billion. I dread to imagine what the Labourite crusade in Iraq and Afghanistan had cost us over the previous decade and I don't imagine we will ever know, but I'm convinced that the current financial crisis that has emanated largely due to the collapsed financing systems of the USA and the UK was no coincidence.

Not sure where this leaves the relocation of the BFI however.................