Ministers ignored evidence from their own experts who found scant social or economic justification for bidding for the 2012 Olympics, The Times has learnt.
A 250-page strategy document, signed off in December 2002 by Tony Blair as Prime Minister but selectively distributed, found little support for the claim that the Games would produce significant economic returns or more people playing sport.
The Game Plan document, whose findings are not widely known even in sport’s upper echelons, has emerged as Games chiefs meet today to agree funding cuts for Olympic sports such as basketball and hockey.
UK Sport, the funding agency for lottery cash, has a £79 million shortfall in its £300 million budget because hoped-for private sponsors have been hit by the credit crunch. The existence of the report will strengthen calls for an “Austerity Games” in the image of 1948, when London was last host city, as the recession forces a squeeze on public spending in 2012-13.
This is going to be such a fucking embarrassment of a games. If I wasn't paying for it, I'd be laughing my tits off.
2 comments:
We should cancel the whole fucking charade.
All of the Olympic sports take place every week up and down the cuntry. What's wrong with just using the existing facilities? Quite why the fuck we need to waste billions on all this is fucking stupid. And don't forget the Paralympics shortly after.
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