Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Mea maxima culpa
Well, once again I was wrong. It turns out that the logistics of the Olympics actually ran pretty well. Even the road fuckery near the village and elsewhere was minimal, apart from a very few fuckups on the Central line, the Tube ran well and everything was pretty slick.
You could niggle about some things, to be fair: the insane costs, the fact that volunteers were doing all the work despite the vast sums of sponsorship, the army acting as security guards, the insanely political opening and the insane closing; but the games have been and gone and all my fears about the unmitigated disaster it was going to be turned out to be pretty unsubstantiated.
So well done to all those who made it happen.
Just one question: why isn't it always like this?
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6 comments:
I'm as surprised as you that we've been denied the opportunity to point and say "I told you so!" - maybe we've just become accustomed to everything turning into a monumental clusterfuck.
I'd almost say that this should be adopted as the way to do things from now on - but when even a successful project comes in at least three times the cost of the estimates then we'd just be further up shit creek, sans paddle, wouldn't we?
I don't care if it ran like a Swiss fucking watch, 20 billion sovs for Sports Day is a disgrace.
On a slight tangent, am I the only person who thought the G4S debacle, and the sudden appearance of thousands of extra troops at the Games was a bit odd?
I'm perfectly prepared to believe that G4S are a bunch of chancers who took on more than they could chew, but really? To get a month or so before the largest logistical event for decades and suddenly announce you are thousands of bodies short of your target? And then for the Army to rustle up several thousand troops out of the blue at a moments notice?
It occurs to me that IF there was a credible security threat to the Games, that required a serious security response, there was no way the government could just announce 'Don't worry, but we've got a good idea some of the usual suspects are going to try and blow you all up while watching the run-and-jump-athon. We'll send in lots of troops, and we're sure it'll be all OK'. It would have created panic, no-one would have gone near the Games, the whole thing would have taken place to empty arenas. The only way such a sudden escalation of the security could be pulled off was if someone (step forward G4S) took one for the team, and needed 'rescuing' from their own incompetence. Thousands of extra troops on the streets, terrorists get a very public demonstration that they are rumbled, but Joe Public thinks its all Nick Buckles fault.
Or is my tin foil hat on a bit too tight and I'm losing blood flow to the brain?
Throw enough money at the problem and even government can deliver.
I get really pissed off at hearing the political scum talking about how it all got delivered so well, when it's cost something over £9bn. The tangible returns on hosting the games are around £1-1.5bn games (tickets, TV rights, useful post-games stadia).
We've spent more, in today's money than Disney spent building Disneyland Paris, and that's something that lasted for decades. While we're going to have a swimming pool for kids, you could have spent £20m building one of those rather than £200m+ on an aquatic centre.
The beauty of the free market is that it's about value. No-one cares if you come up with the perfect product, if the price is too high.
I worked from home (the joy of being a programmer) for most of the two weeks. As a backup I had my motorbike, and worked out a route that didn't involve the olympic lanes.
Most of the people in the office (large one in Canary Wharf) with 'difficult' commutes - like Stratford, Liverpool Street, Canada Water etc.. either took the two weeks off or worked from home for the whole time. The service staff - cooks, vending machine guys, cleaners etc simply shut down. I couldn't get a fucking packet of crisps from a vending machine for two bastard weeks!
If I expand my anecdotal experience to the other businesses around the area, we all avoided it like the fucking plague.
So from my experience, the roads, trains and tube had a FAR lighter 'normal' presence throughout the games.
Obviously helps that the school run wasn't on either - it being summer and all.
Frankly, if they had the full gamut of commuters going in, I think it would have been a shambles..
i'm sure those in charge have already whitewashed everything which shows them in a bad light.
the only fookups that have been aired on the MSM, are those which have involved pointing the finger at someone else.
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