What chance a lasting Olympic legacy?
Peter Hoskin 3:49pm
One of the major factors behind London's successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games was the promise to create a lasting "Olympics legacy" - to rejuvenate some of the poorer areas of London; to get more people participating in sport; to create a set of sporting facilities which will promise future success for British athletes, and so on. But - as the Standard reports today - there are signs that the Government might fail to deliver on (at least some of) that promise.
The figures they've got their hands on show that, whilst London as a whole met the Government's 2002 target to get 85 percent of schools providing their pupils with at least two hours of sporting activity a week, some 15 of the 32 London boroughs didn't. Crucially, many of the Olympic host boroughs - including Greenwich, Tower Hamlets and Hackney - are among those 15. And - Olympics or no Olympics - it doesn't augur well for their ability to meet the Government's latest, more ambitious target to get children doing five hours of sport a week, both in and out of school.
With the London Olympics currently pencilled in as costing £9.3 billion - although some say that figure could rise exponentially - many taxpayers will want to see that the promise of a lasting Olympics legacy isn't an empty one. The more signs that it might be, the less goodwill there'll be towards 2012. There's another story in today's Standard of a London couple who are willing to become "Olympic martyrs" by refusing to pay the £33 tax for funding the Games. I wonder whether anyone else will be joining them over the next four years?
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Aidan
September 3rd, 2008 4:13pm Report this commentSimple answer - none. Never has been. This has only ever been about the ego of certain individuals in the Olympic "movement". Who wants a velodrome in the Lea Valley? It will have been turned into a bingo hall within 18 months, if it's still standing.
I'm convinced that Jacques Chirac's so-called gaffe, when he insulted Finnish cooking on the eve of the Olympic vote, was no gaffe at all but deliberately intended to make sure the games went to London not Paris
Elizabeth Elliot-Pyle
September 3rd, 2008 4:23pm Report this comment"The government might fail to deliver..."
Nothing new there, then.
mac
September 3rd, 2008 4:57pm Report this commentThe arguments over the crude logo and the embarrassing London tableau (Beckham kicking a football etc) in the Bird's Nest stadium doesn't fill one with confidence about the organisers of this expensive shindig. But hey, there's a powerhouse of ministerial involvement we can rely on, including Mesdames Jowell and Hodge. Those two weren't involved with Mandelson in that sublimely organised millennium party, were they? That went well, didn't it, and it left us the legacy of the Dome, too.
Verity
September 3rd, 2008 5:00pm Report this commentExcept the London pair of refuseniks: Ha ha ha ha, suckers! You allowed it!
Hysteria
September 3rd, 2008 5:31pm Report this commentsnag is - it's not going to be this lot who will be in the government - it will be the other lot - who will be struggling with a raft of other issues (from the state of the economy to the resurgence of Russia to name but two).
Gotta hand it to the athletes in Beijing - I just hope the BOC can make it work.
Glad I am not a Londoner
Verty
September 3rd, 2008 5:56pm Report this commentIf Cameron had any guts, which he hasn't, he'd cancel them and sort out Britain's problems without this millstone around London's neck.
Guy Herbert
September 3rd, 2008 8:10pm Report this commentIf you want to know what a 3-week festival of sport can do for a London district, go and have a lookto White City which is just about recovered now from the 1908 Olympics.
In addition to paying taxes for something I don't want, as a Londoner, I'm also going to have to make provision for a holiday of about 2 months somewhere, anywhere, else, to avoid the crowding and the security nonsense. I pity the London tourist/leisure industry which will lose a significant amount of its usual trade that summer, if Athens' suffering is anything to go by. It only makes sense to try to use the Olympics to bring people to a city if they don't go there in big numbers anyway.
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