The emerging debacle of the escalating costs of the Games are providing the most disingenuous twists of logic and language. Ken Livingstone now states that the rising costs are not associated with the Games but with the ‘Legacy’, as if it were a leech that had insinuated itself into the proceedings. ‘Legacy’, we were told when the bid was successful, was one of the reasons which helped win. ‘Legacy’ was all about regeneration of an area typified as a black hole, despite it housing over 250 businesses, housing low-wage families and individuals and having a significant urban wildlife associated with the waterways and derelict land.

The regeneration of the Lower Lea was being planned before the Olympic bid reared its head publicly. Initially the regeneration proposals were going to be made public at the same time as those of the bid, but were then withheld and are now promised in a year or two.

Regeneration of the area is now being discussed as if it were some bright new idea which is going to cost a bit. It is clearly a poor smokescreen to attempt to justify the rising costs. ‘Efficient’ planning would have taken into account how the land was to be used after the short-lived games. The plethora of ‘consultation’ exercises (how much have they cost?) have been telling us so. Housing, or rather ‘new communities’ were part of the original proposals as was a new park, doubling the area of accessible green space.

The reality is that hosting the games is an unknown quantity. The overly-ambitious plans (more a result of not anticipating a win?) are located in an area where there are huge infrastructural problems in terms of development alone:

1. The land has a long history of contamination by the various noxious industries that were moved out of the city.
2. Much of the land is made up of landfill and World War 2 rubble. What it contains is anyone’s guess.
3. One thing it does contain is Japanese Knotweed – the costs of treatment are currently estimated at £70 million.
4. There are two major sewage works affecting the area – Deephams and Abbey Mills – both of which have been regularly responsible for excreting sewage into the waterways.
5. The River Lea catchment drains a large part of east London and is the major flood relief system. Part of the Olympic proposals include impounding the river – in a flood plain??!
6. The Greenway (northern outfall sewer embankment), which carries London’s sewage out east, runs right through the site and is proposed to carry one of the major avenues into the Olympic precinct. One dare not contemplate a breach of the Victorian construction.
7. Then there is the undergrounding of the pylons...

Sorting out these issues alone is the stuff of nightmares. As for security, it was known well before the July bombings that this would be substantial.

Tests are currently being undertaken on this land. Surely this is something that should have preceeded the bid in order to ascertain and present realistic (and honest) costs to the public (who were never consulted on whether we should bid or not).

The public purse in many guises is funding all this. Will there be a refund after all the land is sold and luxury housing erected on some of the last vestiges of a wilder landscape close to central London? Forget local communities and key workers – that land will cost a mint or two - and developers, should they take the bait, will need to recoup a large amount of money and it will fill their pockets.

What will be provided in terms of public open space and the promised park? Parks do not generate the sums that housing will – is yet more public open space to be sold off under our noses? Public open space and access to it is being lost to the games as it is, the worry has been that once developed it will stay that way. On the present showing this is likely to be the case.

These games are a lot more than anyone bargained for – if they are to be delivered on time (and they have to be) let’s hand them over to Paris.