Following the criticism of his posting about Stratford City (see 2012 Blog**ng Lies and Censorship) Mr Higgins seems to have been alerted to a negative comment from another respondent, dg (see below), who also pointed out the Stratford City was planned before the Olympic Bid was won. So our Dave had another shot at convincing blog readers that Stratford City really is an Olympic gain (see further below). Apart from dg the only other responses came from some very impressionable shopaholics or possibly ODA staff!

Conclusions and Recommendations of the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee Report 22 April 2008

1. Foreseeable requirements for public sector funding were excluded from the estimates at the time of the bid to host the Games, giving an unrealistic picture of the expected costs. Contrary to good practice, the Department [of Culture Media and Sport] did not include programme contingency, now £2.7 billion, because the scale and complexity of the undertaking were not appreciated at the time of the bid. The costs of tax and security, now estimated at over £1.4 billion, were also excluded from the estimates as they were uncertain. Yet £738 million of funding from the private sector was included, despite not being supported by robust analysis. All costs and revenues should have been included from the outset, with the uncertainties explained and a contingency provided.
   
   

One of the supposed objectives of the 2012 Olympics is to stimulate greater participation by the general public in sport. However, another even more pressing concern is the final medal table and Britain’s place in it. The National Audit Office recently got in on the act and produced a report (see attachment) on Britain’s strategy for increasing its medal tally at the Olympic Games.

London 2012 Update, April 1st 2008, latest information on preparations for the 2012 Olympics, the relocation programme, budget and other matters. Embargoed till midnight April 1st.

London 2012 are happy to announce recent inflated budget estimates have turned out to be totally false. The original budget of £2.4 billion has been reinstated after careful examination of the figures. Mr Livingstone and Ms Jowell, who insisted repeatedly that the budget had been properly set have been vindicated and expect to receive apologies from those critics who doubted their veracity.

Produced by Demos and the Institute for Public Policy Research in 2004.
This is a collection of essays examining the challenges of hosting a 2012 Olympics that will leave a positive legacy. It is fairly realistic in acknowledging the difficulty of achieving many of the lofty ambitions attached to hosting the games, and the gulf that can appear in between PR gloss and the reality that transpires.

Road closures

Road, cycle and pedestrian routes across the Olympic Park

Preparation works are now underway on the Olympic Park site As part of these works it is essential to close some road, pedestrian and cycle routes on 2 July Details of routes that will be affected are:

Three Games Monitor romantics paid a visit to the ODA Planning Decisions Team office in Burford Road, Stratford on St Valentine’s Day. We wanted to view the new Olympic Planning Application which is contained in 53 document folders containing hundreds of individual documents, plans, drawings, etc, numbering in excess of 10,000 pages (these were still being uploaded on to the website when this article was first written). It is difficult to determine the exact number of documents from the website as many refer to different aspects of the application. The documents should soon be available to the general public in a set of dvds at a cost of £25 plus postage and packaging or in hard copy at a purchase price of £500.

The 2012 Olympics is littered with organisations claiming to be bringing benefits London and the UK. These goodies include the vital achievement of ‘world city’ status for London and a range of other ‘unquantifiable benefits’.