The IOC has published its final assessment of the five Olympic bids. The summary: the London and Paris bids are both great; the Madrid and New York bids are acceptable; and Moscow would be a fiasco.
Much as I love being cynical about London, I’m rather impressed by the bid committee’s achievement over the last 12 months in moving from ‘unimaginable’ to ‘comparable to the Froggie bid’. See, we *can* do infrastructure projects after all (simultaneously, it sounds like the Dome is going to become the worthwhile and interesting venue it should have been in the first place).
So London, Paris, Madrid and New York are all in contention, with a mild bias towards London and Paris on the grounds of competence.
Paris is the odds-on favourite. I had planned some kind of Eurovision-comparison post at this point, pointing out that everyone hates the French, the British and the Americans (generally either in order 1-2-3 or 3-2-1), and therefore Madrid would probably actually win. Paris would do worst, since everyone *really* hates the French.
However, according to this ACNielsen survey, Paris is by far the most popular Olympic choice among the people of the world. Weird shit. Maybe they’re following the Samizdata line that holding the Olympics is an excellent punishment for someone you don’t like…
But just to mess up the plans somewhat, the BBC are now reporting that New York may withdraw as funding problems seem to mean that they won’t have a stadium to host the Games in.
But surely the US holds world events every year; the supersupersupergreatfantasticmarvelousbowl(1), the baseball(2) *World Series*. How could they fail to hold the Olympics?
1. The shit version of rugby.
2. Rounders.
London and Paris have both done it twice, but London did it more recently, so I reckon it’s Paris’s turn. Either would be the first to have hosted the Games three times.
I should think the Parisian bid will be popular with a remarkable number of Londoners and by that I mean people who’s lives are invested in this city rather than just passing through for a few years.
A Paris succes should be interesting as they’ll be looking for the billions to pay for it just about the time the EU money tap gets turned off by the collapse of the CAP/Euro/EU.
Incidentally, does anyone know what it’ll cost to keep the Dome standing for another 12 years? This isn’t the most durable structure were talking about. The Government were reluctantly admitting to M£1/4 a moth back in 2003 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200203/ldhansrd/vo021126/text/21126-03.htm so on past form, the Scottish Parliament comes to mind, multipying that by four to a round mil & rising by 10% per annum would be on the conservative side.
That adds up to nearly £M200 by flame lighting day alone without any changes to host the games. Personally I’d reckon on a final tab up near the billion it cost to build the thing in the first place and then past 2012 we’re still stuck with the monstrocity.
No idea what your first point is about. A significant majority of Londoners back the bid; I haven’t seen a breakdown by "level of lives being invested in the city" (?!), but I suspect support is high in the largely poor-native-Londoner communities around Stratford which will be regenerated by bid cash.
Your pricing logic makes no sense, either. The Scottish Parliament costs were estimated before the project started; the Dome figures are the actual figures as disclosed to Parliament. There’s no justification for your 10% per annum cost inflation rate, and the £200m figure is complete bollocks even if there were, since you’re not imposing a discount rate on future years’ spending.
In any case, since the plan is to flog the Dome to a private company to become a concert venue and casino, the government isn’t going to have to pay maintenance anyway.
But apart from being wrong in absolutely every aspect, your comment was a good one.