£15 million has been spent already just bidding for the Olympic games for London. But now even more direct costs will fall upon the citizens of that city.
Apparently, £1.5 billion will come from the National Lottery and up to £550 million from London council tax. £75 million will come from other council taxes and £250 million trom the London Development Agency.
But it is likely to cost much more than this. Sydney 2000 ended up costing over twice the pre-bid figures. In Athens, total costs were four times the initial budget. Before the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, the government had to give an emergency subsidy of £105m.
After Sydney 2000, underused venues are still costing taxpayers A$46m (£18m) a year and will lose money for at least another decade. The Greeks have a £6.25bn debt, and pay f60m a year for the upkeep of unused facilities from the Athens games.
The London Olympics will have a large, negative environmental impact.
Most obviously, 50 mature trees will be felled in the Olympic zone. The complex river system of the Lower Lea, and the important natural habitat it provides will be destroyed with a network of concrete bridges and culverts, making the area much less sympathetic to wildlite.
As the campaign group NOLondon2012 reports:
"A new 'park' is promised post Olympics, providing a greater amount of open space [but] not until 2020(8 years after the games), and meanwhile public amenity of the area will be lost.
"There are, as yet, no financial arrangements for the management of a new park, and no organisation has claimed they want to run it. By 2020, will anyone remember a park was promised?"
And the ideology behind the Olympics is completely bankrupt, and of no benefit to working people.
At its most blatant, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has admitted that £340 million will be channelled from the existing sports lottery distributors.
So the Olympics will actually take money away from participative sport provision for ordinary people, and channel it towards elite professional athletes.
Already for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, UK Sport, the body that distributes Many people across East London, having been promised vitally needed regeneration in the area, will be delighted at news of London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics.
The bid-organisers' campaign to win public support centred on promises to revolutionise transport, sports facilities and the quality of life in Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham, three of the most deprived areas in Britain.
"Expectations are high and we share the aspirations of people across East London to transform the area for the better," says George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green & Bow.
*But people here also have concerns mingled with those funding is spending £57.5 million supporting just 320 elite competitors, plus a further £16 million to their sporting bodies.
This includes £600,000 to support one professional weightlifter; €5.3 million for the equestrian team, £2 million for high diving, and over £1 million for the archery team.
The aim is to increase Britain's Olympic medal tally; and the funding does not even go towards sports where there is mass participation or spectator interest.
It is focussed onto activities where individuals be groomed to produce maximum results.
The sporting ideal represented by the Olympics was described the French Marxist, Jean-Marie Brohm, as "physical torture put on as entertain"Expectations are high and we share the aspirations of people across East London to transform the area for the better," hopes. The Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets has already been 'redeveloped. But it has come at the expense of local
*With property prices now expected to soar further beyond the reach of ordinary families, there is a real fear that working
page 8 of the scan
John Lister, London Health Emergency As we go to press, the first steps are being taken to bring together a new, broad, national campaign to challenge the government's drive to establish a market system in place of a planned system of public health care.
Ministers have ensured that the necessary steps for a full market in health care provision will be in place by the end of this year. The same policies throughout the country struggle to cope with unprecedented deficits, and are told not even to ask for help from the government.
• Local PCTs, as commissioners, have been instructed to divert a minimum of 10 percent of NHS elective operations to private providers, regardless of the choices that may be made by patients.
• While guarantees and enhanced fees are offered to private providers, NHS hospiof Health officials told a meeting of 100 private sector representatives "We have created a market place, it's up to you now..."
• Even Monitor, the regulafor established to keep watch on Foundation Trusts, has been effectively privatised, spending two thirds of its first year budget buying in consultancy services from McKinsey in the US.
The ending of planned, national provision of health