Regulars
SPORT
Back the Bid? Not Likely...

by Craig Turp
March 2005

Representatives of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were in London last month to assess the British capital’s ability to successfully organise and host the 2012 Olympic Games. ‘Back the bid’ is the London 2012 organising committee’s none-too-catchy slogan, and you see it everywhere you go in London, from the moment you arrive at Heathrow to the moment you read your Evening Standard well after you have boarded the plane to leave. Even some of London’s famous red buses have been painted blue to show their support for London’s Olympic bid, yet, irony of ironies, local support – beyond those cashing in vast amounts of what is a massive advertising spend – is minimal. Londoners want the Olympic Games as much as they wanted the Black Death.

There are great cities in this world, and then there is London. No city has given the world more, and no city offers visitors more. No city’s residents, on the other hand, get less in return. Highly taxed, directly and indirectly, Londoners effectively subsidise much of the rest of the United Kingdom, and have long resented doing so. The corporate taxes paid by companies registered in London alone could provide London with the finest urban infrastructure in the world. There would be no need for obscenely high council taxes allegedly paid to provide Londoners with their local services. Instead, the money is spent in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the north of England – indeed anywhere except London. The capital’s relationship with the rest of the country has always been shaky: the Olympic Games, which would bring glory to Britain but misery and even higher local taxes to London would break it forever. That is why Londoners are saying no to the Olympics.

Besides, London is as capable of hosting the Olympic Games as I am capable of flying to the moon. It took nearly ten years of wrangling to decide on the design and contractor of the new national football stadium at Wembley, in North London. And the IOC is expected to believe that London can have Olympic standard venues for every sport ready in seven years? No chance. That London’s notoriously poor transport system will be able to cope? No chance. That’s its mayor will not go on offending Jewish people? No chance. And they are the reasons why the IOC will pick Paris when it meets to decide the 2012 host city next month. When it does so Londoners will breathe one enormous, collective sigh of relief.

Craig Turp edits Bucharest in your Pocket.