The 2012 Olympics

[cdd]

Not only will the Olympics actually come out in profit (£100 million is the predicted sum) the legacy left to the lower Lea Valley, London and the UK will be impressive.

I tried to phrase my post as carefully as possible to account for this: I realise that there will be much revenue from this (mostly from tourism, etc) -- but I stand by my original point -- if we don't get the games in 2012 we've wasted an awful lot of money. Plus WE DON'T EARN THE BENEFIT. It's OUR money being spent, but the people who earn the money are shop owners; building corporations; architects; a much smaller group of people get the benefit, which is one step closer to complete capitalism, where a small percentage of population have a lot of money. Do the government learn nothing, from, e.g., the pre-WW1 era? But hang on, our government isn't acutally STUPID. It's not like they just "forget", or overlook something. Everything is carefully thought out... and in fact it is more convenient for the government to have it this way.

Finally, it's all very cynical. If the Olympics would result in a net loss, the councils, etc., certainly wouldn't promote it. As it happens, the Olympics could attract much revenue, and for this reason, they are pushing as hard as possible to have it here (have you seen how much propaganda has been spouting about it?)

And about prestige -- baloney. What will we be left with? ANOTHER stadium London doesn't need (we've already demolished one -- and we're going to build another for the Olympics?)

In addition, I strongly argue against the necessity to promote sports -- although obviously my viewpoint is biased due to very bad experiences regarding compulsory sport I believe that the government only want to encourage this timewasting activity because it puts less strain on the NHS (a healthier population). Whether that is the only reason or not I have no idea, but that is an undisputed "benefit" and it can't just be coincidence. After all, it leaves the government with more of OUR money (remember, we ultimately pay for our own NHS!) to spend on things like, oh I don't know, bombing Iraq. Indeed, the government have a lovely two-stroke attitude towards smoking -- which are: "Smoking is terrible! You shouldn't smoke, look at all these things we're doing to help you quit and not start smoking", but also, "Let's tax cigaretttes oh-so-heavily and earn money off the smokers who we don't really want to ban because they earn us such a healthy chunk of money which we can use to fund wars".

I must say the amount of "hidden" tax (I regard -- and I only list a fraction of a fraction of the number that there are -- V.A.T., inheritence tax, road tax, THE CONGESTION CHARGE, and before the huge outcry, petrol tax, relatively hiddden) that the British public have to endure is astronomical. If we took the sum of all the taxes paid by the public and put it into one tax (e.g. council tax) have you any idea how much we end up paying? And to think the EU wants to scrap our tax-free children's clothes.

Governments/councils also like having large "monuments" to show what they've done. Things like additional policing generally go unnoticed by the public (although are absolutely desperately needed), whereas a new bus shelter in the middle of the vauxhall cross gets public attention and media attention, despite being totally unnecessary and useless. My council has recently planted some *beautiful* new trees at the end of my street, and from what I gather, people enjoy them; they say "ooh, look how nice our council is", and every time they walk past them, they think wonderful things about the council who are instead involved in some horrible corrupt tax scandal or something. Well I think it's incredibly cynical, and frankly the only reason councils can get away with it is because our nation is becoming thicker by the minute (qualifications are becoming much easier to pass in -- which of course does wonders for the statistics!).

You know, because of all the above, and many other factors, I'm incredibly tempted to move to a place that isn't so cynical -- a small island perhaps.

[Ed Hammond]

The reason the tax burden is spread over a number of different areas is precisely because you couldn't spend it all in one go. In any case, the reason taxes cost so much is that, well, the country's expensive to run, even if some (or more than some) is wasted. But that's only natural in a large bureaucracy. You can't "ring-fence" money for certain departments (eg have road tax just spent on roads) because a) it's illegal and b) it makes absolutely no sense. If you start taxing for certain specific services pretty soon that tax turns into a charge, and if you don't pay the charge you don't get the service. You may think that you pay more than you get out, but it's always going to be the case that some people pay more than they take and some people take more than they pay - it's called redistribution of wealth.

I don't think that decisions made by a council's Environment department regarding tree-planting would be made to deflect attention away from other issues, or to cow the public - local government simply doesn't work that way, believe me.

Fair enough, too, I hated PE at school but you have to agree that some level of physical fitness is a good idea, generally. There are plenty of people who, for some reason, enjoy sport and physical education and I think that much of the problem with it in this country is that it tends to be taught in schools by brain-dead morons rather than the actual sport element of it.

And finally, although the Games will benefit architects and businessmen the vast majority of jobs will not be high-level ones like that. After all, somebody has to build and staff the damn thing. Nothing wrong with having a stadium either. It'll be a replacement for Crystal Palace and mean that we can host even more international events, bringing even more money into the capital.