As of yesterday, there was exactly one year to go until the opening ceremonies for the 2012 London Olympiad. Apparently that's not too soon to declare the whole thing a splendid success, because that's what a host of politicians, Olympic organisers, IOC bigwigs and even a few sportspersons did at a series of well-publicised events across the UK. It's certainly a great achievement to have got the facilities so close to readiness so far ahead of the Games; it would have been nice if space had been found at yesterday's bunfights for some of the builders and other trades who have done the actual work -- not to mention the taxpayers who are stumping up for the whole thing.
If you need an antidote to all the self-congratulation, you need look no further than Hackney's most famous living Welshman, the writer Iain Sinclair, currently flogging his latest book, "Ghost Milk". Sinclair took a few potshots at the Games in his previous work, "Hackney, that rose-red empire"; "Ghost Milk" is an anti-Olympic tirade running to more than 400 pages. Much of Sinclair's oeuvre deals with the loss of traditional ways of life at the hands of progress -- see the aforementioned "Hackney...", or the earlier "Lights out for the territory" or "London Orbital" for more of the same. With the Olympics destroying parks and wetlands, uprooting neighbourhoods and pushing long-established businesses out of its way, the Games are an obvious target for Sinclair's fulminations.
If you can handle his quirky style, Sinclair is always fun to read and provides insights you won't find anywhere else. At the same time, it would be wrong to deny that the Stratford area of East London, home of the Olympic Park, was seriously blighted before the Games works began. Improved transport links, affordable housing (the eventual use of the Olympic Village) and ancillary developments, including a spiffy new shopping centre, could ensure that the area will be a much more desirable location once the Games are over.
One writer who seeks to take Sinclair to task for his miserablism is David Aaronovich, in a column in today's Times (paywall protected). Aaronovich decries what he sees as Sinclair's inability to accept that his beloved East End was less than a paradise before Lord Coe and his Olympic pals showed up.
Fair enough; but it's a bit breathtaking to find Aaronovich also praising the fact that the Games are coming in "below budget". Which budget is that, David? The estimate presented to the Government and the British people before the bid was submitted to the IOC was in the range of £2.0-2.5 billion. The actual cost is going to be somewhere close to £9 billion. Once the Games were safely won, the organisers promptly and shamelessly kitchen-sinked the costs to even more than £9 billion, an amount so huge that it has proved beyond the wiles even of a gaggle of architects to blow through.
There's every reason to hope and expect that the Games will be a success from a sporting standpoint, but how can they ever represent value for that kind of money? That will depend on the much-vaunted "legacy". Sprucing up Stratford is all well and good, but it could have been accomplished far more cheaply without the Olympics, and quite possibly without getting Iain Sinclair all lathered up.
Other aspects of the legacy look downright shaky. The hugely expensive media centre will almost certainly be shuttered for good the instant the Games end. The main Olympic Stadium is already caught up in litigation between two football clubs over its post-Games use; one of the bidders (Tottenham Hotspur) wants to rip it down and start again, while the other (West Ham) wants to remodel and keep it, a decision it may well come to regret sooner rather than later. And as for the promise of a boost for grass-roots sport across the UK, best keep shtum. Although Lottery profits have been diverted wholesale into the Olympic pot, there are absolutely no Olympics-related legacy projects outside England. Yesterday the Games organisers were pleading with the Government to inject yet more money to shore up the legacy programme.
One further criticism of the Games has been the thoroughly bizarre ticket allocation process. There has been particular annoyance at the fact that locals, who have had to put up with all the disruption (with another year of the same to come) have not been given first dibs on some of the tickets. One lucky local who has received tickets, according to David Aaronovich today, is Mrs Anna Sinclair of Hackney. No word on whether she will be taking her husband along with her.
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