Independence
I'm pleased the games are going to Stratford - as I lived near there for a few years - it will help the area that is run down. Would have preferred the games to have come to Dundee though!
I say good luck to them. And don't forget that the Olympics will also be coming to Scotland, as the Quarter Final of the Under 23 football tournament (Woo!) will be played at Hampden. I really do wish they would be honest about this and say it was designed purely to benefit London, and not patronise the rest of the UK by bleating about the benefits of selling T-shirts. Hopefully now the Scottish public will receive a fulsome apology from London's bid organisers who claimed that our reluctance to enthuse about the bid was preventing them from getting it.
If the Olympics were to come to these islands then realistically the only city capable of hosting it was London, given the relentless centralisation which the UK has endured in the post-WW2 period, both by government and corporations. (For more on this - see my blog 
)
However, bearing in mind that Holyrood, the Dome, Portcullis House, PFI and any number of IT or defence procurements have resulted in cost overruns of tens of billions of pounds, that cost estimate of £5billion is going to haunt them.
How ironic also that Chirac, Bush, Putin and Blair slugged it out over their respective rights to spend billions on hosting an extended PE lesson on the very date they attended a summit whose purported aim is to stop a child dying of extreme poverty every three seconds.
Politicians. Can't live with them...and the law prevents you from battering them over the head with a shovel and burying them in a shallow grave.
I hope the genuine sports enthusiasts have a great time, and keep the politicos at arm's length.
I for one am glad that the Olympics are coming to the UK and do not begrudge that a poor part of London will most likely see a lot of regeneration. I will certainly plan to be in London for a period during the Olympics to attend a few of the events, but what Alex says is certainly true:
I hope the genuine sports enthusiasts have a great time, and keep the politicos at arm's length.
- that'll be one of Sebastian Coe's major tasks over the coming period, I suspect.
"do not begrudge that a poor part of London will most likely see a lot of regeneration"
It won't be poor for long now. Though I doubt very much if the poorer folk who live there now will see much benefit.
More a case of neighbourhood makeover than enfranchising the economically inactive and underprivileged...
Hi Alex
I'm not going to let your cynicism change what I think
Let's wait and see rather than leap to a judgement - I'm afraid I worked for far too long in CAN DO! environments for me to be infected with this kind of thing 
I'm not cynical at all about the Olympics, or indeed most things - I think it will be of marvellous benefit to London and the south of England. They saw an opportunity and went for it. More power to them. I just wish Scotland had more people working for its good in positions of power of the calibre and ambition of those working on London's bid.
The only cynicism I have with regards to this project is the manner in which it has been sold to the rest of the UK. Did the Barcelona games benefit Seville? Did the Atlanta games benefit San Francisco? Of course not, either in a fiscal or cultural sense. And there is nothing wrong with that at all. It is the London Olympics after all. To suggest that we should all be jumping up and down at the prospect of the business benefits is both patronising and obfuscating though, as is the belief that support would not be forthcoming if there wasn't something in it for us.
The French have a saying about Paris, in relation to the rest of the country: "All else is desert".
Ridiculously Metropolitan and highly unrepresentative of course, but the chauvanistic and centralist attitude does prevail there, and they make no bones about it.
It exists in the UK too. Centralists just fudge a response when accused of it.
Commenting by HaloScan
