Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, has decided to simply ignore the enormous and ever-rising cost of the Olympic games, by basically stating that it isn’t his problem.
He insists that the original figure of £2 billion, all privately financed, is plenty sufficient, as long as you ignore the cost of actually building the facilities. As long as you only look at the moeny he will spend in the 16 days the games are actually happening, his budget looks fine, ample even, according to Deighton.
Not everyone agrees however. Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, is expected to confirm that the figure has risen from an original estimate of £2.4bn to closer to £6bn, although some predict the final budget could be as high as £9bn.
Speaking at the inaugural National Events Conference hosted by EventScotlandinaugural National Events Conference hosted by EventScotland, Deighton said, speaking of the delays in drafting an actua budget for the games:
The time it is taking is mostly because the government is carefully trying to figure out how to distribute the funding responsibilities and that’s a delicate political balance they want to get right. What I’m hoping is that when it gets resolved, which will be fairly shortly, we will transfer the discussion into a real review of the benefits of staging an Olympics.
Sounds like the political football is being passed around, eh?
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