What would you spend £9 billion on?

[stewart38]

Thought id missed a Euro Millions roll over there

spend £9 billion to generate £234 billion over 50yrs. Thats a tough one

















ps i made the £234b figure up

[JiveLad]

.......It's also strange that £9bn is required to run the Olympics, but we can do the Commonwealth Games for under £300m.

Where is all that extra money going?

Well, Wembley cost £950m (if the losses incurred by the contractor are added in) - so I imagine the olympolitico's want a stadium much bigger/better - so you can write off £1.5 billion straight away.

What concerns me even more is the recent crap track record of UK building in the South of England........eg. Wembley, Millenium Bridge, Diana's fountain (crikey - we can't even get a fountain right!) to name but 3.

The one positive construction appears to be Heathrow Terminal 5 - which seems to be going to plan. Perhaps the guy (or girl) in charge of that should be given control of the Olympic project............

[David Bailey]

We are all going to be paying for London's Olympics, through our taxes, and for those foolish enough, through the national lottery.

As we paid for the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, for example?

Funny that if Glasgow gets to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014, it will only be Glasgow and Scotland that will be paying for it.

That's the joy of devolution for you

It's also strange that £9bn is required to run the Olympics, but we can do the Commonwealth Games for under £300m.

Ummm, if the estimation process is anything like the cowboy "finger in the air" process used for the Olympics, then it'll be more like £1 Billion...

And considering the exactitude of the cost-control and planning process used by the Scottish Executive to design a big office building (£10m -> £400m+), you have to assume that all these estimates are basically just made up on the spot to get the business.

[David Bailey]

Where is all that extra money going?

OK, here's some actual facts from the BBC's Economics Editor:
BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Evan Davis

The costs everyone talks about are those for building the facilities and re-developing the games site. This is said to have quadrupled from 2.4 billion to 9.3 billion.

However, the 2.4 billion figure is wrong, as is the 9.3 billion figure.

Always added to that original 2.4 billion was an extra billion pounds of spending on local regeneration. So the 2.4 should be counted as 3.4.

And that original budget of 3.4 billion has now risen to 7.5 billion, not 9.3.

The 9.3 includes stuff - like security, VAT and some extra bits - that were always accounted for separately from the 3.4 billion.

So in other words, the original 3.4 billion has in fact risen by 120%. Or, a good journalistic way of saying a cost has risen by 120% would be to say it has "more than doubled".

That might sound like costs are "out of control", but when you take into account that 2.7 billion of that 7.5 billion is a contingency for unforeseen costs, you realise that we can't say costs are out of control yet. We don't know whether they'll go out of control, we are simply making sure we can cope if they do.

In other words, the costs haven't really gone up much. but we're now fully-disclosing the additional figures, presumably to get all the bad news out of the way early on.

In addition:

As it happens, the budget for running the games itself - the two week sports festival - is £2bn. That has not changed and is not included in the 9.3 billion. No-one really talks about this two billion as it will be financed by private sponsorship.

[Gav]

OK, here's some actual facts from the BBC's Economics Editor:
BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Evan Davis

I can't believe you managed to use "actual facts" and "editor" in the same sentence without a negative!

[David Bailey]

I can't believe you managed to use "actual facts" and "editor" in the same sentence without a negative!

I'd trust the BBC Economics Editor much more than I'd trust the government.

In fact, I'd trust the BBC more than I'd trust the Pope.

Anyone remember "45 minutes"? Guess who was right over that one, huh?