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Tessa throws good money after very badBy Sam Leith 19/03/2007
There comes a point, in the course of a successful confidence trick, at which the victim becomes complicit in the scam. Say you received that email, from the daughter of an exiled Ugandan politician, explaining that if you let her funnel several million dollars out of the country through your bank account, she'll cut you in for 10 per cent. Say - being greedy and stupid - you fell for it. And say, a little way down the line, you forked out a couple of hundred quid just to cover the administrative fees. At this point, you have a queasy feeling. You know at a deep level, and for sure, that you are being had. But you are so embarrassed to admit it, even to yourself, that vanity forces you to start throwing good money after bad. This is the point we're at, surely, with the 2012 Olympics. We have messed up. We have contracted, as a nation, to spend unimaginable amounts of public money on the most insubstantial of pageants. And now, without the faintest shame, Tessa Jowell announces to Parliament that her initial estimate of how much it will cost was - oops! - out by a factor of four. What does it tell you about the Government's priorities that the same Tessa Jowell has just asked the British Library - cornerstone of what this wretched pack would call our "knowledge economy" - to prepare for a seven per cent cut in funding?
Does she pull the plug on the Olympics? Does she buffalo. Never mind, she says instead: let's gouge the Lottery. Tons of money there. What this nation needs, at all costs, is a nice firework display and a lot of bandy-legged Eastern European stringbeans running round and round and round in their vests. Let me be clear. I'm all for sport. Nothing brings a tear to my eye faster than the very invocation of "the Corinthian spirit". And nothing stirs my animal passions more than the thought of sweaty men competing to throw heavy objects a short distance. That's why I sometimes watch it on the telly. But up with this I cannot put. Unlike the victim of the Ugandan email con, Miss Jowell enjoys a twofold luxury: the good money she's throwing after bad doesn't belong to her, and she's going to be well clear of the scene by the time the balloon goes up. Only in such circumstances could her reassurances be so blithe. The initial estimate of the cost, she explained, wasn't actually an estimate after all. It was a "funding pitch". Eh? The reason they're splashing out all this extra money, she explains, is because of "the scale of our ambition" - a phrase that means not a damn thing, but brilliantly turns a cock-up into the occasion for misty-eyed self-congratulation. She promises that the Olympics will be a "success" - another promise as empty as the air. How does a successful Olympics differ, measurably, from an unsuccessful one? "There will not be a single person on the opening night of the Olympic Games who will say this is a waste of money," she tells The Sunday Telegraph. "This will bring the country together and it will be a moment people will remember for the rest of their lives." Knowing Miss Jowell's enthusiasm for gambling, I wonder if she would be prepared to bet me that I can't, on the opening night, find someone who regards the Olympics as a complete waste of money. Let's call it £1,000 for each person I find. If she goes for it, I'm going to start my straw poll at the British Library. See also Olympic Games the Chinese way Escalating costs of Olympics |
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