...One London's consistent criticisms of the Olympics and predictions, all of which, including the loss to businesses, lack of tourists and even empty seats, have come true are being supported and voiced by at least one former Conservative member of the London Assembly. At the time One London was attacked for its negative attitudes.
Oh and while we are on the subject of money, would it not be a good idea to explain who exactly paid for the free Oyster cards across 9 zones issued to all Olympic event ticket holders?
Oh come now. You know who is paying, surely.
ReplyDeleteThe Nagano Winter Olympics of 1998 were much criticised at the time because many people - spectators, media etc - went to Japan for the Olympics and discovered that public transport in Japan is (horror) expensive. (Although given that the otherwise almost entirely pointless Nagano Shinkansen was built specially for the event, Japanese taxpayers did not exactly get off lightly). The Sydney Olympics two years later was the first to do what London did - provide free public transport for all ticket holders - and this was much praised by freeloaders, especially those who had been to Nagano two years earlier. As a consequence, free transport tickets for anyone pretty much even very tangentially related to the Olympics is another thing that host cities pretty much have to agree to before the IOC will even let them bit for the Olympics these days.
I look forward, of course, to seeing if British officials can manage to go more than a decade without actually opening the accounts the way the Australian ones managed to.
Yes, Michael, it will be interesting to see how they will avoid all FOI requests for full (and I mean full) information.
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