Alice Miules in The Times is saying that the UK Olympics have all gone to hell (and that the UK should pull out):

Yesterday Ms Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and political leader of the Games, admitted that costs for the Olympic park had risen 40 per cent in a year. It will now cost not the £2.375 billion of public money she promised last year that she was applying “absolute rigour” to, but £3.3 billion of public money. Then there is another £1.044 billion for regenerating the East End. London Assembly members, who meet today to discuss the Olympics budget, think it may cost £8 billion or more in the end.

Take a figure . . . double it . . . add whatever you like. Which part of the extra costs were not predictable when the bid was submitted in October 2004? A spiralling security budget, more than quadrupled now to £850 million? Did the bid team really need to wait for 7/7 to realise that an Olympics in London in 2012 would be under particular threat from Islamist terrorism? Or was it the increasing cost of land in the East End that took them by surprise, from a predicted £478 million to £1 billion and rising? I wonder who it was who failed to predict that landowners would make sure they squeezed as much as they could from a Government that had no choice but to buy their land, and fast. “We have also adjusted the transport figure to put it in 2012 figures,” Ms Jowell blithely added yesterday. Well, what figures was it in before? And who drew them up? Ah, yes. Tessa Jowell.

I was so happy when Vancouver got the Winter Olympics, knowing that this would scuttle Toronto's chances for quite some time.