And the winner of the Olympic bid is..........................................

[MarsLady]

LONDON

thank goodness

the deprived of Dorset find their lives much improved by pan pipes

I suspect it will be an absolute nightmare and terrorist magnet.
And very, very, very expensive. We'll be paying for it for decades.
Ho hum.
All here and healthy though, I am so happy to say.

I sgree with aloha and thought this was a target before the happenings of today.

I do not want to have all this sport of the "best" we need to encourage fitness for all. I am going to be bored ridgid by all the TV coverage and I dont see how all this money being spent is going to make anyones life better. Bah humbug grumble grumble grumble .......

sgree = agree

aloha no comment on pan pipes?

Did anyone know that the Special Olympics are being held right now in Glasgow?

no I didnt - I thought it was called the paralympics and was held at the same time as the big one?

Special is for special needs, or those with learning difficulties. My dp is up there filming it. Closing ceremony is tomorrow though I think it's only being shown on BBC Scotland. No coverage at all down here as far as I can see.

Special Olympics are the UK annual ones I think. The Paralympics are the ones that go with the Olympics.

"It?s the biggest sporting event taking place in the UK this year" - how sad that there is no big national TV coverage

Think it got upstaged by Live 8 and then G8 and now..well. It's kind of illustrative of how invisible this side of society is though.

Waste of money, and as a Londoner I don't want to pay for it. Why can't we spend billions on our schools and hospitals instead?

And as for the 'regeneration' aspect, what a laugh, all the new jobs will be short term, and the last thing east London needs is a new sports stadium.

No Olympics in living memnory has ever made a profit, and it has virtually bankrupted most of the cities it has been held in.

I doubt that everyone will be so in favour of it when income tax and council tax go up to pay for it.

Am pro-panpipes, just not in my back yard, OK?

goldenoldie iirc the aussies made a profit (or was it Atlanta?)

snort!

Los Angeles made a profit too.

when is a profit not a profit? when it is an Olympic profit! the stars are my addition.

Costliest Olympics posts profit
From correspondents in Athens
May 13, 2005
From: Reuters

THE most expensive Olympic Games in history has posted a profit of more than 130 million euros ($215.84m), organisers said overnight.
The 2004 Athens Games cost more than 9 billion euros, but the organising committee said that with a budget of about 1.9b euros it had produced revenues of 2.09b euros, due to increased profits from TV rights, sponsors and ticket sales.
"We have succeeded in not only meeting the balanced budget but securing a surplus of more than 130.6m euros," it said in a statement.

The committee was not responsible for the construction of any sports complexes, access roads or the athletes' Olympic village, nor did it foot the 1b euro Games security bill.*

The committee said 123m euro from the profits had already been spent on a series of projects ahead of the Games, as agreed with the government, in a bid to speed up preparations.
The committee said it would post a final profit of about 7m euros in its balance sheet.
The overall cost of the Games severely burdened Greece's public finances and was a major factor as the country's budget deficit ballooning tomore than six per cent of GDP in 2004.