Total Incompetence.

[Bazza454]

Imagine this scenario -

You've been saving for months and waiting even longer and finally your new motorhome is ready for collection.

You arrive excitedly at the dealership to be told - "We're really sorry, but the manufacturer has made a mistake with the production costings and the price has now quadrupled from £30,000 to £120,000". You would probably tell the dealer to put the motorhome where the monkey puts the peanuts, and walk away.

We're told today that the cost of the Olympics has now quadrupled from the original costings to £9.2bn.

How the hell can any Government or any organisation get their predicted costings so wrong?

If any Company in the private sector managed their operation in this way, the business would be bankrupt in a matter of months. Yet this useless, leaderless bunch of idiots running the country can just pass the cost on in increased taxes.

And guess who is going to pay - exactly. 

[Dave Newell]

Hang on to your hat Bazza, by 2012 it could well have gone up by 10 times not just four! The Chinese are spending 20 Billion on the Beijing Olympics and as their labour costs are a lot lower than ours I don't see how we can possibly do it cheaper.

 

D.

[Guest starspirit]

Because they lied in the first place knowing that the nation would never except that cost if it knew.

 

Always looking on the bright side of life, we will (or Londoners will) be left with a lovely development of mainly waste land.

 

This will of course be ideal for the government to confirm their incompetence and sleaze and be conned out of by some smart suited multi national prick so that he can make a fortune at the expense of you and me - again.

[twooks]

that seems awfully cynical of you Richard, anyone would think that you didn't have any faith in Teflon and friends.

 

sad how quickly cynicism becomes realism innit!

 

B-)

[Guest starspirit]

Whatever gives you that impression Jackie?

[twooks]

dunno - must be the red wine :-> :->

 

You're quick off the mark tonite, must be quiet down in wet wales - or is it snowing already????????????? :->

 

B-)

[Guest peter]

I don't give a damn, as I will be living in Austria by then. :D

[twooks]

not so sure about Austria, now Australia - :-> :-> >:-) >:-) *-)

 

B-)

[Guest peter]

Skiing in the winter and walking in the mountains in the summer. My wife is half Austrian and all her relatives are over there so will be great. Now, they really do know how to enjoy themselves, and the Germans of course.

[Guest starspirit]

So that's where I went wrong.

 

When I got myself fixed up again I should have found a nice French, Spanish or Italian lady so that I could go live somewhere warm without having to worry about the foreigners not speaking English.

[Bazza454]

Dave Newell - 2007-03-15 7:51 PM Hang on to your hat Bazza, by 2012 it could well have gone up by 10 times not just four! The Chinese are spending 20 Billion on the Beijing Olympics and as their labour costs are a lot lower than ours I don't see how we can possibly do it cheaper. D.

Hi Dave,

Adding to Richards point that the UK Government has initially lied about the true costs, at least it looks like the Chinese Government are being open and honest from the start.

[Guest starspirit]

Well that's a novelty init!

 

That ANY government is open and honest takes some believing but the Chinese - yeah right?

[chas]

Perhaps people will now know where all the taxes gathered from this phoney green tax bo***cks will be going. (^)

[michele]

CHAS ,

It's not B****ks its FUBAR .......To you Cornish people ;-)

[michele]

Rich ,

 

Your right Londoners will be left with waste land the only fortunate thing is it's a vast improvement on the already waste land that is there now.

 

BOOOOTiful place more pyke's can move in underneath the railway arches

what a mess this country's in things can only get better they certainly can't get any worse or did they just :-(

[Usinmyknaus]

Picking up on the green taxes point. We are told we have to cut the UK's carbon emissions by 60% so why, exactly, is it a good idea to host the Olympics? Apart from the silly capital and running costs, imagine how much extra CO2 mega machines clearing vast amounts of wasteland produce, then all the machines building the venues, plus the carbon loading of making all the construction materials and shipping them to the site and bussing all the workers around. Next add on vast amounts of extra air, train, ferry and car traffic during the event and er, that sounds like a massive increase in CO2 emissions to me.....

 

So the government taxes us to extinction to pay for the olympics, it bumps up carbon emissions in the process, fails the targets it set for carbon reduction, so it then fines us all extra green taxes because "we" missed their target.

 

Austria and Australia have been mentioned but anywhere is sounding better then here.

[twooks]

michele - 2007-03-15 10:08 PM

 

Rich ,

 

Your right Londoners will be left with waste land the only fortunate thing is it's a vast improvement on the already waste land that is there now.

 

BOOOOTiful place more pyke's can move in underneath the railway arches

what a mess this country's in things can only get better they certainly can't get any worse or did they just :-(

 

I used to like the Lea Valley area, there are better ways to improve it than by dumping an Olympic Village out there.

 

Unless they've decided to flatten Downing Street and turn Buck House into the athletes accommodation.

 

B-)

[GJH]

chas - 2007-03-15 9:45 PM

 

Perhaps people will now know where all the taxes gathered from this phoney green tax bo***cks will be going. (^)

I heard on TV that they are going to use Lottery money - the part that's usually spent on non-essentials like Education & Health - not forgetting the grass roots sports developments that the Olympics were supposed to kick-start which won't now get the money.

 

Also don't forget that the Government is providing the biggest wadge of funding - which means that every one of us, through our national taxes, will pay - and that's even though its the London Olympics, not the British Olympics.

 

The event will bring extra wealth to already well paid people and nothing to the rest of us.

 

Graham

[Supertractorman]

Sounds a bit like the London Dome, and was there a Football Ground called Wembley where the estimates were wrong. *-)

 

David

[Mike Chapman]

And do not forget the Scottish Parliament Building where £40 million became £414 million. On that basis the Olympics will be £29 billion (factor of 10) by the time it's complete.

 

Great here innit!

 

Mike.

[Brian Kirby]

Oh, but there's more to this!

First, all the pricings will have been prepared by the private sector, not by the government or the civil servants.  Everyone working on the Olympics is either a cost or design consultant, or a construction contractor.  They work out the costs.

Second, the figures given to us and the IOC were doctored.  Caborn said so last night.  As he put it, there were the figures used for the bid, and then, when they won the bid, they went away and worked out the real figures.  Nothing whatever stopped them from doing the last bit first, except they'd never have got the figures accepted that way!

Third, the cost of the Olympic stadia and village has actually increased from £2.3bn to £3.1bn.  That seem to be semewhere around 40%.  There is absolutely no explanation for this increase, it is just passed over as a small increase by comparison with the others.  40%, small?

Fourth, the cost of "regeneration" of the surrounding area has been added on to what is supposed to be the cost of staging the Olympics.  However, this is totally disingenuous since the regeneration would have been required at some time, and is actually nothing to do with the Olympics.  However, this is where the real cost increases have come in.

Fifth, they have added contingency that is more than 100% of the actual estimated construction costs.  This is already a high risk project.  Carrying out the regeneration concurrently is mad, it guarantees the local labour and construction markets will overheat with run-away pricing and overshoots.  When projects run late, people panic and start trying to buy accelleration.  This never works, it just bashes the price up.  Hence you need so much contingency.

Finally, they have announced the level of contingency.  What Muppets!  That is the equivalent of peeing on your own powder!  There won't be a builder's QS anywhere in the counrty who won't now know what he has to do to get the job in the first place (cut price offer, as usual), what he has to do to increase this (comb the contract for omissions and inaccuracies, as usual), and exactly how much dosh his client thinks he'll have to spend in the end (which is highly unusual, and very useful!).

However, they are apparently trying to run this via some unusual tendering and contracting methods, pioneered by BAA at Heathrow, which sound as though they may be a great improvement on the norm - so maybe the outcome won't be quite as bad a I'm inclined to expect.

What concerned me more than the increase they announced, was that neither of the ministers understood what a contingency actually is, or what was the difference between a budget and a cost.  Unless someone sorts them out sharpish, there is no hope!

[W3526602]

Hi,

 

I did a bit of mental arithmetic. £9,000,000,000 divided by a population of 60,000,000 is £150 for every person in the UK (but check that).

 

How much will it be per competitor? Can't work that out, cos I don't know how many competitors there will be.

 

How much per UK medal? I daren't even think about it.

 

How much will it be per spectator? If they get a million spectators, they would have to pay £9,000 each to cover the costs, let alone make a profit.

 

Okay, I know it can't be measured that way, but........

 

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