Pick a number, any number
The government was "entirely unrealistic" in estimating the cost of hosting the 2012 Olympics, a group of MPs have said. The Public Accounts Committee said ministers used "wishful thinking" and "ignored foreseeable major factors" such as tax and security. At the time of the bid, costs were estimated at just over £4bn, but last year the budget was put at £9.325bn. The government says "a lot has changed" since the period the report focuses on. In its report, the committee outlined the division of costs anticipated at the time of the bid - which were to be met by public sector funding of £3.4bn and a further £738m from the private sector
Yes, "a lot has changed" since the original bid was made … like the numbers.
Now in the normal course of a working day, your humble correspondent deals with quite a lot of numbers, but I can assure you all that if I, like the Olympic Committee was wrong by over £5,000,000,000 on a financial projection, I’d be in front of the Chief Executive for the proverbial interview without coffee & shown the door. Oh to work for the public sector, eh?
At the moment, you find me mid way through a reasonably sized deal. The ‘net realisation’ will be in Sterling, an 8 figure number. Most of yesterday was spent haggling over a small sum of money, 0.021% of the total the Company will make. Why? Its not because I am particularly pedantic, its because its not my money. It’s the Company’s money. It’s the shareholders funds. Sadly but somewhat inevitably, the Government does seem to think that it owes the same ‘duty of care’ towards the taxpayer.
Maybe this is because the cost of London Olympics has become the new racism – we are just not allowed to talk about it. You would think that having got a cost plan that wrong there would be a national outcry & demands for ministers heads … publicly displayed, impaled on pointy sticks at the Tower of London. But no, there is almost silence.
It could be that the public has become numbed by both the regularity & the size at which every Government project overshoots its budget or maybe we all knew that when we read the original cost estimates & heard the assurances from Ministers, we all knew they were lying in the first place
Comments
As Ev Dirkson, a past U.S. Senator from Illinois, is alleged to have said when talking about government spending, "A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon your talking about real money."
If he didn't say it, he should have.
Posted by: Berserker | April 25, 2008 7:34 PM