On 25 May, 21:32, Bruce wrote:

Of course no-one would have told the people being asked what the
Olympics will have cost them. *Before asking the question, it would be
instructive to tell them that an average household in the UK has had
£400 taken from them for this festival of greed. *

Perhaps they should be asked "As a taxpayer, on what would you like to
see £10.6 million of your money spent?" * *

And of course they would reply "It's £10.6 billion, you old fool!"

;-)

People were asked, though I'm not sure by who, how they wanted the new
millennium to be celebrated. There were various answers; most wanted
something of permanent, or at least long-term benefit, a hospital or
two, schools, sporting facilities. Some wanted something basically
Christian in nature; others wanted third world debt to be written
off. One of the least popular options was for some sort of short-
lived event, festival, exposition etc. Guess what the chosen option
was? The Conservatives were all in favour; Labour weren't so sure.
If elected in 1997 they might cancel it. They were elected, and
decided that a New Labour Dome (the event, not the actual structure)
had to be even bigger and better than a Conservative Dome.

Most people who went were not that impressed with it, 'ok' and 'quite
good' were about the most positive terms I heard. Of course, in some
ways it was bound to be a disappointment; it couldn't hope to live up
to all the hype surrounding it. The visitor numbers were actually
quite respectable, better than I expected, and if the numbers
predicted had actually turned up the facilities couldn't possibly have
coped. As it was there were long queues at times. The costs spiraled
out of control, and there was no hope that the costs could ever be
recovered during a life of just a single year. All of this was
exactly as I, and many others, had predicted years before.