In message , at 20:33:27 on
Thu, 15 Mar 2012, Bruce remarked:

Spending has already exceeded the original budget by five times,

It's about 3x (ie $9bn)

with an expected overall outturn cost of ten times more

What are spending the other £19bn on??

than what was promised when the UK lost the contest and unfortunately
had to stage the event. That's £28 billion against the original
estimate of a mere £2.8 billion.

The original estimate is curiously close to the cost of the actual Games
themselves. All the rest is spend on infrastructure and regeneration
which has been provided to support the games. I'm not saying that the
figures should not have been queried on that basis, btw.

£10bn is very representative of what the last half dozen Games have each
*spent*, overall. How you translate that "spend" into "cost" is another
matter. It depends how much use you get out of the legacy
infrastructure, for a start.
--
Roland Perry