meenaghman
Guru
I am a bit miffed though that many people from London, who are paying partly for the games, and around the country have not got tickets. I understand that it is a global event and there will be hundreds of thousands of people coming to this country, so there will be a political/economic element to the way the tickets have been allocated, but I do think that more tickets should of been earmarked for people from the British Isles.
Where do I start on this ... The Olympics aren't barnett formulised... its not just Londoners paying for this privilege.
This sort of explains it - http://sluggerotoole.com/2010/10/20/the-olympic-rip-off-continues/
There's other figures on the internet from Plaid. The Scots aren't creating too much of a fuss as the Commonwealth games are on in a few years time in Glasgow.
In Northern Ireland We "benefitted" from an extra 100M or so sports/culture/arts grant in this years budget (which was taken out of block grant Health budget as it wasn't ringfenced as in England.. but have seen virtually all capital sports spending ceased, and indeed the outlook for both Capital and recurrent Arts/culture/Sports spending is a minus (approx 10-15 percent fall by 2014).
So on the one hand we have this mullarkey about how while they're London 2012 games they're for the "whole of the UK" when in reality they're funded by the rest of the UK and based mainly in London.
Not that these games and LOCOG aren't starting to turn me into a bitter twisted cynic or anything :-).. and some would argue about the "Start"