"Ian Johnston" wrote:

But above all, does anyone really believe in this regeneration hype in
the first place?

Only the buggers who spout it, including the politicians and those who
led the Olympic bid.

I mean, if you really wanted to stimulate ecomic
recovery somewhere, would you give it a) a nice new industrial estate
with tax/rate breaks for incoming companies or b) a velodrome? And if
you want a velodrome, do you put it in a) a pleasant convenient
location that people might want to go to or b) a festering hell hole?

Look at the history of Garden Festivals (have they been given up now?)
Gateshead, Liverpool, Glasgow and the one in south Wales (Swansea?)
were all supposed to leave revitalised communities behind them and all
left areas of wasteland where redevelopment, where it happened, took
years. Some of the Glasgow site is still derelict, twenty years on.

For that matter, look at the Monster of Greenwich.

I think we can safely assume that the people who ran the Olympic bid
did very nicely out of it. I think we can assume that the people who
run the games project will do very nicely out of it. And I think we
can safely assume that the people who live on or near the sites will
be ****ed over before and during the games and left to rot afterwards.


Agree 100%.

If I was allowed to state more than 100%, I would choose the highest
available figure.

;-)

London 2012 will be a landmark exercise in institutional corruption at
its very best (i.e. worst).