A Cock Up of Olympic Proportions

Congratulations yet again to the organisers and bureaucrats attempting to "run" the London Olympics 2012, for another cock up.

One of the fundamental planks of the "Olympic strategy" (I wasn't aware that we had one) was that holding the games in London would earn billions from tourism. The government and the Olympics organisers have deluded themselves that the mere existence of the games will encourage thousands of people to come to Britain and spend billions on tourist attractions et al.

Using decidedly dodgy data, that overestimated growth, the government decided that the tourism industry could more or less take care of itself and cut tourism funding by approximately 20%.

The cock up relates to data in the Olympic tourism strategy, which was published in September 2007. This claimed that tourism and leisure grew 4.7% in 2005, compared with growth of 1.1% in the general economy. The government used that figure to justify its claim that a 2004 target to create a £100BN tourism industry by 2010 was achievable.

Needless to say, the figures were fantasy.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) publicised its autumn performance report three months later, this stated that the actual 2005 figure was a mere 0.4% (8% of the overstated figure).

Unfortunately this revelation was too late to save Visit Britain, the national tourism agency, from being savaged by the government. It has had its budget cut from £55.1M to £45.8M.

Will the government please explain as to why the tourism data was so inaccurate?

These games are going to be a shambles, and the taxpayer will end up footing the bill for many years afterwards.