Olympic Bill increases by £900m

November 21, 2006 Federal Europe, Labour No comments
! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.

The bill for hosting the 2012 Olympics in London has risen by another £900m.

The Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, was hauled in front of MP’s to own up to the rising cost of hosting the Olympics.

What isn’t clear, though, is how much of this £900m is down to the European Federation’s demand that the British government charge VAT on the construction despite the Treasury’s promise not to charge VAT when the bids were put forward.  The British government is, of course, powerless to stand by their promise as the European Federation can over-rule them.

A couple of weeks ago the Ignorant Jock said we didn’t have to worry about the VAT bill because it’s just moving money around in the Treasury but fails to tell us how much of the VAT collected will be given to the European Federation because the amount of VAT the Treasury collects determines how much our contributions are.

The phrase “white elephant” springs to mind, I wonder why.

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