This was the scene in Sheffield last week when the British Apathy League held its annual conference (the three people in the photograph are obviously stage technicians not delegates).
Mind you it could have been the January 2007 meeting of all those people who think the 2012 Olympics are going to be a success. Have you ever known such a 'glass half-empty' mentality, people running around shouting 'we're doomed' and that's six years before the event!
Let me ask you Dear Reader a simple question. What do the following have in common? Jesse Owens, Cassius Clay, Michael Johnson and Sir Steve Redgrave. That's right, they are/were Olympians. I mean how much promoting does the biggest sporting event in the world need, forget the marketing budget this baby doesn't need promoting. Nor does London, it's the single most visited capital city in the world. If we build it, they will come.
Don't moan about the publicity or say 'why can't more be spent on the NHS, Public Transport...(insert your pet government spending project here), we are talking about something far more intangible but it some ways just as important. Remember that slogan from the Seventies 'Sport For All' - well we need to get back to that.
Not convinced? Look at this, it's taken from the Government in London site and is for 2003, that's two years before the Games were awarded:
Tourism brings real economic and social benefits to London boosting opportunities for employment to Londoners, bringing income to London’s businesses and offering high value tourist attraction to the residents and workers of the capital. This economic contribution has social benefits in tackling social exclusion and as a major health determinant. Tourism represents
10 per cent of London’s Gross Value Added and
up to 13 per cent of London’s workforce.
London gets more overseas visitors than Las Vegas, New York and Sydney combined, and beats other popular cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau and Dubai. The capital also attracts more overseas visitors than other European cities and since 2002 has increased its share of International visitors from 1.65% to 1.76%.
In 2003, London attracted
11.7 million overseas visitors who stayed for
78.9 million nights and spent nearly
£5.9 billion (almost twice the value of domestic tourism).
As a certain Mr Rotten once sang "those tourists are money."
What about the cost? What about the extra Council Tax?
Forget it. Literally. The Government should write it off. About 65% of local authorities income is from Central Government anyway, so write the whole cost off as an exercise to improve transport, housing, infrastructure but above all sporting excellence.
But it's alright for Londoners they get all the benefits.
Wrong, wrong and thrice wrong. The Olympics will be taking place across the country, besides since when has feeling good had to be so parochial? The latest estimate for the cost of the games is about £3 billion, that can be covered. A report by Pricewaterhousecoopers in 2002 estimated that the benefits from the awarding of the games to London would be £3.2 billion and that 80% of that economic benefit would be gained outside of London, despite the fact that Londoners were willing to pay an extra £22 Council Tax per head per year for ten years whilst those tight arses in Glasgow were only willing to pay £12 a year.
Not convinced? Okay look at Sydney, the Olympic Park attracts 5.5 million visitors a year, that's expected to rise to 10 million before the 2012 Games.
This is from the 2001-2 PriceWaterhousecoopers report on the economic impact of the Games at Sydney:
The NSW Government initiated or participated in a wide range of business development and investment attraction programs linked to the Sydney 2000 Games, including:
- Investment 2000, a government/private sector investment attraction
program, which produced 45 investments, $520 million inward investment and 1,150 jobs
-The Australian Technology Showcase, which highlighted 270
innovative Australian companies and contributed to $288 million in
new sales, investments and exports to December 2001
- The Business Club Australia program, which provided significant
business and networking opportunities. This program linked to the
Commonwealth Trades Business program and attracted 16,000 visitors
to the event.
and this is from the paper 'Economic Impact Study of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Arthur Andersen and Centre for Regional Economic Analysis, University of Tasmania, January 1999.
The Games provided enormous benefit to Australia's tourism and retail
sectors. Highlights include:
-The Sydney Convention and Visitors Bureau has won 210 events,
attracting more than 250,000 delegates and injecting more than $1 billion into Sydney's economy
- The attraction of 110,000 Games-specific international visitors.
Come on England, we can do this.
We have lost sight of the benefit that sport can bring to a country, too much emphasis is put on how much does it cost and very little on the long term benefit to the health of the nation by encouraging sports for those in full time education by scrapping all entrance costs to publicly funded sports centres. But what about the people who don't like sport I hear some of you cry, well tough - I pay for public transport but don't use it, my next door neighbour pays for education but doesn't have children, I have colleagues at work who have never spent a single day in a hospital but pay for that. That's how tax systems work - we all put in cross subsidise the bits we don't like in exchange for the bits we do like. Let's be honest we are all forced to pay the BBC but some of us don't watch BBC television or listen to BBC radio.
Getting people involved through interactive promotions costs peanuts - but the long term benefits would be tremendous. Thirty minutes a day spent getting you heart pumping is better than thirty minutes wasted in front of the television, you can do both of course, but don't neglect physical exercise in the belief that you can catch up later - it could be too late.
Forget all this retro-active stuff about National Service as an end to societies ills make people more aware of team work or self-fulfilment and see the fruits of their labour through personal attainment.
We can do this. As a nation, we can do this.
For those of us born in the 1960's, the 2012 Olympics and 2014 World Cup are the probably the last chance to do something personal and something publicly for the biggest sporting picture. On a personal level we can volunteer (as Mags and Six have) to help or we can attend one of the venues and say 'I was there when this Country held the biggest and best Olympics ever, we can also contribute by buying official merchandise which will support not only those athletes striving for personal and professional records at the games but investing in sport for future generations.
So come on England. After all as everybody knows, there is no I in TEAM.
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