It's A Swan!

Okay it may have once been a white elephant rather than an ugly duckling but the much maligned Millennium Dome is certainly producing the income it was never dreamed it would back in the dark old days of people pointing at it and laughing. The Aunt Sally of Labour vanity has transformed itself into the private sectors own one armed bandit.

The National Audit Office, not sure if that's the one coming or going in the bonfire of the Quangos, said that the Dome eventually cost somewhere north of £780 million, double what it was expected to cost. That induced many strokey beard moments and cries of 'what a waste of money' at a volume rarely experienced by anything or anybody not called David Bentley. Now according to its capitalist pig owners AEG it is attracting more visitors each year, some 7.2 million, than Australia and India combined. Forget the Taj Mahal or the Opera House, people want views of the old East India Docks and the Blackwall Tunnel approach. Well actually they don't, what they flock to the O2 for are concerts and 'major' events. AEG says that the once maligned building is now generating around £400 million each year for the London economy, after expenses, and that the gross value to the area over the past four years is somewhere around £1.4 billion when you take into account wages, taxes, merchandise revenues, income generated simply by people travelling into and out of the area.

Of course come the Olympics it will host the basketball and gymnastics events, although one hopes not at the same time, the sight of Beth Tweddle being slam dunked by a seven foot tall member of Team America is not something I want to remember as part of the 'Olympic Heritage'. Just one thing occurred to me amongst all this good news, when the deal was being done between AEG and the old Labour Government did anybody think to include a clause that would pay back the taxpayer some of the investment? I don't know the answer to that but I think I'll have a look and see if there's anything out there.