Why the Olympic Numbers Don't Add Up ; As the Ioc Arrives in London This Week to Check On the 2012 Games, Our Columnist Explains Why All Grandiose Projects Bust Their Budgets

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THE 2012 Olympics is a project so lavish that it already makes the Dome look almost like a garden folly, in having only cost a billion pounds.

This sum is now the unit by which margins of error are measured in costing the London games. The figure now reported is Pounds 9 billion, but it could as easily be Pounds 10 or Pounds 11 or Pounds 12 billion. And it is unfortunate that these stories should be prominent this week, as the International Olympic Committee is coming to London to check on the health of the 2012 games. But that this should have happened to the cost of London's games is also entirely predictable.

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Why the Olympic Numbers Don't Add Up ; As the Ioc Arrives in London This Week to Check On the 2012 Games, Our Columnist Explains Why All Grandiose Projects Bust Their Budgets

Almost every other Olympics has gone over budget, except for Los Angeles in 1984, which made cheapness almost the sole aim. Indeed most other grand public building projects have, throughout history, made the first earnest indications of cost look laughable. Had we the 5,00...

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