You know, there is a really interesting statistic that places everything into context...

In 1948 London held its second Olympic Games and has entered folklore as "The Austerity Games", the government of the day accepting the invitation to host the games on the proviso that, in a country ravaged by war debt and with a huge infrastructure rebuilding plan to finance, no additional money would be provided for sporting facilities or indeed the hosting of the athletes - British athletes were even sent the cloth and told to make their own shorts and shirts.

In 1948 the NHS came into being and in its first year it had running costs of £248million, a figure which if adjusted for inflation [url=http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.htmlnumber crunching provided here[/url is equivalent to £7.63billion in todays money.

So,

Lasting legacies then...

£7.6billion on a National Health Service for the next 64 years

£9.6billion on seventeen days of (sometimes) obscure sports

The lasting legacy for my part is the continuation of the School Games for many years to come, and the hundreds of thousands of children of all ages being inspired by the Games and being more active, also beneficial to the NHS in the long term.

Do we not see enough of football, rugby and cricket, so what there's obscure sports, people with a passion for sport have an interest in other games, how they're played and their athletes. And not only that but not everyone wants to watch or play the 'mainstream' sports mentioned, children and adults are being encouraged to be sporty and active though a growing variety in schools and clubs, again beneficial to the NHS.

This week is National School Sport Week, as a Partnership we will have over 1200 year 4s at 1 venue accross the week take part in sports including Athletics, handball, goal ball, hockey, volleyball amongst many others. Go and see what's actually going on, don't make flat judgments with less than half the figures.

Yeah, but one nice aspect is that they must be spinning in their graves with Seb Coe (Jewish) and people from many and varied ethnic groups carrying the torch nowadays.
Must admit I quite like that bit.

All well and good Seth,

But we already had such a provision in schools and can already make such a provision in schools without the need for a £10billion showcase - can't we ?

With universities churning out record numbers of degree level sports science graduates (in my day it was Leeds or Loughborough and thats your lot) then surely it doesn't take much imagination to put a sports teacher into each school dedicated to the principles that you describe - are we really saying that in order to do that we need to first host the Olympics, is that really why we are hosting the Olympics, to light some interest in sports among our schoolchildren, christ it would be cheaper to buy them all one-to-one tuition with David Beckham if thats the case.

The main objective according to that PWC report highlighted earlier seemed to be tourism.

I honestly cannot really comment on the 10bn cost, my budgeting decisions stop at £800 for a district event and the costs to run 2 global events for 205 nations and 300+ events, is not my strong point. What I do know is that the Beijing Games cost twice that and Sydney around 7bn. The cost per household per year is relatively very small for what will be an amazing occasion, could there have been a Bn or 2 shaved off the cost?..i don't know, probably, but if households are moaning about the budget, cut down on a couple of takeaways a year, a few beers or burgers that way the NHS will be happy too!!

For an event of such magnitude and importance watched by 4bn people around the world I'd say it's a pretty massive opportunity that needs to be done to perfection.

For those discussing it earlier there will be 200,000+ workers and 70,000 of these will be volunteers, and that's just at the games themselves.

Quit moaning, put your takeaway down,( yes the organisers could have saved us the equivalent of about 5 quid each!) and get involved with it!!!

Sporty and active is all very good, but you really need to be competitive and have some measure of skill in your chosen sport to get the best out of it. Being humped 7 nil out on the football pitch on a regular basis, is hardly the way forward if you want to keep a youngster interested.

It's a shame that a combination of Politically Correct headteachers who banned the end of term school games, and that short sighted policy of selling off school playing fields has denied so many kids of that great simple feeling of being winners.

And all without the subterfuge,obscene costs, political chicanery and outright cheating that passes for The Olympics nowadays.....

A very outdated view that doesn't any longer hold truth. The School Games has 4 levels from local school competion all the way to the national finals known as the Uk School Games, competitive school sport is thriving!

I'd be very interested to know what is the cost, per tax payer, for the games?

What's the issue, Jeff, with able bodied claimants of JSA being asked to earn that allowance during the games?

I wasn't talking about them. I didn''t introduce the term, I asked the poster who did to clarify it.

Do you take issue with the figures Seth has quoted with 200,000 jobs for the games itself compared to 70,000 volunteers?

Do you think the money would have been spent on the NHS had we not been awarded the Olympics?

Excellent news. Can't beat having a trophy or your photo in the paper! Just a shame we can't raze all those housing estates and turn them back into playing fields.

Not at all, its great news and if I read Seth's post correctly the Games have created 130,000 paid jobs during the events - fantastic news.

What do we do in September ?

i don't know, £10,000,000,000 is a lot of money, some of it could have been spent on the NHS, some could have gone towards getting every child of school age to have a face-to-face personal interview with David Beckham in order to inspire them with the equivalent of an Olympic Games style fervour for sport, there would probably have been enough left in the pot to buy them all a skipping rope too, and then some.

You could work it out really easily yourself, just google the number of UK taxpayers, deduct Jimmy Carr and Phillip Green from the number, and then divide into £9,600,000,000.

As far as JSA is concerned, no-one should be asked to work in order to receive JSA, indeed if an individual decides that they can work (even for free) whilst in receipt of JSA then they'll find themselves in deep trouble - you're even supposed to declare when you go away to visit relatives for a few days or go on holiday.

Its Job Seekers Allowance, max £65 per week to pay the expenses incurred when looking for work, pays for bus fares to interviews, a clean shirt, that sort of thing but its absolutely dependant on you actively seeking work and the theory goes that if you are already working somewhere then you are not actively seeking work and should not be claiming the benefit.

Always has been thus and for a government to start requesting job seekers to work for their job seekers allowance would be / is (because its already happening) a national disgrace - you can't prosecute jobseekers for doing the same thing that HM Gov is requesting them to do, its either not permissible or it is permissible .

I'll be taking a trip to Germany, moaning about the build up of traffic now the kids are back at school and reflecting upon a wonderful summer of sport.

You?

Wouldnt the X Billions of pounds spent on the olympics be better spent on re building our manufacturing industry and creating new jobs to get people off benefits, more affordable housing for first time buyers and not reducing the amount of workers in the NHS and emergency services.

That said I dont think anyone could have predicted how much we are in when we actually decided to bid for the games back in 2005 or whenever it was (although im sure we pay people to do exactly that). At that point the economy was booming.

Ok, I did. Top search result was [url=http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080410050121AAMgjSbJust over 60 million[/url. It's rough and ready and not authoratative but it was your suggestion. Anyway, using that as a refence it's £150 a head for the tax payers.

That's fine with me. Money well spent. Of course, the figures you throw around are just the cost. They don't take into account income from sponsorship and ticket sales, tax earned from jobs created and money spent. The cost to me, if there is one, could be much much less.

Thanks for clarifying. Like I said, I've no idea how the benefits system works having only ever been fortunate enough to be a contributor to it. rather than claim from it.

I note your views about what Claimants should. or more importantly, shouldn't, have to do to receive a benefit my taxes pay for.

The actual cost to the tax payer is also closer to 7bn too, so that would be around £116.

That's almost what Bulls supporters were asked to pledge to keep afloat an insolvent private company for a couple of months before inevitable administration, for a little perspective.

Add the fact that we've not been asked to immediately caugh up our £116, (it's more likely equivalent to £5 a month for 2 years) and what's the fuss! I'll happily pay another £10 a month for others if I didn't have to hear their moaning.

Climbing the Yorkshire three peaks and then celebrating my birthday, again.

Not my views, the actual law - i thought thats what you did for a living in between your meal breaks ?

Thats very magnanimous, how do we arrange this and are you willing to pay for more than two people who don't want to contribute ?

Go on, its not like your job doesn't depend on it.

You pay for me for something I don't like, I'll pay for you for something you don't like, we're all happy then!

"The Law" can be a very fluid concept.

"thats what I did". The Law. Break it? enforce it? Practice it? Make it?

I'll let you into a secret. Nobody actually knows what i do for a living. I just happened to occupy a desk in a solicitor's firm 25 years ago and have never left. Before the Internet got invented I took lunches, played solitaire and went to the loo with a copy of Razzle for hours on end.

Now and try and convince miserable auld buggahs on the Internet to cheer up and enjoy the Olympics.