| SamuelRSmith said: ... I have no problem with people feeling pride in their local team, or what-have-you. My problem with the Olympics (and other major sporting events, not all) is that it becomes a part of statist dominance. "My country is better than your country because we win more medals, win more per person, or whatever". You don't see this, to the same extent, with other international sport events. Look at the Tour d'France, US Open, Wimbledon, etc. In those, the quality of the athlete far exceeds their nationality. Let's see a little more than that. As for school sporting events, this boggles my mind even more "My shitty school that I was forced to go to is slightly better at an extracurricular activity than your shitty school thst you were forced to go to". Personally, I love watching college sports, because I'm amazed by the quality of athletes, and admire the effort that they put in. I could not give a toss which school they go to. ----------- If the stadiums were built using private money, then, yeah, go for it. Pomp and circumstance does make things more exciting. The difference is, when you decided to host that event, you made that decision and controlled exactly how much you spent. At any rate, there's no way you'd ever go 5 times over budget. When they take £26 billion in taxes, you take away the amount of money that we have to spend on our own free time. Part of what makes Disney World awesome is how over-the-top and larger-than-life everything is. And that's fantastic. Difference is: nobody paid for it that didn't want to. |
when salt lake city hosted the winter olympics they did so underbudget and made a profit. sounds like this isn't a problem of the olypics but your problem.
..but remember this too. there are other less tangitable benefits to hosting the olympics than just looking at the budget. the whole world is looking at you for weeks. things like this drive tourism which i'd wager is a milti billion dollar industry for you. my top google serach said this:
The total value of tourism to the UK is set to rise by more than 60% to £188 billion (1) over the next decade, says an independent report commissioned by VisitBritain.
marketing is an investment in your future. no different for countries than for products (like 3rd party wii games am i right?)
