Conservatives and London 2012

I am sitting in a briefing from the Olympics organising groups with Lord Coe and Jonathon Edwards.

I have supprted the Olympics and bidding process for years. At one previous conference in Bournemouth some years ago a very angry Conservative member of the Greater London Assembly complained about the increase in their council tax as a result of the Olympics. At the time this was expected to be a total of £20 per year or so. The whingeing individual embodied the worst traits of negativity in the party. I offered to pay it their increase if that would lead to silence and it worked. My support was on the grounds that I was excited and proud to see the greatest sporting event in the world come to the greatest.

Fortunately, that negative strain of thought is not in evidence, today. There was a huge amount of support for the olympics and the concerns and questions are all about how things are being managed, and rightly so.

Hugh Robertson MP is also on the panel.He has done an excellent job of making sense of the numbers in the Olympics budget and making clear that the organisers have not gone over their original predictions. All of the reported ‘increases’ are not actually related to the games costs but are due to Gordon Brown’s attempts to blame Lord Coe for the money Brown wants to spend on regeneration.