In the great race to stage the Olympics, what matters is to come second
Iam throwing my hat into the five rings. The search is on for a leader of London's campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games, next week a short list of candidates come up for interview, Cherie Blair's name has crept in, and it will be joined, I can now reveal, by my own. If the selectors — the lady who runs the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the British Olympic Association's chief executive, and somebody from Mayor Livingstone's office — want original thought, I can refer them to my plan for Wembley. It was, so I argued, self-evidently uneconomic to spend hundreds of millions on rebuilding the stadium on a site with hopeless transport problems, in an area of London where the local sport was drive-by shooting. How much better to move it to Meriden, at the centre of England, with a huge catchment area and ready-made rail, road and air links. It could then expand to accommodate the Boat Race and the Grand National, and would make a far better Olympic site than the malodorous valley of the River Lea and the greyhoundracing stadium in Hackney which now seem to be preferred. If the selectors complain that Meriden is not, strictly speaking. in London. I shall refer them to Gatwick, Luton and Southampton airports, which have dealt with this simply by writing 'London' into their names. The Mayor, though, so I suspect, has other fish to fry. He wants the games for the investment that goes with them, and, of course, the publicity, too.
Palm, yes, dust, no
There is no surer boost for a city than an Olympic campaign. Money from the Treasury, money from Europe, private finance with public guarantees — if the hapless Dome could attract a purpose-built Tube line, just think what the Olympic Games could do. They might revive Crossrail, the east-west link which got the right-away ten years ago and has been stalled ever since. They could breathe new life into the Post Office's underground railway, which is up for sale. (My railway correspondent. I.K. Gricer, wants to use it for transporting athletes, but adds that female shot-putters from Russia would have to pass through a loading gauge.) London would glisten, the Thames would be festooned with bridges and the Lea would smell sweet. Think, though, what would happen if we actually staged the Games — the tantrums,
the tedium. the wave of backpackers, the months of disruption, the fuss about security, and, above all, the vast bills that would linger on after the last shot-putter had gone home. May we all be spared. What we want is the palm without the dust: all the benefits of a campaign to host the Games without the inconvenience of putting them on. That is what I, as its leader, would seek to deliver, and it can be and has been done. Baron de Coubertin said it for me: what matters is not to win but to take part and come second.
Freedom delayed
Taking breakfast at the Ritz on Monday, I shall get Tax Freedom Day off to a good start. From this day forward we stop working for the Chancellor and start to work for ourselves — that is, until 1 January, 2004, when the whole process starts again. Tax Freedom Day is a movable feast, and the Adam Smith Institute, which does the calculations, warns us that next year it will be six days later. (NB: 2004 is a leap year.) With misguided enthusiasm. the Institute suggests that this day should be made a public holiday. In a free country, we should be free to choose our holidays without the diktat of the state. Declaring a public holiday is one way in which governments seek to bribe us with what is, in effect, our own money. In thinking of ways to do this, the present Chancellor is endlessly fertile. Tax credits and social security benefits, which together cost £109 billion last year, will cost £134 billion in two years' time. This is one reason why Tax Freedom Day keeps getting later and later.
Flap off
A flutter of gossamer wings at the Wembley Conference Centre this week signalled the arrival of the Compensation Fairy. She had come to the annual gener
al meeting of Equitable Life to tell its surviving policyholders, or most of them, that things could, after all, be worse. Some of the newcomers, she thinks, were mis-sold their policies. They should have been warned that the Equitable was fighting a test case and might lose it. What could they have been told, except that the board had taken legal advice and was assured it would win? Now, with a wave of her wand, they will get compensation. Who pays? The rest of the policy-holders. The Equitable is a mutual society and theirs are the only pockets available. Who will compensate them? Flap off, Fairy.
Meaning business
After all these years, the vote! I know how Mrs Pankhurst felt. The City of London is adopting its own form of business democracy, and to the 6,000 residents who until now have been its only electors have been added 11.000 partners and sole traders — plus anything up to 15,000 votes to be cast by designated voters on behalf of companies with City offices. Seniority counts, so candidates for the Bassishaw ward should send their manifestos to me. These should include a pilot scheme for converting wine-bars into banks, drafting big hitters to serve as Lord Mayor, and posters on all the City's approach roads: 'We earn £22 billion a year for Britain', or, more simply, 'The City means business.' I shall be open to persuasion on the usual terms.
Vintage Rothschild
The Rothschilds get their priorities right. When President Chirac needed a kissand-make-up present for cher Tony's fiftieth birthday, he found half a case of Château Mouton Rothschild 1989 — a better year for claret than for Mr Blair, who was, so I seem to remember, a junior shadow spokesman on Treasury issues. Why not the 1953, a rarity nowadays, but the birthday boy's own vintage? I am told that the Château could not or would not supply it. The last of the 1953 was being kept for the Masters of Wine, who were touring Bordeaux to celebrate their Institute's own fiftieth birthday. The Masters, apparently, did justice to the vintage, in accordance with my father's maxim: more good wine has been spoiled by keeping than by drinking.
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