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Olympic village troubles put Vancouver in exclusive club

January 21st, 2009 · 11 Comments

Well, we always wanted to be a world-class city. And now we are, as you can see from this article in the Guardian, documenting London’s troubles in financing its Olympic athletes’ village.

And what’s the deal with Whistler? Why aren’t they having the same troubles? They seem to be doing just fine, as Bruce Constantineau’s story in the Sun indicates.

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  • spartikus

    Interesting. But the question is…how can we blame this on Gregor Robertson?

  • LP

    spartikus,

    Since your comment is fairly cheeky, allow me to provide the smart ass answer to your question.

    The government of the UK is on the left, so one ‘could’ suggest that when anything is managed by the left, they’ll find one way or another to f**k it up.

  • tommi

    spartikus, didn’t you mean: “how can we blame this on the NPA”? I don’t recall anyone trying to blame Gregor for the Olympic Village fiasco. Only for the way he and Geoff Meggs decided to spin the information they released.

  • spartikus

    The government of the UK is on the left, so one ‘could’ suggest that when anything is managed by the left, they’ll find one way or another to f**k it up.

    Well, if one were to drop cheek for a moment, perhaps one could, perhaps, elaborate on just what was precisely Left about the London Olympic Village. And perhaps you could throw in the Leftiness of the Vancouver Olympic Village, which some – and by some I mean most – would think of as the quintessential Right initiative…P3, and all that.

  • Jeannette M

    LP…

    Actually, I think London elected mayor who is pretty for to the right last time around… so it all depends on if you want to blame the civic or the federal politics…

  • spartikus

    Yes, that’s right – Boris Johnson, Tory, is current Mayor of London. Though it seems like the national government is on the hook for overruns.

  • LP

    Spartikus and Jeanette,

    Read carefully:

    “Since your comment is fairly cheeky, allow me to provide the smart ass answer”

    What does it suggest my answer is…….seriously get a sense a humor already.

    I may be just right of center but I never suggested gregor was at fault in this whole thing, just being political in his transparency.

  • Michael Geller

    I just read the British story referenced above…

    “Government forced to bail out major Olympic projects.
    Ministers raid £461m from contingency fund to keep construction of athlete village and media centre on track

    The government today revealed it would have to raid its London 2012 contingency fund for £461m to pay for the ongoing construction of the athletes village… after private sector investment dried up.”

    I guess they had an NPA government too!

  • Joseph Jones

    Nothing like a big entry fee to make a club exclusive! Aren’t you glad Vancouver joined?

  • RossK

    And why, exactly, did Whistler get such a great rate?

    Do they have a special fund and/or bank they can go to?

    Why, yes, they do indeed.

    And, according to the Constantineau piece linked to by Frances, it’s name is Gord*:

    “The three-year, floating-rate loan expires on Dec. 31, 2011 and was provided by the Municipal Finance Authority of B.C., the province’s local government financing agency.”

    Imagine that.

    ______
    (*which, of course, for all intents an purposes is really us….Hey! Isn’t that the lefty way?)

    .

  • RossK

    Mr. G–

    Hard to tell just how much influence London council has in this deal without diving into the details, but….

    Don’t forget Red Ken is no longer running the show there….Instead, it’s now a fellow that even the Spamaloteers (ie. the ‘learned’ ones Ms. Bula referred toin a previous post) would no doubt love.

    .