London win the olympics

[Privateer Puddin']

One can assume the cardboard sign had a price in euros and someone photoshopped it out and put the english text there

[Chicky]

Oh, come on. That 'Paris 012' writing has obviously been added.

[passer-by]

Oh, come on. That 'Paris 012' writing has obviously been added.

Probably, but having promotional material ready is still a company policy for many.

[Gilbert]

Most Committees (or companies)have this kind of material ready , just in case they win. It's like in Championships, the Champion team always has drinks andÃ,  T-shirts with their logo and the achievement ready.

Yeah, everyone would prepare everything before the announcement anyway, so they can react as quickly as possible when the result's out.
Take Hong Kong here for example, just after they announced that all the horse race related olympic events will be held here in 2008 (just after they announced London won 2012), some of they government sports centres had their names changed immediately to like "Olympic Centre" and the like the next day, they sure had everything ready long ago, otherwaise how can they make all these billboards, logos so fast?

[Kinoko]

I think if you look closely you'll notice the words on the shirt are fake too. This was originally just a picture of some woman selling crap.

[Becky]

I'm not fussed either way about London hosting the Olympics.  It will probably cripple the transport network, and annoy commuters to no end, but it'll just be another notch on the list of "Things Britain Does To Appeal To The International Community".  On the other hand, it's a whole seven years away, and by then I probably won't be hanging around near London and the Olympyics will have a whole different political backdrop.

[Esseb]

I didn't bother to look at more than the cardboard, but you are indeed right Kinoko.

[Pumaman]

Can't you people stop picking apart the photo and just enjoy the joke

[Privateer Puddin']

i'm saddened, no, ashamed that even brits decided to find flaws in it rather than laugh at the french ¬¬

[scotch]

That photo was in the newspaper when I was in London the other day, along with several other "funny" fake pictures of that sort... seems so childish to me... but what do you expect from English tabloids.
I don't think I know enough about the economics to say if the olympics being here is a good thing or not... I know personally it'll be irritating when it's actually happening, it's bad enough when it's happening over the other side of the world, people are just not going to shut up about it this time.
At least it's 7 years away.

[Kweepa]

Of course hosting the Olympics is a good thing economically - why else would everyone bid for it?
It brings in a shedload of tourist money.
It's going to cost London a lot of money to get the infrastructure, and they're definitely expecting to recoup it.

[Pumaman]

Of course hosting the Olympics is a good thing economically - why else would everyone bid for it?
It brings in a shedload of tourist money.

Actually, the vast majority of people who go to the olympics are from the host country, so it just displaces tourist money rather than generating it. And overall it's reckoned that hosting the games is economically neutral or slightly dis-beneficial. But the political prestige of being the host is what leads countries to want to bid.

If I may quote:
In Sydney, underused venues are costing taxpayers A$46m (£18m) a year to keep afloat and will lose money for at least another decade. The Super Dome, where the closing ceremony was held, recently went into receivership. After the Athens Games, the Greeks face a £6.25bn debt and £60m a year for the upkeep of its unused facilities.

[Kweepa]

Well, that's just stupid.
More info here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3739498.stm

So apparently, the taxpayer will foot the bill, and various London businesses make out like bandits. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Las Naranjas]

Since the Sydney media has dug up every cost-benefit study on hosting the olympics ever made, we've probably read most of them in NSW.

I remember several mentioning that Montreal is still paying of it's debt.

Sydney, like many cities, built most of the facilities in a former industrial area in order to "revitalise" it [as well as the land being cheaper].

problem is, when you've still got facilities there after the athletes have gone home, you realise why the place needed revitalisation. Maybe this would be less pronounced in London since it's geographically smaller than Sydney [every city in the world is really. Sydney is a endless rolling plain of suburbs].

There's also a good seven years of bureaucratic fuck ups to distract the media facing you.

Ironically, the best thing the olympics did for the Australian economy was to nealy send it into recession. Most economies around then were teetering at the edge of the trough, and just needed something to push it in. In Australia, it was a post olympics hangover [along with a new tax], and that essentially saved us from the bigger fall in septemeber the next year.

[and I just described that in really horrible layman's terms]