Dominic Lawson: The futile extravagance of this £9bn dash

The Sicilian aristocracy of the 18th century chose a number of imaginative ways to bankrupt themselves. Perhaps the most fleetingly pleasurable was an ever more extravagant series of banquets they held for each other. Most of them realised these were increasingly unaffordable, but social convention demanded that the hospitality was beyond the obvious ability of the host to pay for it.

Nowadays, we have the Olympic Games. Last week the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, told MPs that our bill for the honour of hosting international athletics' quadrennial beanfeast had more than trebled, to £9.35bn. That this should have excited amazement is itself amazing. These are the people who brought you the Millennium Dome and the new Wembley Stadium. The Olympic Games may no longer match up to the amateur ideals of Pierre de Coubertin, but on the field of accountancy and financial planning we can be sure of a stunning display of amateurism.

Ostensibly, this will all be justified in the old Sicilian style: to demonstrate to our guests - the athletes, media and politicians of more than 200 other nations - that we are wonderful, generous, people. There are differences, most obvious of which is that the Sicilian aristocrats were spending their own money. Tessa Jowell and her colleagues will only be spending other people's money - ours.

In 2004 the taxpayers of Greece were compelled to spend more than $100m on the opening celebrations alone. Part-Greek he may be, but Prince Philips was characteristically unsentimental about this, describing the modern Olympic opening ceremony as "absolutely bloody nuisances ... absolutely appallingly awful". He's absolutely right. These grotesque shindigs exude the ghastly, philistine mass vulgarity more properly associated with fascist and communist regimes. We really should leave this sort of thing to the experts: next year's Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing will show us why.

It's understandable why a country like China - desperate to demonstrate its new-found economic power together with old-style socialist regimentation - would want to put on such a show. I can also understand why South Korea, a country anxious to confirm its very existence, was pleased to pay billions for bombastic self-advertisement. But why should London be so screamingly in need of such promotion? This is a city already described by non-Britons as the new capital of the world - as it certainly is becoming, financially. This is a city which is already a hub of international tourism, to the increasing discomfiture of many of its indigenous inhabitants.

Sebastian Coe, the driving force behind "London 2012", has come up with many justifications for his campaign, both sporting and non-sporting. He believes that the benefit of a home crowd will inspire British athletes, who otherwise might have come fourth or fifth in their events, to "pick up bronze medals". Even if he is right, that seems to elevate bronze to a precious metal of unimaginable value.

It is in his non-sporting justifications that Coe, who had always seemed to me a very level-headed person, gets completely hyper-oxygenated. He warns that "many east Londoners live an average of seven years less than residents of Westminster", implying in some way that the urban regeneration associated with the Olympics will add years to the lives of the residents of the Greenwich Peninsula. "The new sports venues for the games", apparently, will help "to tackle serious lifestyle-related conditions such as childhood obesity, heart disease and diabetes".

In other words, those of us who cavil at this extravaganza are kiddie-killers. Are we to be allowed to point out in our defence that a much greater amount of urban regeneration, or indeed sports facilities, would be affordable by the state if billions were not being paid to finance two and a half weeks of running and jumping? Sorry, we should not forget such fascinating events as women's weightlifting, synchronised swimming, equestrian dressage and beach volleyball.

Similar arguments were put by the Sydney and Athens Olympic organisations to justify to their own residents the extraordinary sums of money which they were being asked to provide. Some perspective on that was recently provided by the Institute for Public Policy and Research, no enemy either of this government or of its winning bid for the 2012 Games. The IPPR pointed out that: "The (Athens) promotional material proclaimed a unique opportunity to update infrastructure and provide new sports facilities for Athenians to enjoy for years to come. Now it looks like a different story.

"The Athens Olympics of 2004 went way over budget, with little apparent long-term reward. The facilities are chronically underused; many are fenced off, patrolled by security guards ... Sydney, hailed as 'the greatest ever Games', is struggling to find viable post-Games uses for many facilities concentrated around an Olympic plaza which now resembles a ghost town."

In her statement to Parliament last Thursday, Tessa Jowell sought to distance London from these débâcles. She declared, in the language and vocabulary which we have come so much to associate with New Labour, that: "The 1 million sq ft media centre for the games will provide in legacy a state-of-the-art business space." Ugh. Ms Jowell went on: "And there will be one of the largest shopping centres in Europe, which will involve an estimated £7bn private sector investment. That money has been invested because we won the Olympic Games."

I have nothing against gigantic shopping centres, but I refuse to believe either that there is a burning national need for another one, or, if there is, that the private sector needs any special inducement to knock one up.

On the day that Tessa Jowell made her announcement I was wandering through Noto, in the far south-east of Sicily. In an otherwise unremarkable town there are a couple of streets of monumental architectural scale and ambition. Alas, the great public buildings are almost all crumbling and deserted. Nonetheless, I would find it hard to criticise the 18th-century ruling aristocrats who commissioned them. Even in their decay, the flowing beauty of the buildings' high Baroque style still had me gasping in admiration.

Somehow I don't think that the traveller of three centuries hence will derive similar pleasure from the contemplation of the east London ruins of a "1 million sq ft media centre" and one of "the largest shopping centres in Europe". Say what you like about the decadent Sicilian aristocracy, but at least they knew how to leave a legacy.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk

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