The Sketch: Tessa's going for the gold in Olympic chicanery

We're getting there, slowly but surely. The Sketch's estimate of the cost of the Olympic games was always £12.5bn. Why can't I be the "world class delivery partner"? I don't know anything about it and I'm closer to the mark than the £400m accountants they've hired to keep things under control. I'll do it for £200m.

Derek Wyatt told us urbanely that international experience suggests Olympic bills double from initial estimates. But we in Britain have managed to treble ours in twelve months (and we still have five years to play with). The possibilities are fabulous. Tessa revealed the new contingency budgets are more than the original estimate. She's going for gold!

She had come to the Commons to deliver her latest estimates. The figures are so large they need special wide sheets of paper to record them. Are they the final costs, she was continually asked. They are "intended" to be the final costs, she continually replied.

As the Lottery fund was being raided again, would good causes suffer from lost grants? Tessa replies to this sort of question in her New Labour way.

She starts with a show of great but weary conviction (oh how tired she must be of repeating the obvious truth). "I've made it aaaaabsolutely clear," she goes, casting forward to the latter part of her sentence "that there will be no cuts." But in the middle she inserts as quickly and quietly as she can, covered by the overhang of her long aaaabsolutely, the words "not the Government's expectation".

It's not the Government's expectation there will be cuts. It's as if to say, "there will be cuts." But you knew that. Of course, you can't say it to Tessa without her accusing you of crimes against the Olympic spirit.

In précis, the exchanges went: "Has the National Audit Office verified this new budget?"

"I'm not going to answer these ranting allegations and slurs!"

"Why didn't you take VAT into consideration?"

"That's a vote for Paris!"

"This profit sharing from the real estate improvement? How much is that going to cost the London Development Agency who had previously been assured of all related profits?"

"Your pants are made of Camembert!" That last was a particularly incomplete answer, many felt.

So, to question the Government track record of cost control, this was to directly attack the hopes and dreams of every school child in the country.

She said our country's young were all, individually, counting off the months to the start of the Games. The breathless, apple-cheeked school population, tiny flags in their fists and Olympic dreams in their hearts, were biting back the tears as devious and manipulative politicians peddled their vile cynicisms. It was a subtle form of abusive paedophilia laced with treason. There ought to be a law! (And maybe there soon will be.)

simoncarr@sketch.sc

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