An Olympic source has said organisers are having 'fruitful discussions' about how much to charge for tickets with some in LOCOG and the government favouring £3,000 for the best seats at the opening ceremony and other key events. However, it seems some idiots have been making "public statements that the tickets would be affordable and that is causing some disquiet.”

A novel take on the 2012 Games. Apparently businesses are anticipating losses from the London Olympics. A range of legal, financial, media and public sector organisations are unhappy at the lack of attention being paid to the possible disruption and loss of revenue the Games may bring.

Today Mr Higgins kindly sent me an email message in which he said:

'We remain within budget and on track to complete the vast majority of the venues and infrastructure with one year to go.'

Kevin Blowe on the demise of the Food Standards Agency and the announcement that

Today's Torygraph has this: London 2012 Olympics:

Professor Bent Flyvbjerg took up his post as Chair of Major Programme Management at the Said Business School at Oxford University on April 1st 2009.

“In a landmark study, ....[he] analysed over 250 major transport infrastructure projects and found that 90% went over budget — and that the benefits averaged only half of those promised. This was so consistent that Flyvbjerg concluded it amounts to “strategic misrepresentation”, and that the culprits are politicians and bureaucrats competing for scarce public resources or seeking to get a suspect project off the ground to make political capital.“

By Ian Austen, New York Times published: November 14, 2008

OTTAWA — When Montreal announced that it would be the host of the 1976 Summer Olympics, Mayor Jean Drapeau promised that the Games could “no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby.” Ultimately the Games left behind about $1.5 billion in unexpected debt that was paid off only two years ago.Now, Vancouver residents prepare to vote in a municipal election on Saturday, the freeze in credit markets and a collapse of the city’s real estate market have made the financing of the 2010 Winter Games a critical issue.