London 2012

from today's Business Week enews (8/27):

August 25, 2008, 3:57PM EST text size: TT

London Games 2012: Lessons from Beijing
The British capital can't match China for spending or flash. It aims instead to emphasize fun at the 2012 Summer Olympics
by Mark Scott

"The over-the-top pageantry of the 2008 Beijing Olympics has left many Londoners wondering how Britain's capital can live up to expectations when it hosts the next summer Olympiad in 2012. The city's mayor, Boris Johnson, summed up the mood: "We've been dazzled, impressed, and blown away by these Beijing Games," he says, adding, "but we've not been intimidated."

Brave words, but the London mayor knows he's got his work cut out to match what International Olympic Committee Chairman Jacques Rogge rightfully called an "extraordinary Games." The British capital has a budget of just over $17 billion to deliver London 2012, compared with the $44 billion that Chinese authorities spent on the Beijing Games. China bulldozed neighborhoods to make way for the Games and throttled factories and driving in a scramble to clean up Beijing's polluted air, but British officials enjoy no such impunity. Indeed, they're already coming up against taxpayer outcry over plans for the Olympic site in East London." ...

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