by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
To all intents and purposes most of (central) London resembles a ghost town during the Olympic Games.
Instead of bringing lots of tourists and others into London and into shops of all kinds the fact is that retailer outlets are empty as are the streets.
Most people, tourists as much as commuters, seem to be staying away from London and stores and market traders are saying that they are, in fact, losing out rather than making the large profit, as they were promised.
Public transport, unlike during normal times, are almost empty as, so it would appear, people are staying away from London in droves. Hotel rooms also are going begging and, so the story goes, many small hotels have reduced their rates simply in order to attract people to come and stay in London this summer.
Instead of bringing benefits the 2012 Olympics in London is going to cost, so it would appear, everyone dearly, from the tax payers to the retailers and everyone in between.
The streets are empty, even in places that are nowhere near the Olympic venues and the controlled traffic lanes and such, and this included Oxford Street and the West End per se.
Theaters in the West End of London are empty and so are shops. So much for all the benefits that the economy was going to get from the 2012 London Olympics.
If I would be a betting man I would bet my bottom dollar that the legacy will turn out as much as flop – for the people at least – as the economic boots that the games were going to bring to London and the country as a whole.
I would suggest that alone the fact that London was, basically, turned into an armed camp with all its over the top security measures has turned many a tourist, from Britain and abroad, to come into the capital.
Even the commuters seem to be either gone on vacation or are working from home, and they are turned off, predominately, by the fact that many of the roads have been turned into the Games super highways and are out of bounds to the ordinary folks and also that there was a traffic chaos expected on public transport.
There will be no economic boot; the opposite rather, and I also hazard a suggestion that there will be no Olympic legacy that will benefit the people of this country whose tax dollars (even though the UK does not use dollars) funded the games.
A total waste and to top it all the greenest games have decided that they rather used natural gas (more than likely supplied by the main sponsor EDF) of bio-gas to fuel the cauldron with the Olympic flame.
© 2012
